Disease, chiefly yellow fever, decimated British occupying troops in Saint-Domingue

Evidence

As the fighting continued, occupying troops garrisoned in Port-au-Prince and elsewhere were decimated by disease. A British officer wrote of the horror of soldiers “drowned in their own Blood”: “some died raving Mad, others formed Plans for attacking, and others desponding.” “Death,” he lamented, “presented itself under every form an unlimited Imagination could invent.” — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 751

Categorization

• XREF: White Western troops dying of tropical disease in colonial wars connects to similar accounts of European mortality in Caribbean and African campaigns.