The county was named to commemorate Napoleon's victory at the Battle of Marengo over Austrian armies on June 14, 1800. This name was chosen in honor of the first European settlers, Bonapartists exiled from France after Napoleon's downfall. In 1817 a number of French settled the area around Demopolis. They were trying to develop a Vine and Olive Colony. Other ethnic French who settled here were refugees from the colony of Saint-Domingue, where enslaved Africans and "free people of color" had routed Napoleon's troops and white colonists, and declared independence in 1804. They established the territory as Haiti, the second republic in the western hemisphere.