Rebel slaves defeated a white and free-colored military expedition

Evidence

Blanchelande sent white troops and a regiment of free-coloreds commanded by Rigaud against the insurgents. As the columns marched up into the mountains, they were “assailed from all sides by blacks they could not see,” who shot at them and rolled rocks down from above. Two hundred white soldiers were killed and several captured. Blanchelande watched in horror as the head of one of his officers—recognizable from a distance because of his white hair—was lifted on a pike above the insurgent camp. The victorious rebels shouted “Long live the king!” and “Long live Blanchelande!” in order to make the whites think there were “traitors among them.” The expedition was an embarrassing and costly failure. “The blacks remained the absolute masters of the Platons.” — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 479

Categorization

• XREF: Guerrilla-terrain tactics echoing accounts of other Haitian and maroon wars fit the reader’s broader Haiti project.