1802 to 1803 · Pre-Revolutionaryspan

The expedition landed in 1802 and lost in 1803

Johnson corrects a published claim that Bonaparte moved to restore slavery in 1800.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1802 to 1803 · Haitianspan

Toussaint is taken in 1802 and dies in a French cell

The leader held up as the emblem of universal history lost, and his compatriots won without him.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1802 to 1803 · Haitianspan

Girard argues non-whites were most of the French forces after 1802

A claim nobody had made before, advanced alongside a thesis that race was only a secondary factor.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1802 · Haitianyear only

Leclerc thanks in the official gazette the women who saved his soldiers

Seven hundred army doctors died, so the cures came from the mountains instead.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1802 · Pre-Revolutionaryyear only

The Maurepas family is flogged to death from a ship's yards

A general's wife and children were hung from the spars in the Tortuga channel and thrown in the sea.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

January 1802 · Pre-Revolutionarymonth known

Madison quietly tells the American agent not to stop contraband

The fleet sails believing Jefferson backs it, while Washington redefines neutrality.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

January 1802 · Diasporamonth known

Rainsford argues an independent Haiti threatens nobody

An Irish officer whose life Toussaint saved writes against the tide of English opinion.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

4 February 1802 · Haitian

A cannonball from Fort Picolet opens the war against Leclerc's fleet

Madiou records that as darkness fell the fort signalled the start of hostilities against the squadron.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

6 February 1802 · Haitian

Christophe burns Cap-Francais and leaves Leclerc seventy houses2 sources

The colonial capital is destroyed by its own commander rather than handed over.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

February 1802 · Haitianmonth known

Leclerc lands with orders that never mention slavery

The plan was to win over the black generals, disarm their soldiers, then deport every black officer.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

February 1802 · Haitianmonth known

Leclerc jails the colony's paymaster for a million francs

The expedition was ordered to fund itself, so it went after the men who held the money.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

24 February 1802 · Haitian

Dessalines burns Saint Marc to deny the French a base

Scorched earth arrives in the west four days before the stand at La Crete a Pierrot.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

4 to 24 March 1802 · Haitianspan

A hilltop fort on the Artibonite holds the French three weeks

La Crete a Pierrot buys the black army the time that the fever will use.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

March 1802 · Haitianmonth known

Marie-Jeanne Lamartinière holds Crête-à-Pierrot

Rifle in one hand, machete in the other, against more than two thousand French troops.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1802 · Pre-Revolutionaryyear only

A French naturalist is pulled out from under a bed and spared

Claire Heureuse hid two men, then held her husband's tunic until he pardoned one of them.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

March 1802 · Haitianmonth known

Peace with Britain returns Martinique and restores slavery by decree

Getting a slave colony back forced Bonaparte to choose, and he chose the slave trade.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

26 April 1802 · Haitian

Christophe hands Leclerc 1,500 men and 100 cannon on generous terms

The first black general to accept French terms takes his rank and his troops across intact.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1 May 1802 · Pre-Revolutionary

Healy reads the surrender as a feint timed for the fever season

Toussaint retires to Ennery planning to strike again in autumn, in her account.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

May 1802 · Haitianmonth known

A Euro-American coalition sails, and Toussaint surrenders in months

Spain and the Dutch lent ships, Britain approved, Jefferson hinted at an embargo, Cuba sent hunting dogs.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

May 1802 · Haitianmonth known

Toussaint accepts a safe conduct, is seized, and dies in a Jura cell

His captors cared mainly about where he had hidden his gold; his bones ended up in a foundation.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

20 May 1802 · Pre-Revolutionary

Dessalines tells the French that Toussaint uses him as a workhorse

Two weeks later Louverture is seized, and Leclerc names these accusations as a reason for the arrest.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

6 June 1802 · Haitian

General Brunet invites Toussaint to a meeting and arrests him instead

A summons about administrative business removes the one man who could have avoided rupture.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

7 June 1802 · Pre-Revolutionary

Toussaint's house is stripped on the day he is seized

His wife saved one object from the pillage, an engraved watch, and left with an escort.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

7 June 1802 · Pre-Revolutionary

Brunet's invitation to talk is the trap that takes Louverture

Warned of the plot, Louverture keeps the appointment and is seized at a plantation.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

30 June 1802 · Haitian

Leclerc orders every worker back to the estate they left since 1791

Forced labour is restored under military supervision to men who had already tasted freedom.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1802 to 1803 · Haitianspan

Dubois credits Dessalines with ending French Louisiana

The statues owed to him should stand across the American Midwest.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1802 · Caribbeanyear only

Guadeloupe is retaken at the cost of a tenth of its people2 sources

Richepance disarmed the black troops, Delgres blew himself up, and slavery came back.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1802 · Haitianyear only

Leclerc comes to exterminate and restock, and dies of fever instead

Rochambeau's cruelty then pushes Petion's forces into alliance with Dessalines.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1802 · Haitianyear only

Warned of invasion, Louverture reassures whites, not the masses

James called it a fatal and avoidable error; Dupuy says it followed from where Louverture's interests lay.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1802 to 1803 · Haitianspan

After Louverture is deported it is the maroons who keep fighting

Fouchard says Christophe admitted as much to a French general during the truce.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

July 1802 · Caribbeanmonth known

Prisoners are stripped of their uniforms and dressed as new arrivals

Spanish officials at Cartagena and Caracas saw through the disguise and turned the ships away.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

1802 · Pre-Revolutionaryyear only

The widow Cotin treats French soldiers with wine, nutmeg and egg

Women who had been enslaved the year before nursed the army that came to re-enslave them.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

August 1802 · Pre-Revolutionarymonth known

Five thousand fresh troops land and are gone in twenty days

The expedition's own funeral tables counted more than thirty five thousand dead of yellow fever.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

summer 1802 · Pre-Revolutionaryseason

While the countryside rises, Dessalines hunts rebels for France

The men of colour who rallied to Leclerc after the May ceasefire stayed in French pay all summer.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

August 1802 · Caribbeanmonth known

The mayor of New York refuses to let a French frigate unload

Three hundred people went aboard at Guadeloupe and one hundred and eighty came back.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

c. 16 August 1802 · Pre-Revolutionaryapproximate

A colony wide rising set for Thermidor fails for want of a chief

Leclerc reports uncovering a plot to raise the whole colony that failed because no leader stepped forward.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

19 August 1802 · Pre-Revolutionary

A guard officer at Verrettes names Belair as secret instigator

Prisoners in the Artibonite say they rose on Belair's orders, and the paper goes to Rochambeau.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

22 August 1802 · Haitian

Toussaint is walled into the innermost cell of the Fort de Joux

The prison was chosen for one quality above all: distance from the sea.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

24 August to 17 September 1802 · Haitianspan

At Fort de Joux, Toussaint dictates and corrects his memoir

Twenty-one dense pages in his own hand, plus drafts, produced between arrival and Caffarelli.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

3 September 1802 · Haitian

The Third Polish Battalion lands at Borgne already short by a fifth

Brunet asked for 789 soldiers and received 634, the rest having gone straight to hospital.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

10 September 1802 · Pre-Revolutionary

Belair surrenders when a search party finds his wife in the grass

A guard detachment sent by Jablonowski takes Belair in the Cahos and hands him to Dessalines.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

16 September 1802 · Pre-Revolutionary

Leclerc tells Bonaparte that Dessalines does his hateful work

The French commander praises his black general as the instrument of the colony's worst measures.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

21 September 1802 · Haitian

A captain misreads French orders and loses his guide and 35 men

Thirty-five legionnaires die at the Dubrail plantation because a rendezvous was misunderstood.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

4 October 1802 · Pre-Revolutionary

Dessalines writes to Leclerc listing his own operations

A letter of great value to the argument details actions in his department, including support given to Petion.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

5 October 1802 · Pre-Revolutionary

Dessalines asks the French to punish Charles Belair and his wife2 sources

He tells Leclerc he has undeniable proof Belair led the rising, and the couple are shot.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

5 October 1802 · Haitian

Sanite Belair refuses the blindfold and refuses the block

The court sentenced her husband to be shot and her, because of her sex, to be beheaded.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

5 October 1802 · Pre-Revolutionary

Sanite Belair refuses the block and is shot instead

Her sentence named her sex; she fought the executioner until they agreed to use a firing squad.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

7 October 1802 · Haitian

Leclerc writes his last letter with most of his army dead

The expedition that took Toussaint was destroyed before the news reached Paris.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

10 October 1802 · Haitian

Wood credits Clervaux with starting the final insurrection

A desertion with troops on 10 October sets the last revolutionary attempt in motion.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

10 October 1802 · Caribbean

A French general denies that shipwrecked children were sold into slavery

Rumours in Santo Domingo said black children landed from a French ship had been sold with his consent.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

October 1802 · Caribbeanmonth known

A corvette maroons one hundred and fifty men on the Miskito Coast

Of five hundred who sailed from Martinique, eighty five reached Santo Domingo alive.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

13 October 1802 · Haitian

Three days after Dessalines calls on him, Petion turns on the French2 sources

The defection that brings the mulatto officers and the maroon bands into one army.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

night of 13 to 14 October 1802 · Haitian

Petion and Clervaux cross to the insurgency with 2,500 colonial troops

One night of defection triples the indigenous force in the north and strands the Polish garrisons.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

October 1802 to April 1803 · Caribbeanspan

The slave ships return to Martinique a month after the handover

Two thousand nine hundred people were landed on the island in the first six months.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

October 1802 · Pre-Revolutionarymonth known

A priest's servant warns Dessalines with a movement of her hand

He rose from the table saying he saw smoke on the mountain, and fired the alarm cannon.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

mid-October 1802 · Haitianmonth known

A humiliating search ends Toussaint's hope of leaving Fort de Joux

He asks for a son as secretary, writes once more to Bonaparte, then loses pen and paper.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

24 October 1802 · Haitian

Dessalines defects from the French army and calls himself a Frenchman2 sources

His letter explaining the break cites massacres and the threat of re-enslavement, not independence.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

17 November 1802 · Pre-Revolutionary

The generals hand Dessalines command six weeks after Belair is shot

Clervaux, Petion and Christophe submit to a man the standard account calls Belair's betrayer.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

23 November 1802 · Haitian

Marie Bunel talks her way out of prison by playing the helpless wife

With executions under way at the Cap, she told Rochambeau that politics was foreign to her.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

December 1802 · Pre-Revolutionarymonth known

Henriette Saint-Marc is hanged in front of the cathedral

She had been buying powder and shot from French soldiers for the generals at Arcahaie.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

December 1802 · Haitianmonth known

A captured banner becomes French propaganda and forces a new flag

French troops seize a rebel colour near Croix-des-Bouquets and print that the rebels still fight as Frenchmen.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page

December 1802 · Haitianmonth known

A free Black woman asks her agent to watch her former subjects

Nine years after abolition, Marie Bunel lists fourteen people with their skills and children.

›Read the full entryClose

Opening… read it as its own page