But the strictness of Louverture's November 1801 decree highlighted the strain of the balancing act he had been sustaining for years. Committed to defending liberty at all costs, Louverture had turned himself into a dictator, and the colony he ruled over into a society based on social hierarchy, forced labor, and violent repression. The proclamation was a measure of Louverture's failure to find a middle way by which a true liberty could coexist with the plantation economy. When, a few months later, ships arrived from France to crush Louverture, he would find that among his officers and soldiers, not to mention the cultivators and city-dwellers of Saint- Domingue, there were many who were unwilling to fight to save him.

Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ …, loc. 372