Napoléon Bonaparte's Caribbean Genocide
Napoléon's legacy in the Caribbean is one of great Caribbean, genocide and destruction. The French historian Claude Ribbe states: "...Napoleon ordered the killing of as many blacks as possible in Haiti and Guadeloupe to be replaced by new, docile slaves from Africa," (Randall)
Late in the war against the Haitian revolutionary forces, Napoléon Bonaparte's troops resorted to outright genocidal tactics. In 1803, General "Rochambeau [Napoléon's supreme commander and under his direct orders], accompanied by the French Generals Pageot and Lavalette, undertook to subdue [the Haitian troops]''. His arrival at Jacmel was signalized by a horrible crime: by his orders, about 100 natives, who were only suspected of having little zeal for France, were thrown into the hold of a man-of-war 2, the hatchways of which were tightly closed; the men were then suffocated by the fumes of the ignited sulphur, their corpses being afterward thrown into the sea."
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