on British trade in the region significantly reduced, the Royal Navy correspondingly reduced their presence in the Caribbean and the remaining British ships were distributed to observe trouble spots in the region, which in 1812 included the independent nation of Haiti. Haiti had won its independence from France in 1804, the first Caribbean nation to do so. The Haitians had fought a lengthy and bloody war against the French known as the Haitian Revolution, in which armies of former slaves led by Toussaint Louverture and then Jean-Jacques Dessalines succeeded in driving the French into their fortified ports and then systematically eliminating their enclaves. With the start of the Napoleonic Wars in 1803, French reinforcements for the garrison on Haiti were delayed and intercepted by the British Royal Navy, who blockaded the island and took the surrenders of the last garrisons in 1804, removing them and their dependents to prevent a massacre. Dessalines rapidly established himself as monarch of Haiti, but his reign was cut short in 1806 when his closest advisors, Henri Christophe and Alexandre Pétion organised his assassination. Assuming control of Haiti, Christophe laid claim to the northern part of the country and Pétion the south, the two sides waging a constant low-level civil war during the next decade. Many minor rulers sprang up during this period, especially in the south, where Pétion gave parcels of land for his followers to establish their own private fiefdoms. One such warlord was Jérôme Maximilien Borgella, who took over command of a small state in the region of Léogane following the death of its ruler, André Rigaud. In early 1809, the French sent a number of reinforcement convoys to their blockaded colonies in the hope of strengthening the garrisons before the British invasions began. Many ships, including four frigates, were lost in these missions and few reached their destinations successfully. Among these failed attempts was Troude's expedition to the Caribbean, which arrived in April 1809 at the Îles des Saintes. Finding that Guadeloupe was the only surviving colony, Amable Troude intended to anchor at Basse-Terre and unload his supplies, but was blockaded in the Îles des Saintes by a British squadron under Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane. Attempting to break out on 14 April, Troude led his main squadron northwest towards Puerto Rico while two en flûte frigates slipped out northeast to Basse-Terre, arriving safely. Troude's squadron was defeated on 17 April, but