ON THIS DAY ·
Creation of the Haitian flag
18 May 1803 — At a congress of the rebel generals, Dessalines tears the white out of the French tricolour. The blue and red, sewn by Catherine Flon by tradition, becomes the flag of the war for independence.
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The moment in context
Napoleon’s expedition aimed to restore the colony’s place in a French empire, and its first months seemed to succeed. Leclerc sailed from Brest on 14 December 1801 with orders to disarm the colony’s Black generals and send them to France, while Napoleon publicly promised to respect the freedom of its people. The fleet gathered at Samaná Bay in late January and landed at several points in February; at Le Cap, Henry Christophe burned the town before the French could take it. Toussaint’s armies fought a war of retreat into the mountains, and at Crête-à-Pierrot, a small fort above the Artibonite River in the colony’s centre, a garrison under Lamartinière held off far larger forces from 4 to 24 March 1802, cost the French some 2,000 killed and wounded, and then broke out through their lines. Yet by May Christophe, Dessalines and Toussaint had all submitted, and Leclerc had won the field at a price that left his army too weak for the fever season.
From Napoleon’s Saint-Domingue expedition, chapter 4 of Two Roads to Independence: Haiti 1789–1838 and Kenya 1895–1978 (1803).
The place: Creation of the Haitian flag — map and full story →
Teach this in 5 minutes
- Why it happened — A constitution that alarmed Paris. Toussaint’s constitution of 1801, his rule over the whole island and his trade with Britain and the United States made Napoleon fear that France…
- The turn — Vertières, 18 November 1803. Vertières is the hinge because it ended French power in Saint-Domingue and made independence the only remaining question. Dessalines’ army attacked…
- What it changed — Independence is declared. With the French gone, the generals gathered at Gonaïves on 1 January 1804 and declared the country independent under the name Haiti, taken from the…
Then ask the room: Why did Napoleon’s expedition to Saint-Domingue fail? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
The atlas that shows it
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