This was not an encouraging commencement for these children of the French Revolution, who had beaten Suwarrow in Switzerland and blasted the Mameluke cavalry with rolling fire, who had debouched from the St. Bernard upon the plains of Piedmont in time to gather Austrian flags at Marengo, and who added the name of Hohenlinden to the glory of Moreau. Humbert himself, at the head of four thousand grenadiers, had restored the day which preceded the surrender of the Russians at Zürich. Le Clerc was obliged to say that the First Consul never had the intention of restoring slavery. Humbert himself carried this proclamation to Maurepas, and with it gained admittance to the intrenchments which he could not storm. This single defection placed four thousand admirable troops, and the harbor of Port-de-Paix, in the hands of the French, and exposed Toussaint's flank at Gonaïves; and its moral effect was so great upon the blacks as to encourage Le Clerc to persist in his enterprise. In the brief period of pacification which preceded this attempt of Bonaparte to reconquer the island, Toussaint was mainly occupied with the organization of agriculture. His army then consisted of only fifteen demi-brigades, numbering in all 22,500, a guard of honor of one thousand infantry, a regiment of cavalry, and an artillery corps. But the military department was in perfect order. There was an État-Major, consisting of a general of division with two aides-de-camp, a company of guides, one of dragoons, and two secretaries,--ten brigadier-generals with ten secretaries, ten aides-de-camp, and an escort,--and a board of health, composed of one chief inspector, six physicians, and six surgeons-general. The commissary and engineering departments were also thoroughly organized. The pay of the 22,500 men amounted to 7,838,400 francs; rations, 6,366,195; musicians, 239,112; uniforming, 1,887,682; officers' uniforms, 208,837. The pay of a non-commissioned officer and private was 55 centimes per day. In this army there were one thousand mulattoes, and five or six hundred whites, recruited from the various artillery regiments which had been in the colony during the last ten years. Every cultivator was a member of the great reserve of this army, its spy and outpost and partisan.