Outstanding Eyewitness Account of the Brutal Leclerc Command of the St. Domingue Expedition.
Including Extensive First-Hand Descriptions of the Destruction of Cap Français, the Ruthless Counterinsurgency, and the Pestilent Yellow Fever.
This extensive 31-page diary records the experiences of a 17-year-old sailor aboard the Mont Blanc as he is sent to Saint-Domingue in 1802 as part of an expedition to dismantle Black rule on the island and re-establish Haiti as a French colony.
The diary is an almost timeless record of the experiences of a soldier during a counterinsurgency. Auguste, the author, describes how the expedition initially left France jubilant, and confident in the nation’s status as a superpower after having eight years of successive victories on land and at sea. Despite repeated military victories for the French once on the island, the barbarous actions committed by both sides of the conflict are clear. Within several months, Auguste’s hope is nearly deserted as the yellow fever decimates his friends and fellow soldiers. Relieved to be sent home, his squadron arrives back in Brest Harbor alongside the ship carrying Toussaint Louverture to his untimely death.
The descriptions provided by the book are detailed and range from the banal moments in the life of a soldier, including his descriptions of the local inhabitants. Regarding the war, he tells of the brutality with which battles are conducted, mentioning summary executions and the massacres of opposing forces. He relays the story of a week-long expedition into the hills above Cap Haitian which one of his friends took part of, and describes the complicated tactics ordered by generals including Rochambeau, Leclerc, Magon, and Latouche Treville.
As a sailor, the author is particularly focused on the comings and goings of ships in the Cap. While most of the vessels are French military ships, of particular interest are the recurring mentions of American ships, including one from Philadelphia, that traded with the French and supplied their efforts. Despite official American neutrality, this tacit support was helpful for the French and allowed them to prolong their campaign.
The journal, written aboard the Mont Blanc, provides a key description of one of the pivotal moments in the history of the Americas. The desire for independence sprung by the American Revolution had spread to a second country, but the complex geopolitics of the Napoleonic Wars and the European fear of Black self-rule in the Caribbean led to a difficult, decade-long campaign of repression. This diary captures the final phase of that repression, as France achieved military superiority but lost the hearts and minds of Haitians.
The Second Burning of Cap Français
As the main commercial center of Haiti under colonial rule, important for its cultural legacy and large, fertile plains, Cap Français (later Cap-Haitien), was an important symbol of both the French colonial power and the potential for Black self-rule. The city was first burned in 1791 as part of the initial uprising that marked the commencement of the Haitian Revolution, as memorialized here (https://www.raremaps.com/gallery/detail/93355). This was one of the important events that precipitated the proclamation by the French National Assembly that initially ended slavery on the island.
A decade later, the semi-autonomous rule led by Toussaint Louverture had consolidated control on the island. Faced with an impending French invasion, his troops, led by his lieutenant and the future King of Haiti, Henri Christophe, the decision was made to burn the coastal cities, and their inhabitants, rather than let the French establish a foothold.
Auguste and his detachment saw the flames of the city from afar, and the tale of the burning was relayed to them as follows:
In the night, we learned that the fire that we had seen the previous day was, correctly, the burning of the Cap Francois in front of which the naval army had presented itself the morning of the 15th in battle formation. The first two vessels that crossed over the bar in the reef were the Scorpion and the Patriot, which approached Fort Picolet and proceeded to bombard it. During this time, the other vessels from the army had entered into the bay and started to disembark. When Christophe learned that his hand was forced, he, without even telling the people of the town, set fire and in a moment the city erupted in flames that provided no possibility of escape. This was the second time that this city, so rich and so commercial, found itself destroyed since the start of the revolution. This time, one has to regret many people, goods of all types, provisions of all varieties, and even treasures buried in the ashes.
Auguste is later sent to Cap Haitian, when it is already starting to succumb to yellow fever. He tells of his visit as follows:
On the 30th, I disembarked to visit the city of the Cap, which I did not know. Or rather, I visited the city’s emplacement, as there hardly remained a dozen houses that had survived the conflagration. I thus saw only the public places, as well as the quays and the buildings associated with the port. Everything else was rubble from which there emanated a strong odor that had been fed by the first rains of winter, that horrid season into which we were entering.
Several hundred men, both white and Black, were occupied with cleaning the rubble, but the debris was too considerable for the few people that were employed. This contributed in no small part to the development of miasmas which infected the air and transmitted the malady known as the yellow fever, which began to make itself known in the troops that had disembarked.
The Decimation by the Yellow Fever
Yellow fever has often been called Toussaint Louverture’s greatest ally in the fight against the French. Auguste describes both the death toll and the effects on the troops’ morale:
On the 24th and the following days, the yellow fever continued to cause us great difficulties. In less than a month we had lost more than forty men from our crew, and the leaders were not spared. We had just lost the excellent officer named Rabasse who had received his promotion to frigate captain, and we put, daily, two hundred whites in the Fosette [the cemetery at Cap Francais]. We made our prayers for departure.
Eventually, at least three of his closest friends in the crew die of the epidemic. Auguste credits his survival to advice given to him by a retired officer prior to his departure to eat bitter oranges twice daily, which he purchases from local merchants upon his arrival.
Full translation available upon request.