French indiscriminate killing drove slaves into insurgent ranks, killing neutrality

Evidence

It had become an “exterminating war.” Because of the indiscriminate killing of slaves by French troops, many who might have opted for the relative safety of their plantations fled to the insurgent camps. There was little room for neutrality. “The country is filled with dead bodies, which lie un-buried. The negroes have left the whites, with stakes, &c. driven through them into the ground; and the white troops, who now take no prisoners, but kill everything black or yellow, leave the negroes dead upon the field.” — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 394

Categorization

• XREF: State violence eliminating the possibility of neutrality echoes the logic behind other anticolonial wars where brutality backfired by swelling rebel ranks.