Where we left off in the last video, Toussaint L'Ouverture
had just been betrayed, on some level, first by some of
his right-hand men, because they joined the side of
Leclerc-- or essentially they gave up rebelling against
Leclerc-- convinced that Leclerc wasn't that bad, that
he had no intention of reinstating slavery or taking
away the civil rights of the freemen of African descent.
This is another picture of Leclerc, right here.
This is Leclerc.
So he had to essentially give up his arms. He went to
negotiate with Leclerc, Leclerc imprisoned him, put
him on a boat, and sent him to France and he died the next
year in 1803.
So he was betrayed.
And he really was, on a lot of levels, one of the most
important leaders not just in Haitian
history, but in general.
When he took power, as I said before, he didn't take revenge
on the white population.
He helped the economy of Haiti get back up and running.
He actually helped defend what is now Haiti, but
Saint-Domingue against the British Royal Navy.
I forgot to mention that.
Defended against the British Navy, which at the time was by
far the dominant navy in the world.
So this is what really earned his reputation as a great
general, on top of being a great leader in terms of not
exacting revenge, in terms of not having slash and burn
tactics, in terms of not just ravaging his enemies.
So he was betrayed, and then just to make it clear that
Leclerc really does deserve devil horns of a sort--
although we're about to meet someone who deserves much
bigger devil horns, or maybe that he was actually the
henchman for someone who deserves devil horns-- in May
of 1802, Napoleon signs a law that reinstates slavery where
it has not disappeared.
And so it was a little bit ambiguous.
There were some areas where slavery had still not
disappeared.
Those include the French colonies at Martinique, at
Saint Lucia, at Tobago.
But in Haiti-- or Saint-Domingue, at that time--
things were a little ambiguous.
Had slavery truly disappeared, or had it not disappeared yet?
Apparently, slaves were free in Haiti.
So it wasn't clear exactly what this meant for Haiti, but
at the same time, the Haitians didn't even
know this was happening.
This was May of 1802.
But just to make things clear, Napoleon actually sent Leclerc
a secret memo to essentially reinstate slavery when the
time was right.
So these guys, they were no jokers.
They knew the situation.
They knew that they needed the help of some of Toussaint
L'Ouverture's former generals, former right-hand men, in
order to keep control of Haiti.
But the intention the entire time was, when they have the
upper hand, to actually clamp down, reinstate slavery, and
take away the civil rights of the freemen of color.
Now these guys weren't stupid either.
So you might remember Dessalines.
This was one picture of him.
He was also a former slave, one of Toussaint L'Ouverture's
right-hand men, very effective general.
And, as you remember, near the end of the fight against
Leclerc, he gave up the fight against Leclerc and to some
degree you could say he turned on Toussaint L'Ouverture.
But he and some of the other former followers of
L'Ouverture saw the writing on the wall.
They didn't even have to intercept that secret memo.
They got word from Martinique and Tobago and Saint Lucia
that slavery was being reinstated.
The French at this time were not people that you wanted to
deal with or trust when it came to issues of slavery.
So Dessalines and his comrades re-took up arms. And
Dessalines was a very different character than
Toussaint L'Ouverture.
The one similarity is that they were both very effective
military men.
The big difference between the two was that Dessalines was
not one to hold back.
He wasn't afraid to essentially take an eye for an
eye, so to speak.
So here you had Dessalines in charge of what was, I guess
you could call, the slave rebel army.
And then on the other side of it, you have Leclerc with the
40,000 troops that he showed up, with Napoleon.
But lucky for Dessalines, yellow fever--
and it's not lucky.
I mean, people died across the board.
But this did really turn the tide of war in favor of the
people of African descent on the island.
Yellow fever struck the island, it killed Leclerc, and
it also took out twenty something thousand-- or the
number I read was 24,000-- of the actual French soldiers,
and another 8,000 were hospitalized.
So that's 32,000 out of commission, so you're
essentially only left with 8,000 soldiers.
So all of a sudden, it completely turned the tide,
completely changed the numbers in terms of what types of
forces the rebel army had to fight against.
But it wasn't all good at this point because Leclerc-- I
mentioned, I gave him little devil horns-- he was replaced
by someone who deserves very big devil horns named
Rochambeau.
Not to be confused with his father, who goes by the same
name who was a hero of the American Revolution.
He fought for France on the side of the Americans.
And he, as far as I can tell, seemed like a decent guy.
But his son was really evil.
And there are very few people in history that you can say
are unambiguously evil.
He is one of them.
Now that he was kind of desperate, his forces were
ravaged by yellow fever, he's going against a fairly
aggressive enemy, he did things like-- let me write
these down because they are evil.
He would bury African-- or I guess I
should say African Americans.
He would bury former slaves, or people of African descent--
bury in, bury alive in pits of insects.
He would boil people alive in molasses.
I read one account that says that at one point he held a
ball where he invited all of the prominent mixed-race
people to a party essentially at his place and at the stroke
of midnight he announced that all of the
men are to be murdered.
The only bounds on his cruelty was the people that he could
get his hands on, especially the people of African descent.
The one positive of his cruelty is that he for the
first time really unified the population of African descent
on the island.
So he unified both the slaves, the former slaves, and the
mixed-race.
And at the same time, we're now in 1803.
And, I've said it before, we're
still at war with Britain.
And Britain is-- and I've mentioned it before-- they had
the most dominant navy in the world.
This guy, despite how evil and how cruel he was, he needed
reinforcements from Napoleon if he had to take on
Dessalines.
And let me be very clear about this.
Dessalines, as I mentioned, he was not hesitant to take an
eye for an eye.
In one incident, Rochambeau buried 500 rebel prisoners
alive, then Dessalines went and hung 500 French prisoners.
So he wasn't someone to kind of shy away
from, I guess, blood.
And this is very different to Toussaint L'Ouverture.
It's kind of a lesson.
If you are fighting an enemy, if you get rid of the more
reasonable leaders of your enemy, you might end up
getting maybe a leader more similar to yourself and your
cruelty, if you betrayed the more reasonable ones.
But anyway, enough of my commentary.
So the stage is set.
War with Britain.
Britain owns the seas, especially the Caribbean.
This guy needs reinforcements going against a very strong
leader of the former slave rebels.
But Napoleon, he's known to be one to cut his losses.
He did it with his troops in Egypt.
He's really not someone who really cares, I think, about
the individual.
He cares much more about his ego and his power.
So Napoleon leaves them hanging.
Napoleon saw the writing on the wall.
He wouldn't be able to get through the British fleet.
And at the same time, Napoleon's fighting all of
these wars in Europe.
As you remember, the whole French Revolution was
precipitated by France being broke.
So Napoleon, not only does he give up on this guy-- and he
essentially got what he deserved-- Napoleon gives up
on maintaining all of their colonies or any major presence
in the Western Hemisphere.
So essentially to raise funds, Napoleon also sells Louisiana
to the Americans.
Now when I say Louisiana, I'm not talking about just the
state of Louisiana in its present state, which
is about that big.
That's actually where I was born.
We're talking about the whole-- this is like 1/3 of
the United States today.
Sold all of this.
And he was clearly desperate.
He sold it for $15 million, or that's the
equivalent of F60 million.
And I've been told, in today's money, that would be on the
order of $10 billion.
You know, if someone said for $10 billion, you could own 1/3
of the land of the United States, you would say that's a
pretty good deal.
$10 billion in today's money.
So $15 million 1803, $10 billion today, that's still
not a lot of money, but he was desperate.
He realized that he couldn't maintain control of something
halfway around the world when Britain owned the seas and he
was busy having his own troubles in Europe.
So the Americans got a good deal.
And frankly, if he didn't sell it to the Americans, either
the British or the Americans could have probably
just taken it anyway.
So being left to hang to dry by Napoleon, Dessalines is
able to destroy Rochambeau and essentially declare
independence for Saint-Domingue.
And it 1804, January 1.
Dessalines declares independence for, and he names
the new country Haiti, which is the indigenous peoples'
name for the island.
It means land of the mountains.
Now I want to just leave with one note, because you may or
may not be aware.
Haiti is still a very, very, very, very poor country.
And besides, after Dessalines, they had many, many, many--
and eventually, I'll do videos on it-- rounds of one dictator
after another.
And the people have really been through a lot.
But I just want to make it clear that they really got
started off on a horrible foot.
Because even though Dessalines declared independence in 1804,
the French did not recognize Haiti until
1805-- sorry- 1825.
And you might say, well, who cares about recognition?
Who cares what the former colonial masters think?
But until they recognized them, they were essentially
embargoing Haiti.
They weren't allowing any trade to
actually go on with Haiti.
So it was really on the front of a barrel gun.
And in order to be recognized, Haiti had to agree to F90
million of debt to France.
And just to be clear how much money this is, here's a small
island-- or half of an island-- of newly freed slaves
and they were forced to owe France-- and this actually was
further reinforced by the United
States and Great Britain.
So it goes to show you, even former enemies can kind of
agree when it comes to a oppressing small
impoverished islands.
But they had to owe France the equivalent of 1 and 1/2 times
what the United States paid for the Louisiana Purchase.
This was F60 million.
They got all of Louisiana.
Now France is telling Haiti, you owe us F90 million.
Or that's roughly the equivalent of $14 or $15
billion in today's terms. And this is for a population of
essentially half a million freed slaves.
So it's kind of a horrendous amount of debt.
And just to be clear, this wasn't like the crazy
colonials in the early 19th century, forcing to do this.
This debt was not paid off with the interest until 1947.
They were continuing to pay the debt.
And just to add insult to injury, the reason for the
debt, they claim, was for lost property.
So that's why France claimed that Haiti owed them the
money, for lost property.
Where, included in the list of lost property
was land and slaves.
Essentially, now that you've got your freedom, you owe us a
ton of money for us losing the rights to own you.
So it's just insult to injury.
And actually, I was shocked the first time I learned this
number, that they were forced to continue to pay debts from
one poor country, one small poor country, right over here,
they had to continue to pay debts to a Western developed
nation until 1947, essentially to buy their freedom.