Battle of Vertières (1803) Haiti's Final Victory Over France

The Last French Stronghold By November 1803, the Haitian Revolution had already lasted more than a decade. What began in 1791 as an uprising by enslaved people in the French colony of Saint-Domingue had become one of the most extraordinary revolutions in history: a struggle against slavery, colonial rule, foreign invasion, and the return of French imperial power. Saint-Domingue had once been France’s richest colony. Its sugar and coffee plantations created immense wealth, but that wealth depended on the forced labour of hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans and their descendants. When the revolution began, the old colonial system started to break apart. France abolished slavery in the colony in 1793–94, but Napoleon Bonaparte later attempted to restore French control and re-establish slavery in the Caribbean. The French expedition sent to Saint-Domingue had initially been large and powerful. But years of fighting, guerrilla war, disease (respecially yellow fever) and the determination of the revolutionary forces had devastated it. By late 1803, the remaining French troops were concentrated around Cap-Français, today Cap-Haïtien, on Haiti’s northern coast. Their commander was Donatien de Rochambeau. He held a chain of fortified positions on the hills outside the city, including the strongpoint at Vertières. Rochambeau still had guns, fortifications, and professional soldiers. But his force had been reduced to perhaps 1,500–2,500 men, and it had little hope of receiving help. The British navy controlled the sea and blockaded the port, making French resupply or escape increasingly difficult. The Army Outside the City Outside Cap-Français stood the army of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, commander of the Haitian revolutionary forces. His army was much larger, perhaps 15,000–27,000 men, though the exact number is uncertain. It included soldiers who had once been enslaved, free people of colour, veterans of earlier revolutionary campaigns, and men who understood that defeat could mean the return of slavery. Dessalines knew that the French position was strong. A frontal attack on fortified high ground would be costly, and he could not afford to waste men. But the French position could not survive forever. Rochambeau’s army was isolated, weakened by disease, and trapped between the Haitian army and the British blockade. The question was not whether the French would eventually leave. It was whether they would be forced out by negotiation or by battle. On 18 November, Dessalines chose battle. The Man Called Capois-La-Mort One of Dessalines’s most famous commanders was François Capois, often remembered as Capois-La-Mort Capois the Death Defier. He commanded a division tasked with attacking the French position at Vertières. The name reflects the story that would later be told about him. During the fighting, Capois was said to have continued leading his men even after his horse was shot from beneath him and his hat was knocked away by enemy fire. Some details of this story belong to later national memory and cannot be verified exactly. But Capois’s role in the battle is firmly rooted in Haitian tradition: he became the symbol of an army that refused to turn back even when the cost was terrible. At dawn, the Haitian army moved toward the hills.