Louisiana territory from Spain in r8or was one sign of this new bearing;
another was the disastrous decision to send an expedition to Haiti.
The island of Haiti was the scene of nearly twenty years uninterrupted
warfare since the early 1790s. Three years' warfare by the black ex-slaves
against the British in 1793---96 led to total victory by the islanders, though
the principal general fighting on the Haitian side was yellow fever.
According to some estimates, in five years on the island the British lost
so,ooo dead and another so,ooo permanently incapacitated to the dreaded
'yellowjack'. These years saw the rise of the 'black Napoleon', Toussaint
l'Ouverture, a man whom the white original in France at first treated like
a favourite son. After Brumaire Napoleon issued a proclamation, 'From
the First of the Whites to the First of the Blacks,' lauding Toussaint to
the skies: 'Remember, brave negroes that France alone recognizes your
liberty and your equal rights.'
In 1799 there was a power struggle on the island between Toussaint in
the north and Rigaud in the south. When civil war loomed, Napoleon
came down on Toussaint's side, appointed him commander-in-chief and
recalled Rigaud to Fra nce. Throughout r8oo and r8or Haiti answered
Napoleon's purposes. But Toussaint became increasingly independent
and began to disregard orders from France. It became clear that
Napoleon would either have to use force to remove him or acquiesce in a
move towards total independence. Napoleon dithered over the options.
On the one hand, to concede independence to Haiti meant the ruin of
French planters there. On the other, French commercial interests in the
West Indies in general would not be affected, sending an expedition
would be costly, and there was also the prospect of an army of 30,000
blacks in the hemisphere distracting the U.S.A. and making them less
inclined to interfere in his plans for Louisiana and Canada; this of course
assumed that Toussaint would obligingly use his army in this way.
All such considerations became academic when Toussaint foolishly
made the matter one of credibility by making a unilateral declaration of
independence and sending a copy of Haiti's new constitution to France as
a foit accompli. Even worse, Toussaint claimed the right to nominate his
successors, who were likely to be the Francophobe firebrands Dessalines
and Christophe. This was an overt affront to the honour of France, which
Napoleon could not condone. He therefore placed his brother-in-law
Leclerc in command of an army of 25,000 troops and with the expedition
sent the Rochefort squadron under the command of his most talented
admiral, Louis de Ia Touche-Treville. With the expedition Napoleon sent
a decree, proclaiming that the blacks would be free in Santo Domingo,
Guadalupe and Cayenne but would remain slaves at Martinique and the
marcin
(Marcin)
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