Louverture’s takeover of Spanish Santo Domingo soured Bonaparte against him

Evidence

Bonaparte’s opinion of Louverture, however, began to shift when news arrived of his takeover of Spanish Santo Domingo. The consul believed that this occupation, while allowed by the 1795 treaty between France and Spain, should have been carried out only under his orders. Bonaparte rescinded his promotion of Louverture and indeed took him off the list of those who were to be maintained as officers in Saint-Domingue. Many of the proplanter advisers whom Bonaparte had placed in the Colonial Ministry encouraged him to eliminate Louverture as a first step to rebuilding the colonial economy. In September 1801 the officer François Kerverseau, who had served in Saint-Domingue, wrote in an official report that the Republic should “examine whether, after having laid down the law for all the monarchs of Europe,” it was appropriate for it to “receive laws from a rebel negro in one of its own colonies.” — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 900