1802-11-01: (Leclerc Dies of Yellow Fever on Tortuga, His Army Decimated by Disease, the French Campaign to Reconquer Haiti Collapsing Around a General’s Cor…
1802-11-01: (Leclerc Dies of Yellow Fever on Tortuga, His Army Decimated by Disease, the French Campaign to Reconquer Haiti Collapsing Around a General’s Corpse): On November 1, 1802, General Leclerc died of yellow fever on the island of Tortuga. He was thirty years old. The army he had brought to reconquer Haiti was disintegrating: yellow fever had claimed twenty-five thousand French soldiers during the summer, and the reunited revolutionary forces were inflicting casualties that France could not replace. Leclerc was succeeded in command by Donatien-Marie-Joseph de Vimeur, Vicomte de Rochambeau, but the campaign was already lost. Napoleon had gambled that European military superiority could crush a population of formerly enslaved people fighting for their freedom. The Caribbean climate and the Haitian will to survive proved him wrong.