except through the intervention of France.  I had, it is true, resolved not to intermeddle in your affairs—­but I cannot remain insensible to the distress of which I see you the prey—­I recall my resolution of neutrality—­I consent to be the mediator in your differences.”  Rapp, adjutant-general, was the bearer of this insolent manifesto.  To cut short all discussion, Ney entered Switzerland at the head of 40,000 troops.  Resistance was hopeless.  Aloys Reding dismissed his brave followers, was arrested, and imprisoned in the castle of Aarburg.  The government was arranged according to the good pleasure of Napoleon, who henceforth added to his other titles that of “Grand Mediator of the Helvetic Republic.”  Switzerland was, in effect, degraded into a province of France; and became bound to maintain an army of 16,000 men, who were to be at the disposal, whenever it should please him to require their aid, of the Grand Mediator.  England sent an envoy to remonstrate against this signal and unprovoked rapacity:  but the other powers suffered it to pass without any formal opposition.  The sufferings, however, of Aloys Reding and his brave associates, and this audacious crushing-down of the old spirit of Swiss freedom and independence, were heard of throughout all Europe with deep indignation.

Feelings of the same kind were nourished everywhere by the results of an expedition which Buonaparte sent, before the close of 1801, to St. Domingo, for the purpose of reconquering that island to France.  The black and coloured population had risen, at the revolutionary period, upon their white masters, and, after scenes of terrible slaughter and devastation, emancipated themselves.  The chief authority was, by degrees, vested in Toussaint L’Ouverture, a negro, who, during the war, displayed the ferocity of a barbarian, but after its conclusion, won the applause and admiration of all men by the wisdom and humanity of his administration.  Conscious that, whenever peace should be restored in Europe, France would make efforts to recover her richest colony, Toussaint adopted measures likely to conciliate the exiled planters and the government of the mother country.  A constitution on the consular model was established, Toussaint being its Buonaparte:  the supremacy of France was to be acknowledged to a certain extent; and the white proprietors were to receive half the produce of the lands of which the insurgents had taken possession.  But Napoleon heard of all these arrangements with displeasure and contempt.  He fitted out a numerous fleet, carrying an army full 20,000 strong, under the orders of General Leclerc, the husband of his own favourite sister Pauline.  It has often been said, and without contradiction, that the soldiers sent on this errand were chiefly from the army of the Rhine, whose good-will to the Consul was to be doubted.  Leclerc summoned Toussaint (Jan. 2, 1802) to surrender, in a letter which conveyed expressions of much personal respect from Buonaparte.  The