Dessalines announced a strategy of feigned surrender to defeat the French.

Evidence

Louverture sent two emissaries to carry this letter to Dieudonné. He also gave them secret instructions: if Dieudonné was unwilling to come over to their side, they should encourage his followers to rise up against him. As Louverture reported with satisfaction to Laveaux days later, his plan worked beautifully. Dieudonné refused Louverture’s entreaty, but one of his lieutenants, Laplume, led an uprising that brought the several thousand troops who followed him to the Republican side. Dieudonné was imprisoned and died soon afterward. Laplume’s troops, however, did not submit to Bauvais and Rigaud, but instead put themselves under Louverture’s protection. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 686 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

Related

• Dessalines openly told his troops he would feign surrender and betray (similarity 0.83)
• The French lost their capacity to intimidate the Haitian insurgent population. (similarity 0.81)
• Haitian insurgents used bait-and-ambush ruses that repeatedly fooled French troops (similarity 0.80)
• Dessalines initially helped the French crush Belair’s uprising against them. (similarity 0.80)
• Louverture’s strategy relied on scorched-earth destruction and disease to defeat the French. (similarity 0.79)
• Louverture used divide-and-conquer intrigue to poach Dieudonné’s army from the British (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Haitian insurgents used bait-and-ambush ruses that repeatedly fooled French troops #expands (0.85)
• Haitian rebels reused 1791 trap tactics against the French in 1802. #corroborates (0.80)
• Louverture subverted Dieudonné through a covert double strategy that split his forces #qualifies (0.40) — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 686