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foes. The French sailors and soldiers were engaged in
dajly tasks of massacre, executed in every form which
ingenuity could invent. Noyades, or drowning of people
in masses, were practised to such extent that the inhabit-
ants of the sea-coast refused to eat the fish which were
taken along the shore where so n^any dead bodies were
floating. In reprisal for these massacres, Paul Louverture, a
negro chief whose wife had been drowned at Cape Francois
by the order of Rochambeau, having obtained possession
of thirty Frenchmen who were passengers aboard a French
ship which had been wrecked at Fort Dauphin, hung them
all within sight of the French lines. . Some of the negroes
who had been ordered over to the executioner were saved
from their fate through the avarice of the French officer,
and sent to other islands to be sold as slaves.
This wanton vengeance was not confined to the prov-
ince of the North, where Rochambeau had the command,
but, as If the French had resolved to employ the last mo-
ments of their dominion in avenging their slaughtered
countrymen, the former victims of negro ferocity, and
to repay themselves in* vengeance for the mortification of
being driven from the island by their slaves in arms, every
part of the country became a scene of carnage and cru-
elty, and death attended the march of the French in every
district. The mulattoes of the South were in arms against
Gen. Lavallette, who commanded at FoiX au Prince, in
consequence of outrages wMch had been committed upoo
several ^individuals of that caste. To avenge this move-
ment the mulatto gendarmrie of Aux Cayes was put aboard
a vessel in that harbor, and massacred by night and the
dead bodies thrown into the sea.
