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The coast, however, being already taken by General Leclerc, the white population joined them; and a large number of the negroes, becoming alarmed, accepted the conditions offered by the general. Then, after offering some defence, several of Toussaint's lieutenants, one after another, surrendered. The most ferocious of them, Dessalines, had just been driven from St.
Madame Dessalines was alone in a dimly-lighted apartment of Government-house dimly-lighted except by the moon, shining in full at the range of windows which overlooked the gardens, so as to make the one lamp upon the table appear like a yellow taper. For most of the long hours that she had sat there, Therese had been alone.
"Such a soldier!" she dreamed on. "War was his sport, while I trembled at home. He had a soldier's heart." Her father was silent; and she seemed to miss his voice, though she had not appeared conscious of his replies. She started, and sprang to her feet. "You will go home now, Genifrede," said her father. "With Madame Dessalines you will go. You will go to your mother and sister."
On January 1, 1804, at the place whence Toussaint had been treacherously seized and sent to France, the independence of Hayti was declared by the military leaders. Dessalines was made governor-general for life and afterward proclaimed himself emperor. This was not an act of grandiloquence and mimicry.
"And happy if they be no worse than subjects," said Christophe. "If," said Toussaint, "Bonaparte respects the liberties of the French no more than to reduce them from being a nation to being an army, he will not respect the liberties of the blacks, and will endeavour to make them once more slaves." "Ah! you see!" exclaimed Dessalines. "I neither see nor believe, Jacques. We are only speculating.
"You will, at least, try. If you are going, go; the sun is setting," said Toussaint. "What escort have you?" "Old Dessalines and another, I want no more." "Old Dessalines!" said Toussaint, smiling; "then he must have wine. I must see him." "He is here," said Therese, calling him.
Christophe saw, by a glance at his friend's countenance, that he was right. "I should act as you do," Henri continued, "if I were certain of a full and generous reciprocity of feeling on the part of the government and of Bonaparte. But I have no such confidence." "Hear him!" cried Dessalines and Raymond. "You were not wont to doubt Bonaparte, Henri," observed Toussaint.
Now, when there was no oppression and no slavery, the simple system of justice was truly "working well"; not only in the prospect of the crops, and the external quiet of the proprietors, but in the hearts and heads of every class of men of perhaps every family in the island. Jacques Dessalines had arrived from Saint Marc, near which his estate lay.
But for old Dessalines, who, being no soldier, had chosen to hide himself in the same retreat with them, they would hardly have had good shelter before the rains.
"Who is surprised?" inquired Dessalines. "I forewarned you of this, long ago: and I said, at the same time, that, if we waited for aggression, we might find it too late for defence." "Not a word of fear, Jacques. Our victory is as sure as the justice of Heaven."
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