Saint-Domingue expedition

With his hands freed on the continent by the Treaty of Lunéville of February 1801, Napoleon at first planned to confirm the ranks and lands of Toussaint's officers and guarantee freedom to the former slaves while re-establishing Paris's authority, but after the constitution of July 1801 he secretly directed Leclerc in October to disarm Toussaint's government and deport the Black officers to France. Since Toussaint had over 16,000 men, Leclerc was given 30,000. Before the Peace of Amiens was signed, on 14 December 1801 Villaret de Joyeuse's fleet of 35 ships of the line and 21 frigates left Brest with 7,000–8,000 troops, followed in February by Ganteaume's squadron from Toulon (4,200 men) and Linois's from Cádiz (2,400), then by over 4,000 naval troops, a Dutch division, the 3rd Polish Half-Brigade and a Spanish fleet under Gravina. In all 31,131 troops were landed, among them the free coloured officers Rigaud and Pétion (Leclerc's biography gives 40,000 and Toussaint's 20,000). The fleet reached Cap-Français on 3 February 1802 and attacked on the 5th, and Christophe burned the town as ordered. Within ten days the French held the ports, the towns and most of the cultivated land, and the general offensive of 17 February drove Toussaint back towards Gonaïves. Dessalines held the fort of Crête-à-Pierrot under siege from 4 to 24 March before breaking out; the surrenders of Christophe (25 April) and Dessalines were followed on 6 May by Toussaint's acknowledgement of Leclerc's authority and his retirement to his plantation at Ennery. In June Leclerc called Toussaint to an interview, arrested him and shipped him to the Fort de Joux in France.

With the rains of March came yellow fever, which killed around 15,000 men in only two months. The Law of 20 May 1802, confirming slavery in Martinique, returned by the Treaty of Amiens, and news of the re-establishment of slavery in Guadeloupe revived the threat of revolt in Saint-Domingue, and Leclerc's attempt to disarm the Blacks only angered them further. From August the Black and mulatto troops deserted en masse, and in October Pétion, Christophe and Dessalines all left the French forces. With only 8,000 to 10,000 men fit to serve, Leclerc, after Christophe massacred several hundred Polish soldiers at Port-de-Paix, had 1,000 Black colonial troops at Le Cap executed by tying sacks of flour to their necks and pushing them from the ships, and in early November the still-loyal General Maurepas was drowned with his family in the harbour. Leclerc died of yellow fever on Tortuga on 1 November 1802 (2 November in his English biography); his wife Pauline Bonaparte cut off her hair and put it in his coffin, placed his heart in an urn and took his remains back to France. His successor Rochambeau received a shipment of slave-hunting dogs from Cuba, a military disappointment whose use still resounds in Haiti as a symbol of colonial viciousness. War with Britain resumed in May 1803 and a blockade began; defeated at Vertières on 18 November, the last French soldiers left the island at the end of December, and Rochambeau was captured on the voyage home by the Royal Navy and interned for nearly nine years. Little more than 7,000 to 8,000 of the 31,000 soldiers sent survived and over twenty generals died, so that France lost more troops in Saint-Domingue than it would later lose at Waterloo. On 1 January 1804 Dessalines proclaimed the independence of Haiti.