Fire would transform Saint-Domingue within seven years of the balloon flight

Evidence

On that day, as they watched the spinning, rising balloon, the spectators probably could not imagine that the final element, fire, would within a few years transform everything around them. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 310

Categorization

• XREF: The author’s ironic foreshadowing device — balloon flight of 1784, insurrection fire of 1791 — closes the chapter’s opening frame dramatically.