The Assembly granted their request.
However, the French aristocrats in Haiti refused to follow the
directives of the Assembly. At this point, two free mulattoes,
Vincent Oge and Jean Baptiste Chavannes, both of whom had
received an education in Paris, led a mulatto rebellion. The
Haitian aristocrats quickly and brutally suppressed it.
By this time, however, the concepts of the rights of man had
spread to the slave class. In 1791, under the leadership of
Toussaint l'Ouverture, the slaves began a long and bloody revolt
of their own. Slaves flocked to Toussaint's support by the
thousands until he had an army much larger than any that had
fought in the American revolution, This revolt became entangled
with the French revolution and the European wars connected with
it. Besides fighting the French, Toussaint had to face both
British and Spanish armies. None of them was able to suppress the
revolt and to overthrow the republic which had been established
in Haiti.
After Napoleon came to power in France, he sent a gigantic
expedition under Leclerc to reestablish French authority in Haiti.
Pages:
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71