Versailles. The Estates General open there.

The Estates General opened at Versailles on 5 May 1789, and began against the aristocracy those gigantic struggles that regenerated humanity. The news of the convocation of the Estates General reached Saint-Domingue in the last days of 1788. All the clear-sighted minds of the Colony were deeply stirred by it. Most of the Whites, however, burst into an enthusiasm hard to describe: the great enslavers hoped to fill the high offices that until then had belonged only to Europeans; and the petits Blancs hoped to make themselves masters of the riches of the enslavers, whom they called nothing but aristocrats. But neither the one nor the other gave a thought to the freedman and the enslaved, who, roused by the words of liberty ringing around them in their enslavers’ mouths, would take up arms and crush their former rulers one after another. The enslavers and the petits Blancs, blinded by the prejudices of color, did not foresee that the Mulatto and the Black might become active citizens like themselves. The course of this history will prove to us that there was nothing noble or generous in the hearts of the White Creoles, and that they consented to remain French only so long as their material interests were not harmed.