Disease and desertion quietly undermined the British occupation of Saint-Domingue.

Evidence

The arming of slaves helped shore up the British occupation, but it did so at a cost to the plantation regime, and ultimately did not resolve the basic problem: Saint-Domingue was devouring British money and troops and providing little reward in return. 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.” Furthermore, though many French planters and free-coloreds remained loyal to the British, by 1798 there were increasing complaints, and defections to the Republican side. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 751

Categorization

• XREF: Reinforces the pattern of European expeditionary forces being destroyed by Caribbean disease rather than direct combat, as with the later Leclerc expedition.