In 1791, enslaved Black people in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (modern-day Haiti) launched a slave rebellion which initiated the Haitian Revolution. Two years later in August 1793, French commissioner Léger-Félicité Sonthonax officially abolished slavery on Saint-Domingue as part of an effort to win over Haitians to the cause of the French First Republic. Prominent Haitian leader Toussaint Louverture, himself a former slave, joined the French Republicans shortly afterwards. By 1801, Louverture had consolidated his rule over the entire island of Hispaniola. In July 1801, he promulgated a new constitution for Saint-Domingue which appointed himself as governor for life, while simultaneously reaffirming the colony's position as "part of the French empire."[1]
Upon receiving news from Saint-Domingue in October 1801, Napoleon interpreted Louverture's new constitution as an unacceptable offense to French colonial authority, and subsequently appointed Leclerc as the commander of a military expedition to restore France's authority in Saint-Domingue.[2][3] In his initial instructions, Napoleon directed Leclerc to liquidate Louverture's government and deport his military officers to France, while publicly maintaining the abolition of slavery in Saint-Domingue. Napoleon announced his intentions to reinstate slavery in the neighbouring Captaincy General of Santo Domingo, which Louverture's forces had recently occupied.[4] Secretly, Napoleon planned to reinstate slavery in Saint-Domingue once Louverture had been detained by French troops.[5]
Leclerc left Brest, France in December 1801 at the head of a French Navy fleet transporting 40,000 troops, publicly repeating Bonaparte's promise that "all of the people of Saint-Domingue are French" and would remain forever free. Louverture's harsh discipline had made him numerous enemies, and Leclerc played off the ambitions of Louverture's officers and competitors against each other, promising them that they would maintain their ranks in the French army and convincing them to abandon Louverture. The French won several victories against Haitian forces and regained control of Saint-Domingue in three months after fierce fighting, with Louverture forced to negotiate a surrender with Leclerc which resulted in him being placed under house arrest in his plantations. However, Napoleon had given secret instructions to Leclerc to arrest Louverture, which he did during a meeting before deporting him to France, where Louverture died in 1803 while imprisoned at Fort de Joux in the Jura Mountains.[citation needed]
Despite his superiors' warnings, Leclerc did not consolidate his victory by disarming Louverture's officers and troops. After a brief period in which he incorporated many of Louverture's officers into his own army, Haitians in Leclerc's forces began to desert during the second half of 1802. These desertions, along with uprisings by Haitians against French rule, occurred in response to news that slavery had been reestablished in the nearby French colony of Guadeloupe. The prospect of a similar restoration of slavery in Saint-Domingue swung the tide inexorably against French hopes of reimposing control, as Leclerc began summarily executing suspected conspirators en masse.[citation needed]
By October 1802, Leclerc wrote a letter to Napoleon advocating for a war of annihilation, declaring that "We must destroy all the blacks of the mountains – men and women – and spare only children under 12 years of age. We must destroy half of those in the plains and must not leave a single colored person in the colony who has worn an epaulette." He also lamented his assignment in the letter, declaring "My soul is withered, and no joyful thought can ever make forget these hideous scenes."[6] In the meantime, more Black officers defected from Leclerc's army, including Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Alexandre Pétion and Henri Christophe. After Christophe massacred several hundred Polish soldiers at Port-de-Paix following his defection, Leclerc ordered the arrest of all remaining Black troops in French service in Le Cap, executing 1,000 of them by tying sacks of flour to their necks and pushing them off the side of ships.[7]
Death and legacy
Statue of Leclerc at Pontoise
In November 1802, Leclerc died of yellow fever, which had already decimated his army. Pauline returned to Europe, where she later married the Italian nobleman Camillo Borghese, 6th Prince of Sulmona. Leclerc was succeeded in his command by Donatien-Marie-Joseph de Vimeur, vicomte de Rochambeau, whose similarly brutal tactics drove more Haitians to resist the French. On 18 November 1803, François Capois defeated Rochambeau's army in the Battle of Vertières. Dessalines proclaimed the independence of Saint-Domingue as Haiti on 1 January 1804. In the meantime, Leclerc's body had been transported to France by Pauline and buried on one of his estates.[citation needed]
A statue at Pontoise depicts Leclerc in his French army uniform, his scabbard touching the earth. It was placed by Louis Nicolas Davout and his second wife Louise-Aimée-Julie at the top of a staircase built in 1869 by François Lemot. Around three metres high, the statue is on a square stone pedestal inscribed with information on him in gold majuscule letters. It adjoins the south side of the Pontoise Cathedral. There is also a statue of him by Jean Guillaume Moitte in the Pantheon de Paris, and another statue of Leclerc fully nude at the Palace of Versailles which was sculpted by Charles Dupaty.[8]
^Philippe R. Girard, "Liberte, Egalite, Esclavage : French Revolutionary Ideals and the Failure of the Leclerc Expedition to Saint-Domingue," French Colonial History, Volume 6, 2005, pp. 55–77 doi:10.1353/fch.2005.0007
Girard, Philippe R. "Liberte, Egalite, Esclavage : French Revolutionary Ideals and the Failure of the Leclerc Expedition to Saint-Domingue," French Colonial History, Volume 6, 2005, pp. 55–77 doi:10.1353/fch.2005.0007
Bob Corbett's Haiti Page – Online collection of resources on the revolution in Haiti. See especially links to the Haiti Mailing List and Corbett's essays on the revolutionary period.
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