The novel follows a friendship between the enslaved African prince of the title and a French military officer named Leopold D'Auverney during the tumultuous early years of the Haitian Revolution.

The story of Bug-Jargal begins several weeks before the Haitian Revolution, when Toussaint Louverture fights the colonial regime.

However, Pierrot does save Marie from a crocodile, but soon finds himself thrown in prison for trying to protect another slave from his owner's wrath.

They stay despite the warning, and the day of the wedding the slave revolution begins, and the white landowners see the rapid and violent dissolution of their society.

In the grotto the freed slaves force their captured white prisoners to kill each other in order to preserve their own skins.