Long afterward, at St. Helena, Napoleon wrote comments[167] on the causes of his disaster at St. Domingo, severely blaming his brother-in-law Leclerc for failing to carry out his orders to arrest and send to Europe all the black generals, as he sent Toussaint. Napoleon’s rule in politics, and one which cost him dear, was to disregard masses and reckon only on leaders. Toussaint came within a step of achieving the greatest triumph of his age. Had he been true to himself and his color, and had he hidden himself for a few months in the mountains, he need not have struck a blow in order to drive Bonaparte’s generals back to Europe; the yellow fever and the blind despair of the negro laborers would have done the work alone. Bonaparte’s theory in regard to the negro chiefs was an illusion. Christophe, Dessalines, Maurepas, and all Toussaint’s chief officers served Leclerc faithfully till they saw his case to be hopeless. “Dessalines is at this moment the butcher of the blacks,” wrote Leclerc Sept. 16, 1802, in the midst of insurrections; “Christophe has so maltreated them as to be execrated by them.” The negro chiefs were traitors to both sides; and if not arrested by Leclerc, they deserved to be shot by their own people. While they helped to exterminate the black laboring class, Leclerc sent home reports that might have frozen the blood of any man less callous than Bonaparte:[168]-- “The decrees of General Richepanse [at Guadeloupe] circulate here, and do much harm. The one which restores slavery, in consequence of being published three months too soon, will cost many men to the army and colony of St. Domingo.... I get news of a bloody combat sustained by General Boyer at the Gros Morne. The rebels were exterminated; fifty prisoners were hung. These men die with incredible fanaticism,--they laugh at death; it is the same with the women. The rebels of Moustique have attacked and carried Jean Rabel; it should have been retaken by this time. This fury is the work of General Richepanse’s proclamation and of the inconsiderate talk of the colonists.” As the insurrection spread, and the fever reduced Leclerc’s European force, the black generals and troops began to desert. Shooting was useless; drowning had no effect. No form of terror touched them. “Few colonial troops remain with me,” wrote Leclerc in almost his last letter. “A battalion of the Eleventh Colonial, which had been joined with the Legion of the Cape, having furnished a number of deserters, 176 men of this battalion were embarked at Jacmel for Port Republican. Of this number 173 strangled themselves on the way, the Chef de Bataillon at their head. There you see the men we have to fight!”[169] At length the report came that Leclerc himself had succumbed. Worn by anxieties, exertions, and incessant fever, he followed his army to the grave.