isles of France and Bourbon. He explained that the differential decree of
28 Floreal r8or was necessary because Martinique, just obtained by the
Treaty of Amiens from the British, was as yet in too volatile a state for
abolition.
It has sometimes been said that the dispatch of such a powerful
expedition to Haiti alarmed the British and hardened their resolve to
renew hostilities. In fact, far from opposing the endeavour, the British
secretly approved, as they feared the example of the black Jacobins could
spread to their own plantations in Jamaica. English historians of the
Victorian period liked to portray the struggle between Pitt and Napoleon
as one between liberty and tyranny, but both sides were cynically
concerned with economic interests, and even England's 'saviour' Horatio
Nelson was in favour of slavery.
Leclerc was as inadequate a military commander as he was a husband.
He threw both his best cards away. Hating his most able general
Humbert, who had achieved wonders in Ireland in 1798, he gave him a
minor post in Haiti where his talents could find no expression. Then he
disregarded Napoleon's express instructions to work with and through
the mulattoes of the island against Toussaint and the blacks. Influenced
by the creoles, who loathed the mulattoes even more than the blacks,
Leclerc disregarded his instructions.
The result was a two-year nightmare campaign. Toussaint was
captured by a trick, transported, and imprisoned in an icy dungeon in
France where he died within a few months. As Napoleon had foreseen,
Christophe and Dessalines took up the struggle, and after r6 May r8o3,
with the resumption of general hostilities, they could count on powerful
British naval assistance. Meanwhile the French army was progressively
reduced by the ravages of yellow fever. 25,000 men landed in Haiti in
r8oi but by r8o3, when they surrendered to the British, only 3,ooo were
left; Leclerc was among the casualties.
Napoleon's brief dream of empire in the West crumbled in the swamps
and bayous of Haiti. When general war broke out again in r8o3, he
concluded that his position in America was hopeless and the Louisiana
territory untenable. He opened negotiations with President Thomas
Jefferson, whose authority to purchase new chunks of land was
constitutionally unclear. But Jefferson pressed ahead and Napoleon was
glad of the money from the sale. Over the strenuous protests of Lucien
and Joseph, Napoleon sold Louisiana to the United States for eighty
million francs. His heart had never really been in the western hemisphere
and it is significant that he abandoned the area as soon as war broke out
again in Europe. Yet in his failure to think through the consequences of
marcin
(Marcin)
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