black, recently a slave, who displayed faculties which are very unusual in
his race. In his difficult government, Toussaint Louverture had given
proofs of a generalship, foresight, courage, and gentleness which gave him
the right to address Bonaparte, the object of his passionate admiration,
in the following terms: "The first of the blacks to the first of the
whites." Toussaint Louverture loved France, and rendered homage to it by
driving from the island the Spanish and English troops. He claimed the
ratification of his Constitution, and sent his sons to France to be
properly educated.

The instructions given by the First Consul to his brother-in-law, General
Leclerc, are still secret. He had placed under his command 20,000 men,
excellent troops, borrowed from the old army of the Rhine, the generals
and officers of which were unwilling to resign during the peace. The
squadron, in charge of Admiral Villaret-Joyeuse, was a large one. The
English had been informed of the expedition, by a note signed by
Talleyrand but drawn up by Bonaparte himself. "Let England know," said he,
"that in undertaking to destroy the government of the negroes at St.
Domingo, I have been less guided by commercial and financial
considerations than by the necessity of smothering in all parts of the
world every kind of inquietude and disturbance--that one of the chief
benefits of peace for England at the present moment was that it was
concluded at a time when the French Government had not yet recognized the
organization of St. Domingo, and afterwards the power of the negroes. The
liberty of the blacks acknowledged at St. Domingo, and legitimized by the
French Government, would be for all time a fulcrum for the Republic in the
New World. In that case the sceptre of the New World must sooner or later
have fallen into the hands of the negroes; the shock resulting for England
is incalculable, whereas the shock of the empire of the negroes would,
with reference to France, reckon as part of the Revolution."