Le Clerc, with the largest part of the squadron, came to anchor off Cape City, and summoned the place to surrender. The reply which he received from Christophe was such as to teach the captain-general what he had to expect in the subjugation of St. Domingo. “Go tell your general that the French shall march here only over ashes; and that the ground shall burn beneath their feet,” was the answer that Le Clerc obtained in return to his command. The French general sent another messenger to Christophe, urging him to surrender, and promising the black chief a commission of high rank in the French army. But he found he had a man, and not a slave, to deal with. The exasperated Christophe sent back the heroic reply, “The decision of arms can admit you only into a city in ashes; and even on these ashes will I fight still.” The black chief then distributed torches to his principal officers, and awaited the approach of the French. With no navy, and but little means of defence, the Haytians determined to destroy their towns rather than they should fall into the hands of the enemy. Late in the evening the French ships were seen to change their position, and Christophe, satisfied that they were about to effect a landing, set fire to his own house, which was the signal for the burning of the town. The French general wept as he beheld the ocean of flames rising from the tops of the houses in the finest city in St. Domingo. Another part of the fleet landed in Samana, where Toussaint, with an experienced wing of the army, was ready to meet them. On seeing the ships enter the harbor, the heroic chief said: “Here come the enslavers of our race. All France is coming to St. Domingo, to try again to put the fetters upon our limbs; but not France with all her troops of the Rhine, the Alps, the Nile, the Tiber, nor all Europe to help her, can extinguish the soul of Africa. That soul, when once the soul of a man, and no longer that of a slave, can overthrow the pyramids, and the Alps themselves, sooner than again be crushed down into slavery.” The French, however, effected a landing, but they found nothing but smouldering ruins where once stood splendid cities. Toussaint and his generals at once abandoned the towns, and betook themselves to the mountains, those citadels of freedom in St. Domingo, where the blacks have always proved too much for the whites.