Basel. Treaty ceding the Spanish part of Saint-Domingue to France.

By the middle of 1795 the French Republic was almost everywhere triumphant on the continent of Europe. Exhausted Prussia had been the first of all the powers to make a treaty with her; Holland had been conquered and subdued; a truce had suspended hostilities with Austria; the Vendée, after a bloody struggle, after grazing the breast of the fatherland with its bayonet, had been forced to accept a settlement; and Spain, unable to withstand the republican onrush, had been obliged to give up avenging the Bourbons of France. By the treaty of Basel, concluded between Spain and France on 22 July 1795, the Spanish part of Saint-Domingue was ceded to the Republic. The corvette Vénus, commanded by Captain Desagenaux, arrived at the Cap on 4 October 1795 (12 Vendémiaire, Year 4) with the decree of 5 Thermidor, Year 3 (23 July 1795), and with the treaty of Basel. As soon as Laveaux learned of the arrival of the Vénus, he went to the Cap and received Desagenaux’s dispatches: the National Convention had decreed on 5 Thermidor, Year 3, that the men who had taken up arms in the colony of Saint-Domingue for the defense of the Republic had deserved well of the fatherland; that Laveaux was promoted to the rank of general of division and was provisionally confirmed in the office of governor of the colony; that Perroud was provisionally confirmed in that of commissaire ordonnateur; that commissions as generals of brigade would be sent to Villate, to Toussaint Louverture, to Bauvais and to Rigaud; and that the other ranks conferred by General Laveaux would be provisionally maintained.