page_title: Saint-Domingue expedition
section_title: Expedition
hierarchical_section_title: Saint-Domingue expedition / Expedition
context_page_description: The Saint-Domingue expedition was a French military expedition sent by Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul, under his brother-in-law Charles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc in an attempt to regain French control of the Caribbean colony of Saint-Domingue on the island of Hispaniola, and curtail the measures of independence taken by the former slave Toussaint Louverture. It landed in December 1801 and, after initial success, ended in a French defeat at the battle of Vertières and the departure of French troops in December 1803. The defeat ended forever Napoleon's dreams of a French empire in the West.
context_section_description: Peace had not yet been conclusively signed with Britain (the Peace of Amiens would finally be signed on 25 March 1802) when on 14 December 1801 a French fleet of 21 frigates and 35 ships of the line (with one 120 gun ship) left Brest under Villaret de Joyeuse carrying 7,000–8,000 troops. This fleet was followed by the squadron under contre-amiral Ganteaume which left Toulon on 14 February with 4,200 troops then by that under contre-amiral Linois which left Cadiz on 17 February with 2,400 troops. In the following months even more ships left France with fresh troops, including over 4,000 men from the artillerie de marine, a Dutch division and the Polish Danube Legion. Also included were a Spanish fleet of seven ships under Admiral Federico Gravina as well as a great deal of financial and material aid coming from Spanish Cuba. In total 31,131 troops were landed on Saint-Domingue, including some black figures such as André Rigaud and future Haitian president Alexandre Pétion, both of whom Toussaint had expelled from the colony two years earlier in the War of Knives (after the Saint-Domingue expedition's failure, Rigaud would be imprisoned at fort de Joux by Napoleon, a few cells away from Toussaint himself).
  The ships were due to join up in the Bay of Samaná, which Villaret de Joyeuse reached on 29 January, closely followed by Latouche-Tréville. Without waiting for Ganteaume and Linois, these two admirals divided up their combined fleets to arrive at different ports in order to surprise Toussaint. General Kerverseau was to land at Santo Domingo in the Spanish part of the island, General Jean Boudet was sent to take Port-au-Prince in ships under Latouche-Tréville and Leclerc; Villaret de Joyeuse and Gravina sailed towards to Cap-Haïtien. When Toussaint discovered the French ships in the bay of Samaná he ordered Henri Christophe (head of the island's northern département), Jean-Jacques Dessalines (head of the western département) and Laplume (head of the southern département) to obey the squadrons' summons to a parley, to insist on a parley if none was offered, and (if a landing should occur) to threaten to destroy the towns and massacre the white inhabitants before retreating into the mountains.
caption: Admiral Louis-René Levassor de Latouche-Tréville.
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