Military Career
After the uprising of African slaves in the north of Saint-Domingue in 1791, Boyer joined with the French Commissioners and went there to fight against the grand blancs (plantation owners) and royalists. In 1794, Saint-Domingue was invaded by British forces trying to capitalize on the unrest in the formerly wealthy colony. Boyer went to Jacmel, where he joined forces with the mulatto leader, General André Rigaud. When other mulatto leaders surrendered to Toussaint Louverture in southern Saint-Domingue, Boyer escaped to France with Rigaud and Alexandre Pétion.
At the time, the United States supported French efforts to re-establish control, although it did not commit troops. Boyer traveled to Paris, where he stayed until 1801.
Next, he returned to Haiti to protest the independence that Toussaint Louverture had just achieved. By early 1802, Rigaud and other leaders learned that the French intended to take away the civil rights of mulattoes and re-institute slavery for former slaves in Saint-Domingue (as they had managed to do in Guadeloupe.) They sent General LeClerc to defeat the rebels, and over the next 21 months, added to his forces by 20,000 troops. Boyer collaborated with other native leaders to defeat the French. In November 1803, France withdrew its surviving 7,000 troops, less than one-third of the forces sent to the island. Most had died as a result of yellow fever, which was endemic to the island.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines, a former slave from the North, declared Haitian independence on 1 January 1804. He established himself as Emperor Jacques I. He was assassinated by opponents in 1806.
Alexandre Pétion and Henri Christophe competed to rule Haiti, and represented the split between the urban mulatto elite of the South and the black former slaves of the North, respectively. After years of warfare, they established separate states: Pétion continuing the Republic of Haiti in the southern part of Haiti, and Christophe creating the State (later Kingdom) of Haiti in the north.
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