Initially regarded as governor-general, Dessalines was later named Emperor of Haiti as Jacques I (1804–1806) by generals of the Haitian Revolutionary army and ruled in that capacity until being assassinated in 1806.

Dessalines served as an officer in the French army when Saint-Domingue was fending off Spanish and British incursions.

[6][7] Notably, he excluded surviving Polish Legionnaires, who had defected from the French legion to become allied with the enslaved Africans, as well as the Germans who did not take part in the slave trade.

[8] Tensions remained with the minority of mixed-race or free people of color, who had gained some education and property during the colonial period.

This was an area of very large sugar cane plantations, where the mass of enslaved Africans lived and worked.

Mortality was so high that French colonial planters continued to buy more enslaved people from Africa during the eighteenth century.

Dessalines received his early military training from a woman whose name was either Victoria Montou or Akbaraya Tòya.

Dessalines became increasingly embittered toward both the whites and gens de couleur libres (the mixed-race residents of Saint-Domingue) in the years of conflict during the revolution.

In 1791, along with thousands of other enslaved persons, Jean-Jacques Dessalines joined the slave rebellion of the northern plains led by Jean François Papillon and Georges Biassou.

Dessalines became a lieutenant in Papillon's army and followed him to Santo Domingo, occupying the eastern half of the island, where he enlisted to serve Spain's military forces against the French colony of Saint-Domingue.

In 1801, Dessalines quickly ended an insurrection in the north led by Louverture's nephew, General Moyse.

To inspire his troops at the start of the battle, he waved a lit torch near an open powder keg and declared that he would blow the fort up should the French break through.

[20] The defenders inflicted extensive casualties on the attacking army, but after a 20-day siege, they were forced to abandon the fort due to a shortage of food and munitions.

[20] The French soldiers under Leclerc were accompanied by mulatto troops led by Alexandre Pétion and André Rigaud, free gens de couleur from Saint-Domingue.

They had tried to establish separate independence in the South of Saint-Domingue, an area where wealthy gens de couleur were concentrated in plantations.

[citation needed] After the Battle of Crête-à-Pierrot, Dessalines defected from his long-time ally Louverture and briefly sided with Leclerc, Pétion, and Rigaud.

On 18 November 1803, black and mulatto forces under Dessalines and Pétion attacked the fort of Vertières, held by Rochambeau, near Cap-Français in the north.

On 4 December 1803, the French colonial army of Napoleon Bonaparte surrendered its last remaining territory to Dessalines's forces.

[25] On 1 January 1804, from the city of Gonaïves, Dessalines officially declared the former colony's independence and renamed it "Ayiti" after the indigenous Taíno name.

[citation needed] In 1805, after crowning himself Emperor, Jean-Jacques Dessalines invaded in the eastern part of the island, reaching Santo Domingo before retreating in the face of a French naval squadron.

[29] Many white colonialists planters and merchants, in addition to free people of color, had already fled the island as refugees, going to Cuba, the United States, and France.

[5] In the Haitian Constitution of 1805, Dessalines declared Haiti to be an all-black nation and forbade white colonists from owning property or land there.

"[30] Dessalines enforced a harsh regimen of plantation labor, described by the historian Michel-Rolph Trouillot as caporalisme agraire (agrarian militarism).

[citation needed] Dessalines also believed in the tight regulation of foreign trade, which was essential for Haiti's sugar and coffee-based export economy.

He placed in these positions well-educated Haitians, who were disproportionately from the light-skinned elite, as gens de couleur were most likely to have been educated.

[citation needed] Disaffected members of Dessalines's administration, including Alexandre Pétion and Henri Christophe, began a conspiracy to overthrow the Emperor, and Haitians began an insurrection in the south in August 1806, which culminated in Dessalines being assassinated north of the capital city, Port-au-Prince, at Larnage (now known as Pont-Rouge), on 17 October 1806, on his way to fight the rebels.

Some historians claim that he was killed at Pétion's house at Rue l'Enterrement, after a meeting to negotiate the power and the future of the young nation.

One report say that Dessalines was shot, stabbed, stripped, and had his fingers cut off, before his corpse was brought to Port-au-Prince, where it was stoned by crowds and said to resemble "scraps" and "shapeless remains".

[33] Yet another account recalls a brutal attack on Dessalines by his own men; it says that after being shot, his head was split open by a sabre's blow and he was finally stabbed three times with a dagger, with the crowd shouting "the tyrant is killed".

[34] Multiple modern sources state that there was resistance to providing Dessalines with a proper burial after his assassination, but a vivandière named Dédée Bazile gathered the mutilated corpse of the Emperor and buried it in the Cimetière intérieur of Church Ste-Anne.