authorities, was the principal cause of the
feeble resistance the French encountered in Hayti. Indeed, his
confidence in these authorities was such, that he had discharged the
greater part of the regular troops, and sent them back to the tillage of
the soil."--_Haytian papers_, page 158.

Such conduct is a sufficient answer to the allegation that Toussaint was
actuated by a selfish ambition, cunning in its aims, and cruel in its
use of means.

Some light is thrown upon the character of his mind by the record of the
books he studied while yet a slave. Rainsford gives a list, which does
not pretend to be complete, but which is valuable as far as it goes. It
appears that in his years of comparative leisure he was completely
engrossed by one book at a time, reading it at all spare moments,
meditating its contents while in the field, and quoting it in
conversation for weeks together. One of the first authors whose works
thus entirely possessed him was Raynal: afterwards, Epictetus, in a
French translation; then others, as follows:--

Scriptores de Re Militari.

Caesar's Commentaries. French translation, by De Crisse.

Des Claison's History of Alexander and Caesar.

D'Orleans' History of Revolutions in England and Spain.

Marshal Saxe's Military Reveries.

Guischard's Military Memoirs of the Greeks and Romans.

Herodotus.

Le Bean's Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres.

Lloyd's Military and Political Memoirs.

English Socrates, Plutarch, Cornelius Nepos, etcetera, etcetera.

Great mystery hangs over the tale of Toussaint's imprisonment and death.
It appears that he was confined in the Temple only as long as Napoleon
had hopes of extorting from him information about the treasures,
absurdly reported to have been buried by him in the mornes [Note 1],
under circumstances of atrocious cruelty. It has been suggested that
torture was employed by Bonaparte's aide, Caffarelli, to procure the
desired confession; but I do not know that the conjecture is founded on
any evidence.

As to the precise mode of L'Ouverture's death, there is no certainty.
The only point on which all authorities agree is, that he was
deliberately murdered; but whether by mere confinement in a cell whose
floor was covered with water, and the walls with ice (a confinement
necessarily fatal to a negro), or by poison, or by starvation in
conjunction with disease, may perhaps never be known. The report which
is, I believ