But between the conception and the accomplishment of a guilty deed, man’s native abhorrence of crime often interposes many obstacles to success. The officer to whom had been entrusted the assassination of Rigaud, found it no small matter to screw his courage up to the sticking-place, and the expected signal which he was to display in blood to his associates, was so long delayed that secret messengers began to come to him from all parts of the table, demanding why execution was not done on Rigaud. Urged on by these successive appeals, the white general at last applied himself to the fatal task which had been allotted him. But instead of silently plunging his dagger into the bosom of the mulatto chief, he sprang upon him with a pistol in his hand, and with a loud execration, fired it at his intended victim. But Rigaud remained unharmed, and in the scuffle which ensued the white assassin was disarmed and put to flight. The astonishment of the mulattoes soon gave way to tumult and indignation, and this produced a drawn battle, in which both whites and mulattoes, exasperated as they were to the utmost, fought man to man. The struggle continued fiercely, until the whites were driven from the town, having lost one hundred and fifty of their number, and slain many of their opponents. Tidings of this conspiracy flew rapidly in all directions; and such was the indignation of the mulattoes at this attack on their chief, whose death had even been announced in several places as certain, that they seized upon all the whites within their reach, and their immediate massacre was only prevented by the arrival of intelligence that Rigaud was still alive.[36] The hostile claims of Toussaint and Rigaud, who shared between them the whole power of the Island, soon brought on a bloody struggle between the blacks and mulattoes. The contest was an unequal one, for the blacks numbered five hundred thousand, while the mulattoes were only thirty thousand. The mulattoes, alarmed by the prospect that the future government of the Island was likely to be engrossed altogether by the blacks, thronged from all parts of the Island to join the ranks of Rigaud. As a people, the mulattoes were endowed with greater intelligence; they were more enterprising, and in all respects their physical superiority was more decided than their rivals, the blacks. They were equally ferocious, and confident as they were in their superior powers, they saw without a thought of discouragement or fear the enormous disparity of ten to one in the respective numbers of their adversaries and themselves. Rigaud began the war by surprising Leogane, where a multitude of persons of every rank and color were put to death without mercy.