A larger body of troops being despatched, they contrived, after a desperate resistance, to disperse the mulattoes.  Oge escaped, and found refuge in the Spanish part of the island.  A price was set upon his head.  M. de Blanchelande in his proclamations imputed it as a crime to him that he had claimed the rights of nature in the name of the Assembly, which had so loudly proclaimed the rights of the citizen.  They applied to the Spanish authorities to surrender this Spartacus, equally dangerous to the safety of the whites in both countries.  Oge was delivered up to the French by the Spaniards, and sent for trial to the Cape.  His trial was protracted for two months, in order to afford time to cut asunder all the threads of the plot of independence, and intimidate his accomplices.  The whites, in great excitement, complained of these delays, and demanded his head with loud vociferations.  The judges condemned him to death for a crime which in the mother-country had constituted the glory of La Fayette and Mirabeau.

He underwent torture in his dungeon.  The rights of his race, centred and persecuted in him, raised his soul above the torments of his executioners.  “Give up all hope,” he exclaimed, with unflinching daring; “give up all hope of extracting from me the name of even one of my accomplices.  My accomplices are everywhere where the heart of a man is raised against the oppressors of men.”  From that moment he pronounced but two words, which sounded like a remorse in the ears of his persecutors—­Liberty!  Equality!  He walked composedly to his death; listened with indignation to the sentence which condemned him to the lingering and infamous death of the vilest criminals.  “What!” he exclaimed; “do you confound me with criminals because I have desired to restore to my fellow-creatures the rights and titles of men which I feel in myself!  Well! you have my blood, but an avenger will arise from it!” He died on the wheel, and his mutilated carcase was left on the highway.  This heroic death reached even to the National Assembly, and gave rise to various opinions.  “He deserved it,” said Malouet; “Oge was a criminal and an assassin.”  “If Oge be guilty,” replied Gregoire, “so are we all; if he who claimed liberty for his brothers perished justly on the scaffold, then all Frenchmen who resemble us should mount there also.”

XII.

Oge’s blood bubbled silently in the hearts of all the mulatto race.  They swore to avenge him.  The blacks were an army all ready for the massacre; the signal was given to them by the men of colour.  In one night 60,000 slaves, armed with torches and their working tools, burnt down all their masters’ houses in a circuit of six leagues round the Cape.  The whites were murdered; women, children, old men—­nothing escaped the long-repressed fury of the blacks.  It was the annihilation of one race by the other.  The bleeding heads of the whites, carried on the tops