The town was at the epicenter of the 12 January 2010 earthquake and was catastrophically affected , with 80 – 90 % of buildings damaged . At the time of the arrival of the Europeans in 1492 , Yaguana — modern-day Léogâne — was the capital of Jaragua , one of the five chiefdoms on the island of Hispaniola . This province was the last independent holdout during the Spanish conquest of Hispaniola until their leader Queen Anacaona was captured and killed by the Spaniards in 1503 . The French secured legal access to one-third of the island from the Spanish crown by the Treaty of Ryswick in 1697 and established a city in Yaguana and renamed it Léogâne in 1711 . The town was destroyed in an earthquake in 1770 . In 1803 , during the Haitian Revolution Jean-Jacques Dessalines ordered his men to burn the town to the ground to force out the last of the French colonists
earthquake in 1770
1770 Port-au-Prince earthquake
Léogâne