After the betrayal and capture of Toussaint Louverture in 1802, who died in prison in France, Dessalines became the leader of the revolution. He defeated a French army at the Battle of Vertières in 1803. Declaring Haiti an independent nation in 1804, Dessalines was chosen by a council of generals to assume the office of governor-general. In a genocide, he ordered the 1804 Haiti massacre of remaining white settlers in Haiti, resulting in the deaths of between 3,000 and 5,000 people. He excluded surviving Polish Legionnaires, who had defected from the French legion to become allied with the enslaved Africans. He granted them full citizenship under the constitution and classified them as "Noir", the new ruling ethnicity. Tensions remained with the minority of mixed-race or free people of color, who had gained some education and property during the colonial period.