Facing a devastating combination of yellow fever, relentless guerrilla warfare, and the advancing forces of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, French General Rochambeau agreed to evacuate Cap-Français, the last major French holdout on the island. The collapse of Napoleon's expeditionary force paved the way for the formal declaration of Haitian independence just weeks later, on January 1, 1804, making Haiti the first nation born of a successful slave revolt.
Napoleon had sent roughly 40,000 troops to Saint-Domingue in 1802 intending to restore slavery and French control after Toussaint Louverture's revolutionary government had abolished it. Yellow fever killed French soldiers by the thousands, far outpacing combat losses, and Dessalines' forces, hardened by over a decade of war, ground down what remained.
By late 1803 Rochambeau's position at Cap-Français was untenable; supplies were cut off, reinforcements from France were not coming, and British ships blockaded the coast. Negotiating passage rather than annihilation, Rochambeau surrendered the city and evacuated remaining French troops, effectively ending French colonial rule over the colony once called the richest in the Americas.
The defeat was catastrophic for Napoleon's ambitions in the Western Hemisphere; having lost his most valuable colony, he abandoned plans for a French American empire and sold Louisiana to the United States the same year. Dessalines would declare Haiti's independence on January 1, 1804, and the new nation's very existence terrified slaveholding powers across the Americas for generations.
Key people: Donatien-Marie-Joseph de Vimeur, vicomte de Rochambeau, Jean-Jacques Dessalines