November 18, 1803

Battle of Vertières

Dessalines's army defeats Rochambeau at Vertières

The battle ended with no surrender ceremony — only an overnight request for talks, and a written capitulation signed the following day.

18 November 1803: the assault at Vertières

On 18 November 1803 the Indigenous Army commanded by Jean-Jacques Dessalines attacked the French defensive positions at Vertières and the approaches to Cap-Français, in northern Saint-Domingue.

François Capois led repeated assaults against the fortified French position while other commands under Dessalines pressed the surrounding defences; the division general Jean-Baptiste Clerveaux commanded forces in the attack. Disease, battlefield losses, isolation and John Loring's British blockade offshore had already worn Rochambeau's position down.

The night, and then the paper

By the end of the fighting Rochambeau's force had withdrawn into Cap-Français. That night he sought negotiations.

The formal capitulation was signed on 19 November by Dessalines and Rochambeau's authorised representative, Duveyrier. It required Cap-Français and its dependent forts to be handed to Dessalines, and allowed ten days for evacuation.

What the document covered, and what the story adds

The capitulation governed Cap-Français and its dependent forts — not every French position on Hispaniola. A French force still held Môle-Saint-Nicolas, and the eastern part of the island was a separate theatre; with a British squadron waiting offshore, Rochambeau's ships could not simply sail home.

In Haiti's best-known battle tradition, Capois rose after his horse was shot and drove the assault onward, and Rochambeau halted fire to salute him. That account is central to national memory but survives chiefly through later Haitian historians rather than any same-day eyewitness source.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 8 sources 2 audit passes

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

What the sources leave uncertain

The date, outcome and November 19 capitulation are securely documented. Exact troop strengths and casualty totals vary sharply among published accounts and are omitted here.
The celebrated story that Capois continued after his horse was shot and that Rochambeau halted fire to salute him appears prominently in later Haitian histories. It is central to national memory but should be identified as a later narrative unless a contemporary eyewitness source is supplied.
Detailed battlefield sequences—including the thunderstorm and particular officers' actions—depend heavily on nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century histories rather than surviving same-day reports.