Jean-Jacques Dessalines, one of l'Overture's generals, led the revolutionaries at the Battle of Vertieres on November 18, 1803 where the French forces were defeated. On January 1, 1804, Dessalines declared the nation independent and renamed it Haiti
Two months after his defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte's colonial forces, Jean-Jacques Dessalines proclaims the independence of Saint-Domingue, renaming it Haiti after its original Arawak name. In 1791, a slave revolt erupted on the French colony, and Toussaint-Louverture, a former slave, took control of the rebels.
