Page 6 - Hispaniola

The Fall of

Louverture

Meanwhile in France, Napoleon Bonaparte, the emperor of France at the time, was closely monitoring
Louverture and the situation on Saint Domingue. In 1801, Napoleon noticed that Louverture had established
his own constitution and decided to reinstate slavery in the colony of Saint Domingue. To reclaim Saint
Domingue, Napoleon sent his cousin, General Charles Leclerc to go to Saint Domingue and reclaim it as
French property. In 1802 Charles Leclerc landed in Saint Domingue ,along with 23,000 troops, and he
convinced the people of Saint Domingue that he was on a mission for peace and didn’t want to fight. On
February 6th of 1802 Louverture became aware of Leclerc’s plan to reinstate slavery and tried sending
warning messages to all his generals, but all those messages were intercepted and burnt, leaving his generals
vulnerable to a French ambush. Leclerc then started attacking forts defended by Louverture's generals and
started taking over many colonies again, and after reclaiming most of Saint Domingue Leclerc offered
Louverture the chance to retire in peace with his rank intact and to a place of his choosing. Louverture
accepted the offer, but Dessalines, shocked by this, chose to side with the French instead.

On 27th April 1802, “Napoleon Bonaparte issued a
decree that reestablished slavery in Martinique,
Tobago and Sainte-Lucie. He insisted that slavery
would not be established in the colony of Saint
Domingue.” - (History of Haiti, General Leclerc in
Saint-Domingue 1801-1802) Finally, on June 7th 1802,
Louverture went to Leclerc in hopes of retiring
peacefully, but Leclerc betrayed him, captured him
and shipped him and his family to the French Alps,
where Louverture died a tragic death from
neglection in a frozen cell high in the French Alps.