The Haitian Revolution: From Bois Caïman to Independence

According to Haitian tradition, on a stormy night in August 1791 enslaved people from the plantations of the Northern Plain met secretly in the woods of Bois Caïman, near Le Cap. The Vodou priest Dutty Boukman and the priestess Cécile Fatiman led a ceremony in which a black pig was sacrificed and those present swore to rise up. Within days the plain was in flames; within weeks some 100,000 people had joined the revolt. Historians still debate the details and even the date, but the ceremony is the founding story of the nation.

Location precision: The ceremony's site comes from tradition; the pin marks the place now called Bois Caïman, in Plaine-du-Nord.

Cap-Français, the colony's busiest port and old capital, saw the revolution's sharpest turns. On 29 August 1793, with British and Spanish forces closing in, the French commissioner Léger-Félicité Sonthonax proclaimed the end of slavery in the north; Paris extended abolition to all French colonies in 1794. When Napoleon's brother-in-law General Leclerc arrived with a huge fleet in February 1802 to restore French control, the Black commander Henri Christophe set the city on fire rather than hand it over. The city is today's Cap-Haïtien.

Location precision: These events took place across the city; the pin marks central Cap-Haïtien.

In March 1802 Jean-Jacques Dessalines held this small hilltop fort above the Artibonite River against several French columns. The French lost heavily in failed assaults across the defenders' ditch, and General Leclerc himself was wounded. After about twenty days, with food and ammunition gone, Dessalines's men slipped out through the French lines on the night of 24 March. Even the French general Rochambeau called it an incredible feat of arms. The Haitians turned to guerrilla war, and yellow fever began to destroy the French army.

Toussaint Louverture, born enslaved, had become the colony's master and in 1801 its governor for life. In May 1802, after his generals Christophe and then Dessalines went over to the French, he made peace with Leclerc on a promise that slavery would not return, and retired to his plantation at Ennery. Weeks later a French general invited him to a meeting and arrested him. On 7 June 1802 he was shipped to France, warning his captors that they had cut down "only the trunk of the tree of liberty".

Location precision: Toussaint's plantation isn't located precisely; the pin marks Ennery.

Napoleon had Toussaint locked up in secret at the Fort de Joux, a castle guarding a pass in the Jura mountains near the Swiss border, in a cell whose window was almost entirely walled up. Through the winter his guards reported fevers, stomach pain and swelling; medical care was refused. He died there on 7 April 1803, aged 59 — before he could know that his army had won. In 1954 Haiti's ambassador unveiled a memorial cross at the foot of the fort.

Visitor guidance: The Château de Joux, near Pontarlier in the Doubs, is open to visitors; check the season's opening times.

By late 1803 the French held little more than Le Cap. On 18 November Dessalines's army attacked the line of forts outside the city. At Vertières, General François Capois led his men up a ravine under heavy fire; his horse was shot from under him, and he got up and ran on, sword raised, shouting "Forward!" The French drums are said to have stopped to salute his courage. That night Rochambeau pulled back; next day he agreed to leave the island. 18 November is still celebrated in Haiti.

Location precision: The fighting covered a line of forts; the pin marks the monument to the heroes of independence at Vertières.

On 1 January 1804, in the port of Gonaïves, the generals named Dessalines governor-general and proclaimed the independence of Haiti, taking back the island's Taíno name, Ayiti. Dessalines could not read or speak French, so his secretary Louis Boisrond-Tonnerre read out the act — he had said a declaration should be written on a white man's skin with his blood for ink. Haiti became the second independent republic in the Americas, but France demanded heavy compensation in 1825, and the United States did not recognise it until 1862.

Location precision: The exact spot of the reading isn't certain; the pin marks Independence Square in Gonaïves.