Saint-Domingue expedition

Saint-Domingue expedition
Part of the Haitian Revolution
François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture
Date December 1801 – December 1803 Location Saint-Domingue (later Haiti) Result French defeat Independence of Haiti
Belligerents
France Polish Legions Spain	Rebel Haitians United Kingdom
Commanders and leaders
Charles Leclerc † Vicomte de Rochambeau   Jean Boudet Louis de Joyeuse Louis René de Tréville Federico Gravina	Toussaint Louverture   Henri Christophe Jean-Jacques Dessalines John Duckworth
Strength
27,000 soldiers 4,000 naval gunners	16,000 soldiers
Casualties and losses
23,000 dead (2/3 died from yellow fever)

France

The Saint-Domingue expedition was a French military expedition sent by Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul, under his brother-in-law Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc in an attempt to regain French control of the Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue on the island of Hispaniola, and curtail the measures of independence taken by the former slave Toussaint Louverture. It landed in December 1801 and, after initial success, ended in a French defeat at the battle of Vertières and the departure of French troops in December 1803.

The French Revolution led to serious social upheavals on Saint-Domingue, of which the most important was the slave revolt that led to the abolition of slavery in 1793 by the civil commissioners Sonthonax and Polverel, in a decision endorsed and spread to all the French colonies by the National Convention 6 months later. Toussaint Louverture, a black former slave who had been made Governor by France, re-established peace, fought off Spanish and British attempts to capture the island, and reestablished prosperity by daring measures. However, he went too far in hunting down governor Don Joaquín García y Moreno (27 January 1801), who had remained in what had been the Spanish part of the island following the 1795 Peace of Basel. Toussaint had also challenged French imperial interests by promulgating a self-rule constitution on 12 July 1801, which declared himself governor for life.

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