The first was the father of Maréchal de Camp Monsieur Raymond Dessalines, created 1st Baron de Louis Dessalines on 8 April 1811, aide-de-camp to King Henry I, Privy Councilor, Secretary-General of the Ministry of War between 1811 and 1820 and Member of the Royal Chamber of Public Instruction between 1818 and 1820, who received the degree of Knight of the Order of St. The second was the father of Maréchal de Camp Monsieur Dessalines, created 1st Baron de Joseph Dessalines in 1816, Chamberlain to Prince Jacques-Victor Henry, the Prince Royal of Haiti, and Major of the Grenadiers de la Garde, who received the degree of Knight of the Order of St. Dessalines was a slave on a plantation in the Plaine-du-Nord in Cormiers now known as Cormier, near the town of Grande-Rivière-du-Nord, where he was born as Jean-Jacques Duclos, the name of his father, who adopted it from his owner. Jean-Jacques Dessalines worked for him for about three years until the slave uprising of 1791, which spread across the Plaine du Nord. From then on he was called Jean-Jacques Dessalines. REVOLUTION OF JEAN JACQUES DESSALINES Dessalines followed; becoming a chief lieutenant to Toussaint Louverture and rising to the rank of brigadier general by 1799.
Dessalines became a lieutenant in Papillon’s army and followed him to Santo Domingo, where he enlisted to serve Spain’s military forces against the French colony of Saint-Domingue. When it became clear that the French intended to re-establish slavery on Saint-Domingue, as they had on Guadeloupe, Dessalines and Pétion switched sides again in October 1802, to oppose the French. It was then that Dessalines met the rising military commander Toussaint Bréda(later known as Toussaint Louverture, a mature man also born into slavery, who was fighting with Spanish forces on Hispaniola.
After the Battle of Crête-à-Pierrot, Dessalines defected from his long-time ally Louverture and briefly sided with Leclerc, Pétion, and Rigaud. The Emperor, Death and Legacy of Jean Jacques Dessalines As had Toussaint L’Ouverture, Dessalines demanded that all blacks work either as soldiers to protect the nation or as laborers on the plantations to generate crops and income to keep the nation going. Born into slavery and having worked under white masters for 30 years, as well as having seen many atrocities by all peoples, Dessalines did not trust the white French people.
Between February and April 1804, he had the white Haitian minority killed by ordering the 1804 Haiti Massacre. Dessalines declared Haiti an all-black nation and forbade whites from owning property or land there. For his administration, Dessalines needed literate and educated officials and managers. On 20 May 1805, his government released the Imperial Constitution, naming Jean-Jacques Dessalines emperor for life with the right to name his successor. On 1 January 1804, from the city of Gonaïves, Dessalines officially declared the former colony’s independence and renamed it “Haiti” after the indigenous Taíno name.
