France,
and able to support climatic changes which dealt havoc to the raw
English levies. In truth, the success of the West India expeditions
depended on other factors besides military and medical skill. It turned
on political and humanitarian motives that were scouted at Westminster.
The French Jacobins stole many a march on the English governing classes;
and in declaring the negro to be an equal of the white man they nearly
wrecked Britain's possessions in the West Indies.

For a great negro leader had now appeared. Toussaint l'Ouverture, though
probably not of pure negro blood, was born at Breda in the north of
Hayti in 1746. His mental gifts were formidable; and when sharpened by
education and by long contact with whites, they enabled him to play upon
the elemental passions of his kindred, to organize them, to lead them to
the fight, to cure their wounds, and to overawe their discontent. A
barbarian in his outbursts of passion, and a European in organizing
power, he became a zealot in the Republican cause. A quarrel with
another masterful negro, Jean Francois, forced him for a time to retire
into the Spanish part of San Domingo; but he soon returned, and proved
to be our most formidable enemy.

The position in Hayti at the close of 1795 was somewhat as follows. The
Republicans and their coloured allies, often helped by the Spaniards,
held or ravaged the greater part of the territory which the French
Royalists had invited us to possess. Their hopeful forecasts had led
Pitt and Dundas to send far too few troops for what proved to be an
increasingly difficult enterprise; and at this time British authority
extended scarcely beyond the reach of the garrisons. The French
Royalists had not given the help which Malouet and Charmilly had led our
Ministers to expect.[389] And on the other hand, Victor Hugues, the
Republican leader, managed to spread revolt in St. Vincent, Grenada, and
Dominica. In this critical state of things, the Cabinet decided to
accord to Major-General Williamson, Governor of Hayti, a long furlough,
and to place in supreme command a man of great resourcefulness and power
of character.

Sir Ralph Abercromby was at this time sixty-one years of age; but in
zeal and ardour he excelled nearly all the junior officers. His
toughness and energy had invested with dignity even the disastrous
retreat from Holland early in the year. He was not a great commander;
for he lacked both soundness and firmness of judge