Disease alone reduced Leclerc’s invasion army by tens of thousands

Evidence

“If the first consul wants to have an army in Saint-Domingue in the month of October,” Leclerc wrote to the colonial minister, Denis Decrès, in June 1802, “he must send one from the ports of France, for the ravages of the sickness here are beyond telling.” He had lost 1,200 men during his first month in the colony, 1,800 in the next, and feared that he would lose 2,000 in the coming month. Of the tens of thousands who had arrived a few months before, there were only 10,000 European troops left who could still fight. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 993

Categorization

• XREF: Evokes Napoleon’s later Russian campaign, where disease and distance also destroyed a Grande Armée—worth comparing in the Atlantic context.