<Ul> <Li> view </Li> <Li> talk </Li> <Li> edit </Li> </Ul> <P> Enlightened writer Guillaume Raynal attacked slavery in the 1780 edition of his history of European colonization . He also predicted a general slave revolt in the colonies, saying that there were signs of "the impending storm". One such sign was the action of the French revolutionary government to grant citizenship to wealthy free people of color in May 1791 . Since white plantation owners refused to comply with this decision, within two months isolated fighting broke out between the former slaves and the whites . This added to the tense climate between slaves and grands blancs . </P> <P> Raynal's prediction came true on the night of 21 August 1791, when the slaves of Saint Domingue rose in revolt; thousands of slaves attended a secret vodou (voodoo) ceremony as a tropical storm came in - the lighting and the thunder was taken as auspicious omens - and later that night, the slaves began to kill their masters and plunged the colony into civil war . The signal to begin the revolt was given by Dutty Boukman, a high priest of vodou and leader of the Maroon slaves, during a religious ceremony at Bois Caïman on the night of 14 August . Within the next ten days, slaves had taken control of the entire Northern Province in an unprecedented slave revolt . Whites kept control of only a few isolated, fortified camps . The slaves sought revenge on their masters through "pillage, rape, torture, mutilation, and death". The long years of oppression by the slave masters had left many blacks with a hatred of all whites, and the revolt was marked by extreme violence from the very start . The masters and mistresses were dragged from their beds to be killed, and the heads of French children were placed on spikes that were carried at the front of the rebel columns . </P> <P> The plantation owners had long feared such a revolt, and were well armed with some defensive preparations . But within weeks, the number of slaves who joined the revolt reached some 100,000 . Within the next two months, as the violence escalated, the slaves killed 4,000 whites and burned or destroyed 180 sugar plantations and hundreds of coffee and indigo plantations . At least 900 coffee plantations were destroyed, and the total damage inflicted over the next two weeks amounted to 2 million francs . In September 1791, the surviving whites organized into militias and struck back, killing about 15,000 black people . </P>

Who led the slave revolt in saint domingue