1801 to 1804 · Haitianspan

Independence was a last resort, not the goal of the revolution

Geggus says Louverture had nothing to gain from secession and that Bonaparte's aggression forced it.

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1801 · Haitianyear only

Dessalines kills fifty worshippers in the plain of Cul de Sac

The first official punishment of belief in the country the insurgents were still building.

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1801 · Haitianyear only

Freed workers answer forced labour the way they answered slavery

They withdrew to ground where they could grow food, and waited.

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January and February 1801 · Pre-Revolutionarymonth known

Ship manifests out of Santo Domingo contradict a governor's promise

One Spanish woman sailed with thirty one people entered as her household servants.

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January 1801 · Caribbeanmonth known

Louverture jails the French agent and marches east

Girard finds no emancipation decree accompanying the takeover of Santo Domingo.

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5 February 1801 · Pre-Revolutionary

Ten men are summoned to Port-au-Prince to write a constitution

Healy says Bonaparte's announcement of rule by special decree triggered the proclamation.

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6 February 1801 · Haitian

Toussaint outlaws small land sales to stop workers leaving

Large sales need his personal authorisation, because cultivators were buying land and leaving.

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7 February 1801 · Pre-Revolutionary

No one may buy under fifty acres without proving they can develop it

Toussaint kills the small-farm experiment and keeps two thirds of the land under the state.

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February 1801 · Haitianmonth known

Louverture keeps France's flag and takes France's authority

Schoelcher's line: what the First Consul was told amounted to notice of a coup d'etat.

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4 March 1801 · Pre-Revolutionary

Bonaparte writes warmly to a man who has already disobeyed him

Both rulers were making policy on information months out of date.

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March 1801 · Pre-Revolutionarymonth known

A bishop arrives from France and Louverture refuses to know him

Only priests the governor picks himself will be recognised, a rule he then writes into law.

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March 1801 · Pre-Revolutionarymonth known

Jefferson takes office and calls Saint-Domingue another Algiers

A Virginian slaveholder replaces a New England president and French prospects improve.

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4 May 1801 · Pre-Revolutionary

Girard dates the expedition's real origin to an order for 3,600 men

A modest Brest order in May, not the October confrontation, starts the invasion.

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1801 · Haitianyear only

Toussaint's constitution calls everyone an inhabitant, not an indigène2 sources

The word that would define the nation is entirely absent from the colonial constitution.

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1801 · Pre-Revolutionaryyear only

Exports claw back to a third of the pre-revolution peak

From 230 million pounds in 1789 to four million in 1795, then back to about seventy.

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1801 · Pre-Revolutionaryyear only

Toussaint keeps the plantation economy by renaming the labour

Slavery is abolished and a share-cropping corvee takes its place under his directives.

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1801 · Pre-Revolutionaryyear only

Article seventy-three keeps absent owners' plantations for them

Gaffield reads the first constitution as designed to preserve continuity with the colony.

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1801 · Pre-Revolutionaryyear only

Three men of colour and six whites write the charter of autonomy

The editors print the Cap edition because that is the one in force in the colony.

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1801 · Haitianyear only

Thomas reads the 1801 constitution as deliberate self-restraint

Declaring the colony French bought the time a new state needed to survive.

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1801 · Haitianyear only

Wood has Napoleon send Leclerc in 1801, a year early

The butcher of the Negroes earned the title from the general he later destroyed.

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1801 · Haitianyear only

Louverture asks Britain to help him buy Africans for his plantations

The governor of Jamaica reports the request; Louverture calls the people he wants to purchase cultivators.

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1801 · Haitianyear only

Toussaint claims 648,000 francs and his biographer disbelieves him

Debien called it propaganda or a copying error; King thinks the archives partly back the claim.

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1801 · Haitianyear only

Saint-Domingue makes the inhabitant the bearer of rights

A colonial constitution rewrites the 1789 Declaration so that liberty attaches to place, not birth.

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1801 · Haitianyear only

Sugar returns to 16 per cent of 1789 while coffee reaches 56

The production returns show the plantation model failing where the officers ran it.

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early July 1801 · Pre-Revolutionarymonth known

The fortifications chief is sent away to miss the ceremony

Vincent learns of the constitution anyway and tells him a colony cannot write one.

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7 July 1801 · Pre-Revolutionary

The constitution abolishes slavery and reopens the African trade2 sources

Woodward says the same charter that ended slavery encouraged importing African workers.

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7 July 1801 · Pre-Revolutionary

A white planter reads out the charter making him governor for life

Girard says Louverture decided every clause behind the scenes and let white men front it.

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8 July 1801 · Haitian

The 1801 constitution turns each plantation into a factory by law3 sources

Slavery is abolished forever and the militarisation of agriculture is written into the charter.

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1801 · Haitianyear only

The 1801 charter frees those born in the colony and nobody else2 sources

Casimir reads the 1801 text as a balance of ambiguities that leaves the majority unaccounted for.

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July 1801 · Pre-Revolutionarymonth known

The constitution's careful wording restores the Atlantic slave trade

Authority to encourage the introduction of cultivators sends an envoy shopping in Jamaica.

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July 1801 · Haitianmonth known

Jefferson promises France an embargo, and the invasion follows

A change of president in Washington converts American support for Toussaint into encouragement to attack him.

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July 1801 · Haitianmonth known

Toussaint makes himself governor for life and gives France no role2 sources

Sent to Paris for ratification, the constitution was put into effect at once.

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1801 · Haitianyear only

The labour code sends soldiers to drive the freed back to the estates

King compares it to the American Black Codes and to apprenticeship in Jamaica.

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14 August 1801 · Diaspora

New York Haitians block a sale of their compatriots to the south

Twenty men went to prison for sixty days and the people they came for went free.

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1 October 1801 · Pre-Revolutionary

Peace in Europe is signed so that war can begin in the Caribbean

The Anglo-French preliminaries clear the sea lanes and Leclerc's expedition is announced at once.

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8 October 1801 · Pre-Revolutionary

The Malmaison meeting comes one day too late to change anything

Girard shows Bonaparte ordered military preparations the day before he met Vincent.

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October 1801 · Pre-Revolutionarymonth known

Dessalines puts down a cultivators' revolt on the planters' behalf

During the Moise uprising near the Cap he defends estate owners, most of them white, against black workers.

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October 1801 · Haitianmonth known

Cultivators rise in the north and kill three hundred white colonists

Toussaint's own nephew appears to have instigated it, and was not allowed to speak in his defence.

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23 October 1801 · Pre-Revolutionary

Leclerc accepts the command once he is told what it pays

Summoned on the eighth, named captain general on the twenty-third after trying to decline.

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November 1801 · Pre-Revolutionarymonth known

Britain signs off and the expedition swells to forty-three thousand

Seven ports, twenty-eight ships of the line, two thirds of the serviceable French navy.

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25 November 1801 · Haitian

After a northern revolt, the paperless go back to the fields

Nominative censuses of every farm worker, and soldiers forbidden to mix with cultivators.

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late 1801 · Haitianseason

Louverture executes Moise for siding with the labourers

The nephew wanted the estates broken into small farms; the uncle had him shot.

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late 1801 · Haitianseason

Bonaparte erases the name Polish Legions to please the partitioners

Two legions become three demibrigades, and Dabrowski loses his command to a paper title.

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14 December 1801 · Haitian

Fifty-four warships sail for Saint-Domingue, delayed by Pauline

The largest force France sent to the Caribbean leaves late because the commander's wife was late.

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