What did Napoleon think of the Haitian Revolution?

by J2quared

At the time, if the French really wanted to, could that have ended the Revolution a lot sooner?

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Napoleon sent an expeditionary force of 30,000 men headed by his brother in law Charles Leclerc to bring order back to the colony of Saint Domingue. Slavery had been reestablished in nearby Guadeloupe so the Haitian revolutionaries were largely under the impression that this might also be Napoleon's goal in Saint Domingue (aka Haiti); and in this they were not terribly mistaken.

Leclerc arrived in Saint Domingue in 1802. He made promises that the revolutionaries could keep their freedom and military positions- how this all plays out is incredibly complicated. Suffice to say, throughout the Haitian Revolution there was never a clear cut divide between two different sides. Freed blacks, freed people of mixed race or creole, the British, the Spanish, French planters, French revolutionaries, former slaves, etc, were each pushing their own goals- trying to capitalize on the chaos and instability or maintain their place in society. Leclerc tried to use some of this shifting alliances and identities to his advantage, but the fear of re-enslavement made long-term alliances with former slaves difficult.

The expedition was a disaster. Nearly half the expeditionary force was dead after only two months thanks to endemic disease like yellow fever- the same diseases that killed most slaves brought to the colony within their first five years. By the time Leclerc died of yellow fever near the end of 1802, over 2/3s of his force had perished. The troops will ill prepared for the tropical environment of the island. They underestimated the abilities of the Revolutionaries as well- many of whom we believe had military experience back in Africa- after all, many of the slaves had been captured during wars.

If those odds weren't bad enough, General Rochambeau, who takes over after Leclerc, was incredibly savage and brutal even by the standards of the bloody revolution. His actions- massacres, tortures, scorched earth- helped unite the quarreling factions that made up the Revolution.

So- if your question was, could Napoleon have ended the Revolution? The answer seems to be a deafening no; he tried, and he failed at great cost.