In 1799 Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in France. He had little sympathy for the abolition of slavery and wanted to restore the colonial wealth France had lost. Toussaint's growing independence was a challenge he would not accept. The result was one of the most brutal wars of the era, and a defeat that changed the map of North America.

The Leclerc expedition

In late 1801, after a pause in war with Britain, Napoleon sent a large army to Saint-Domingue under his brother-in-law, General Charles Leclerc. The first troops arrived in early 1802, and with reinforcements the expedition grew to tens of thousands of soldiers. Napoleon's public orders spoke of restoring order. His private aims, historians conclude, included removing Toussaint and the Black generals and, eventually, restoring the old colonial system.

War and betrayal

Toussaint resisted. His forces burned towns rather than let them fall, including Cap-Français, and fought in the mountains. At the fortress of Crête-à-Pierrot in March 1802, a few hundred defenders under Jean-Jacques Dessalines held off French forces many times their number for weeks before escaping. But several of Toussaint's generals, including Henri Christophe and, eventually, Dessalines, went over to the French, and in May 1802 Toussaint agreed to lay down his arms and retire to his plantation.

A few weeks later, in June 1802, Toussaint was invited to a meeting with a French general, arrested and deported to France. As he boarded the ship, he is reported to have said: “In overthrowing me, you have cut down in Saint-Domingue only the trunk of the tree of liberty. It will spring up again by the roots, for they are numerous and deep.” He was imprisoned in the Fort de Joux, high in the Jura Mountains near the Swiss border, where he suffered in the cold and died on 7 April 1803.

Slavery restored

The turning point came with news from other colonies. A French law of May 1802 maintained slavery in colonies where it had not been abolished, and in the summer of 1802, French forces restored slavery in Guadeloupe, crushing armed resistance there. When this news reached Saint-Domingue, the people understood what the French army intended for them. Resistance exploded. Fighters who had laid down their arms took them up again, and the generals who had joined the French began to defect.

Yellow fever and atrocities

Meanwhile, yellow fever devastated the French army. Soldiers from Europe had no immunity, and thousands died each month in the rainy season. Leclerc himself died of the fever in November 1802. His successor, General Rochambeau, turned to terror. French forces carried out mass drownings and executions, and imported dogs from Cuba to attack Black prisoners. The insurgents answered with their own killings. The war became a war of extermination on both sides.

Dessalines and Vertières

In October 1802, Dessalines, along with Christophe and the leader of the free people of color, Alexandre Pétion, broke with the French and united the insurgents. Dessalines, born into slavery and known for his ferocity and military skill, became the commander of the revolutionary army. War with Britain resumed in 1803, and British ships cut off French reinforcements.

On 18 November 1803, at the Battle of Vertières, near Cap-Français, the revolutionary army defeated the French in the last great battle of the war. Rochambeau surrendered and evacuated the colony. Tens of thousands of French soldiers had died, most of them from disease.

A continent changes hands

Napoleon's defeat had consequences far beyond the island. He had planned to use Saint-Domingue as the center of a revived French empire in the Americas, supplied by the vast territory of Louisiana, which France had recently regained from Spain. Without Saint-Domingue, Louisiana lost much of its value to him. In 1803 he sold it to the United States, the Louisiana Purchase, doubling the size of the young republic. Historians widely credit the Haitian revolutionaries' victory as a major factor in that decision.

Worked example: why did Napoleon lose?

Napoleon was the greatest general of his age, and France had one of the largest armies in the world. Weigh the reasons for his defeat.

• Disease. Yellow fever killed far more French soldiers than combat did. Local fighters had greater resistance.
• Motivation. Once people learned that slavery was being restored in Guadeloupe, they fought for their own freedom and their families'. Surrender meant re-enslavement.
• Leadership and experience. Years of war had produced skilled commanders and soldiers who knew the terrain.
• Betrayal backfired. Toussaint's arrest and the restoration of slavery elsewhere convinced even cautious leaders that France could not be trusted.
• Sea power. When war with Britain resumed, the British navy blocked French reinforcements.

Older European accounts often stressed disease, as if the French had been defeated by mosquitoes alone. That explanation erased the people who fought. Disease weakened the French, but it was the determination and skill of the revolutionary army that turned weakness into defeat. How we explain a victory says a great deal about whom we think capable of making history.