Port-au-Prince. Evacuated by the English; occupied by Laplume and the Legion of the West; Toussaint enters in triumph.

In the afternoon of the same day, 9 May, General Laplume, at the head of the Legion of the West commanded by Adjutant-General Pétion, took possession of Port-Républicain. Toussaint, faithfully keeping his word to Maitland, sent Colonel Christophe Mornay to take command of the town, with orders to see that the inhabitants were respected and to send the Legion of the West at once toward Léogane. General Laplume yielded the authority to Christophe Mornay not without displeasure, regarding Toussaint’s conduct toward him as a want of confidence. Wherever Toussaint penetrated he displaced the authorities who might be devoted to Bauvais and to Rigaud. The Legion of the West withdrew to Léogane, loudly showing its discontent. The consideration Toussaint showed toward the English and the white royalists had not escaped the agents of the mother country: for Port-Républicain could have been carried by assault, or at least Maitland, in evacuating it, would not have had time to embark the munitions of war, the archives and the merchandise, had the general-in-chief attacked him vigorously. The colonists, most of whom had betrayed France, had everything to fear from the Directory, which punished traitors and émigrés; and so they had urged Toussaint to build the English a bridge of gold. The name of Louverture was blessed by most of the whites. The enslavers hastened to go out to meet the man they called their liberator. They were preceded by the clergy; the cross and the banner were borne in pomp, and the censers smoked. An immense throng covered the high road of the plain of the Cul-de-Sac, in the midst of which a magnificent triumphal arch had been raised. The richest white ladies, on horseback or in open carriages, had also hastened to meet the general-in-chief of the armies of Saint-Domingue. They were escorted by a brilliant guard of honor made up of young white Creoles.

Toussaint Louverture, coming from Les Gonaïves, appeared on the high road followed by his staff. He was plainly dressed: he wore a madras covered by a laced hat, a short coat and epaulettes. Numbers of young white girls threw flowers and garlands upon him. He dismounted and showed them all his gratitude. Colonists were then seen to prostrate themselves at his feet and to beg him earnestly to place himself beneath the canopy that four of the richest enslavers of the Cul-de-Sac bore with pride.

Toussaint, humiliated and at the same time indignant at so much baseness, above all when he discovered among his worshippers colonists who had always shown themselves his cruelest enemies, said to those who pressed him to accept these honors: “It belongs to God alone to be placed beneath the canopy and to be censed.” In vain did they try to persuade him that this was how the former governors had been received. He entered Port-Républicain with his staff. *