One more touch of negro soldiery must suffice. There was an intrenchment, called Verdière, occupied by the French, upon a hill overlooking the city. Dessalines sent a negro general, Capoix, with three demi-brigades to take it. "They recoiled," says Schoelcher, "horribly mutilated by the fire from the intrenchment. He rallied them: the grape tore them in pieces, and hurled them again to the bottom of the hill. Boiling with rage, Capoix goes to seek fresh troops, mounts a fiery horse, and rushes forward for the third time; but the thousand deaths which the fort delivers repulse his soldiers. He foams with anger, exhorts them, pricks them on, and leads them up a fourth time. A ball kills his horse, and he rolls over, but, soon extricating himself, he runs to the head of the troops. '_En avant! En avant!_' he repeats, with enthusiasm; at the same instant his plumed chapeau is swept from his head by a grape-shot, but he still throws himself forward to the assault. '_En avant! En avant!_'
"Then great shouts went up along the ramparts of the city: '_Bravo! bravo! vivat! vivat!_' cried Rochambeau and his staff, who were watching the assault. A drum-roll is heard, the fire of Verdière pauses, an officer issues from the city, gallops to the very front of the surprised blacks, and saluting, says,--'The Captain-General Rochambeau and the French army send their admiration to the general officer who has just covered himself with glory.' This magnificent message delivered, he turned his horse, reëntered the city, and the assault is renewed. Imagine if Capoix and his soldiers did new prodigies of valor. But the besieged were also electrified, would not be overcome, and Dessalines sent the order to retire. The next day a groom led a richly caparisoned horse to the quarter-general of the blacks, which Rochambeau offered as a mark of his admiration, and to replace that which he regretted had been killed."
The valor and fighting qualities of the blacks in San Domingo were nourished by the wars which sprang from their own necessities. They were the native growths of the soil which had been long enriched by their innocent blood; more blood must be invested in it, if they would own it. Learning to fight was equivalent to learning to live. Their cause was neither represented nor championed by a single power on earth, and nothing but the hope of making enormous profits out of their despair led Anglo-American schooners to run English and French blockades, to land arms and powder in the little coves of the island. Will the negro fight as well, if the motive and the exigency are inferior?