Le Cap. Became the capital; the colonial assembly moved here by decree of 9 August.

We have seen that since the murder of Mauduit, Blanchelande had withdrawn to Le Cap, which had become the capital of the colony. As that town was far more hostile to the new ideas than the province of the West, the colonial assembly, by a decree dated 9 August, moved there. Blanchelande and the other royalist leaders, blinded by the spirit of party, resolved, in order to combat the influence of the colonial assembly, all of whose efforts tended toward the independence of Saint-Domingue, to raise the plantation gangs of the province of the North, just as de Mauduit had for a moment united the people of color against the poor whites in the West. They easily got this plan adopted by men who were victims of every kind of atrocity and who heard the word liberty ringing in their ears. It was to Toussaint, an enslaved man of the Bréda plantation at the Haut-du-Cap, who was distinguished among his people by a rare intelligence and great piety, that the royalist whites first opened this plan. These dangerous auxiliaries, whom the instinct of liberty alone would have driven to revolt, could no longer be led by their instigators once they had taken up arms. At Trou Bordet, at Boucassin and at Les Vases the gangs had already been stirring.