Dessalines waged brutal counterinsurgency against former comrades while serving the French

Evidence

Dessalines was as fearsome an enemy of his former comrades as he had once been of the French. In early August he led a successful attack against the insurgent band led by Macaya and brought back “women and children and prisoners.” “I had a few hung, and others shot,” Dessalines reported. He hoped that “in ten years” the people of the region would still remember the “lesson.” In another letter Dessalines congratulated himself on the “desolation and terror” he had wrought. One French officer noted the “marvels” the black general had performed in capturing hundreds of guns from the insurgents and ridding “the country of more than a hundred incorrigible rascals.” Leclerc similarly praised Dessalines as the “butcher of the blacks,” noting that he was using him to execute all the most “odious measures” he was enforcing. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 997