Christophe, who had taken command of the insurgents, now gave unmistakable proofs that he was a great general, and scarcely second to Toussaint. Twenty thousand fresh troops arrived from France to the aid of Rochambeau; yet the blacks were victorious wherever they fought. The French blindly thought that cruelty to the blacks would induce their submission, and to this end they bent all their energies. An amphitheatre was erected, and two hundred dogs, sharpened by extreme hunger, put there, and black prisoners thrown in. The raging animals disputed with each other for the limbs of their victims, until the ground was dyed with human blood. Three hundred brave blacks were put to death in this horrible manner. The blacks, having spread their forces in every quarter of the island, were fast retaking the forts and towns. Christophe commanded in the north, Dessalines in the west, and Clervaux in the south. Despotism and sensuality have often been companions. In Rochambeau, the one sharpened the appetite for the other, as though greediness of bodily pleasure welcomed the zest arising from the sight of bodily pain. No small part of his time Rochambeau passed at table, or on sofas, with the Creole females, worshippers of pleasure, as well as most cruel towards their slaves. To satisfy these fascinating courtesans, scaffolds were raised in the cities, which were bathed in the blood of the blacks. They even executed women and children, whose only crime was, that they had brothers, fathers, or husbands among the revolters. These brutal murders by the French filled the blacks with terror. Dessalines started for the Cape, for the purpose of meeting Rochambeau, and avenging the death of the blacks. In his impetuous and terrible march, he surrounded and made prisoners a body of Frenchmen; and with branches of trees, that ferocious chief raised, under the eyes of Rochambeau, five hundred gibbets, on which he hanged as many prisoners. The numerous executions which began at the Cape soon extended to other places. Port au Prince had its salt waters made bloody, and scaffolds were erected and loaded, within and without the walls. The hand of tyranny spread terror and death over the shores of the north and the west. As the insurrection became more daring, it was thought that the punishments had not been either numerous enough, violent enough, or various enough. The colonists counselled and encouraged more vengeance. Children, women, and old men were confined in sacks, and thrown into the sea; this was the punishment of parricides among the Romans, ten centuries before; and now resorted to by these haters of liberty. Rochambeau put five hundred blacks, prisoners whom he had taken in battle, to death in one day. Twenty of Toussaint’s old officers were chained to the rocks and starved to death. But the blacks were gradually getting possession of the strongholds in the islands.