Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Infallible physic / [Charles Dickens]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![Charles Dickens ] ALXi THE YEAE. EOTJ NI). [March 3, I860.] 447 fessions, and believing in bis protestations. Wlien the truce ’ivas at its height, and men’s minds most calm and most assured, Toussaint L’Ouverture was treacherously seized in his plantations and carried off, he and his wife and family, to France. There they were treated with all the refinements of cruelty belonging to civilisation: the unfortunate black was thrust into a cold, dank, horrible cell in the prison fortress of Joux, where, on the 27th of April, 1803, he was one morning found dead— the prison authorities said by apoplexy, his- tory says by murder, Hapoleon has few blots on his name more foul, more cruel, more trea- cherous, than this episode of Toussaint I’Ouver- ture, a man of whom history has only nobleness and self-sacrifice to record. After his abduc- tion, the war was carried on with redoubled severity. The French brought bloodhounds from Cuba, and hunted the negroes like wild beasts through the mountains. Eeprisals were not wanting; reprisals so fierce that it was said forty thou-sand French perished by the hands of the blacks, exclusive of those who died of fever and starvation. For, at last, the 'famine was so great that they were forced to eat the very bloodhounds brought over for negro-hunting. Hated, expelled, and their rule broken for ever, the French did the best they could under their untoward circumstances, and recognised Haiti as an independent black nation on the 1st of January, 1804. At that time the negroes were from four hundred and eighty thousand to five hundred thousand strong, and had some notable men among them to take the conduct of af- fairs. True, Toussaint, with his lofty daring and nobleness of soul, was gone, but -Chris- tophe, his friend and companion, remained; and Hessalines was there, vigorous and strong, if peremptory and cruel, with others of less historic weight, and by degrees they put their house in order, -and got things tolerably well arranged. Hessalines, who had made a proclamation advising the assassination of the French, took the west, or French side, as Jacques the First; and Mdien he was assassinated, Petion took the south-west, and Christophe the north- west, as Henri the First. Christophe had been one of Toussainfs most ardent friends and sup- porters, and had been tampered with and tempted by the French at a time when his de- fection would have strengthened their hands perhaps for ever ; but, loyal and true, Christophe had stood manfully by his leader and their cause, and now came forward as the chief of a state, no longer as only the captain of a band of re- volted slaves. In the sequel Christophe was either slain in a military revolt, as some ■sa}'', or, according to others, committed suicide. Put, indeed, Haitian history is sadly confused and in- distinguishable; dates, names, events, sequences, are jumbled together in such utter disorder, that we can make out little beyond the fact that the government of-the island was handed about from one to another, that revolutions and assassina- tions were thick on every side, that the black governors had'much to learn and much to un- learn, and that the whole was a series of experi- ments, in which sometimes the experiment, and sometimes the experimenter, came off worst, and sometimes things went on smoothly and well for all parties. This historic and dynastic imbroglio lasts until August, 1849, in' which month and_ year Soulouque became emperor, under the title of Faustin the First. Soulouque was a kind of prophetic parody. He did in his small way'precisely what a certain neighbour of oui's did in a grander fashion two years later. Elected President, as all the rest had been from Hessalines upwards, he took the oaths and his seat, and for a time conducted himself with becoming presidential moderation. But the glitter of an imperial crown dazzled Soulouque, and the Haitian President ex- ecuted a coup d’etat whereby he became a crowned emperor and the loving cousin of aU the regalities in Europe. It was a grand idea, and by no means weakly executed. Soulouque was a great nobility maker. His Hukes of Mar- malade and Princesses of Barley-Bugar were the standing jokes of the Old World, though not quite fair jokes; and for a time, what with successfully debauchmg the army, and surround- ing himself with a creature court devoted to his fortunes—which were their own—he managed to steer clear of his enemies, and to overbear aU opposition. He was wise, too, in his generation. With a keen eye to the future, he amassed three or four hundred thousand pounds, which he prudently invested in the European funds—his uneasy seat, and perhaps an uneasy conscience, leading him to build his boats and bridges behind him, and make all ready for the day when flight should,, be his sole chance of safety. His immediate caush of failure was not long in coming. A man of -liis inordinate ambition could not let well alone, but must needs plan and plot, and conspire for something more than he had, and this something more was the empire of the whole island. He took his measures, laid his plans, prepared his plot, but his men did not second him, the army even failed him, and the conspiracy fell to the grouhd in a helpless and imperfect manner; whereon Soulouque, in a rage, got hold of his recalcitrants, put them into pits, kept them without food, and left them to be devoured by vermin of the most horrible kind. In short, he acted with all the full-blooded cruelty of an unmitigated savage tyrant. As Anthony Trollope says, “ He played, upon the whole, such a melodrama of fantastic tricks and fantasies as might have done honour to a white Nero. Then at last black human nature could endure no more, and Soulouque, dreading a pit for his own majesty, was forced to run.” On the 29th of January, 18'59, he and his black wife, or wives, his famous daughter Olive, and his numerous maids of honour, took refuge on board the Melbourne, bound for Kingston, in Jamaica. But they found Kingston almost as hot for them as Port-au-Prince. The banished Haitians, of whom Faustin the First had made quite a colony, had mostly congregated there, and received their ancient oppressor, as soon as](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22466022_0004.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
