General Ferrand landed in Monte Cristi and without difficulty took possession of the Cibao while the colored chief, Clervaux, knowing the hostility of the population toward him, retired without giving battle. General Kerverseau took Samana by assault and then sailed for Santo Domingo City. The negro Governor Paul l'Ouverture prepared to resist, but a brave Dominican, Colonel Juan Baron, organized an insurrectionary force and placed himself in communication with Kerverseau. The first attempt at uprising was a failure, as his plans were betrayed, and a rough sea prevented the French from landing. His enemies took the opportunity to sack the town of San Carlos, outside the city gates, and to murder a number of Dominicans. Baron gathered a larger force and in unison with Kerverseau demanded the surrender of the city. Paul l'Ouverture reluctantly capitulated and the French thus assumed command of the Spanish portion of the island, with Kerverseau as governor. When Toussaint heard of what had occurred he ordered the murder of a battalion of Dominican soldiers whom he had retained as hostages.
The war waged between the French and the blacks in the old French Colony of St. Domingue was characterized by nameless atrocities committed on both sides. The last vestiges of former prosperity were swept away and the country converted into a wilderness. Toussaint was captured through treachery and died in a European prison, but yellow fever invaded the French ranks and did great havoc. Le Clerc died, and Rochambeau, his successor, was unable, even with reinforcements, to hold his own. England, again at war with France, impeded further reinforcements and actively assisted the insurgent negroes. Death by disease and wounds made the great French army melt away, and towards the end of 1803 the last remnant was forced off the island. On January 1, 1804, the negro generals proclaimed the island an independent republic under the name of Haiti, one of the island's Indian names. Jean Jacques Dessalines, a rough, illiterate negro, but of indefatigable energy, was made governor for life, with dictatorial powers. One of his first acts was to order the extermination of such whites as still remained. Dessalines a year later assumed the title of emperor.
Ferrand, the French general in the Cibao, conceived the project of disobeying his orders to evacuate and of trying to hold Spanish Santo Domingo for France. Finding that Kerverseau was ready to capitulate, he determined to assume command himself, feeling sure that the French government would approve his action, if his plans were successful. He therefore marched to Santo Domingo City and after a few days' parleying deposed Kerverseau, placed him aboard a vessel that carried him to Mayaguez, in Porto Rico, and assumed the governorship.
Dessalines did not long keep him waiting. Desiring to extend his authority over the whole island, and angered by an injudicious decree of Ferrand, which permitted the enslaving of Haitians of over fourteen years found beyond their frontier, he invaded the country with a horde of 25,000 men. The population of the border towns fled before him in terror, the very slaves remaining with their masters rather than join him. Victorious in an engagement on the Yaque river, he laid siege to the capital on March 5, 1805. In the meantime his lieutenant, Christophe, overran the Cibao, sacking the towns and committing horrors. Santiago was captured before the inhabitants had time to flee, and a large number were murdered by the savage invaders. The members of the municipal council were hung, naked, on the balcony of the city hall; the people who had sought refuge in the main church were put to the sword and their bodies mutilated; and the priest was burnt alive in the church, the furniture of the edifice constituting his funeral pyre.
Santo Domingo City had been placed in a state of defense and artillery mounted on the tower of Mercedes church and the roofs of the San Francisco and Jesuit churches. The garrison consisted of some 2,000 men, but to maintain these and the 6,000 inhabitants of the city as well as the refugees there were only limited supplies on hand. Food quickly ran low when, providentially, a French fleet appeared before the city. The admiral, who thought the entire island abandoned by the French, was delighted to find the French flag still flying and gladly rendered assistance. A desperate sortie was made on March 28, the twenty-third day of the siege, with such success that Dessalines precipitately retired, abandoning his stores. The main body of the Haitians retreated by way of the Cibao, the others through the south, all devastating the country as far as they could. Azua, San José de las Matas, Monte Plata, Cotui, San Francisco de Macoris, La Vega, Santiago and Monte Cristi were reduced to ashes. In Moca 500 inhabitants, deceived by the promises of Christophe, returned from their hiding places in the hills and assembled for divine service in the parish church, where they were butchered by the negro soldiers. In La Vega and Santiago the Haitian troops made prisoners of numerous families, aggregating 900 persons among men, women and children in La Vega and probably more in Santiago, and forced them to accompany the army to northern Haiti, where they were kept in captivity, working practically as slaves for their captors, for four years. The march was full of horrors for the poor prisoners, who were prohibited from wearing hats or shoes and were brutally treated by their guards.
As a civil administrator Ferrand did excellent work. He encouraged the resettlement of the abandoned fields, persuaded emigrated families to return, established schools and began to build water-works for the capital, a work which he nearly completed, but which was abandoned by his successors and has never been realized in the century that has since transpired. Napoleon on hearing of Ferrand's conduct not only approved everything he had done but sent him the cross of the Legion of Honor and financial assistance. Ferrand was especially impressed with the importance of Samana Bay and made plans for a city to be located west of the town of Samana, to which he intended to give the name of Napoleon. The peaceful conditions to which the country returned were only troubled by British vessels which occasionally attempted to establish blockades. On February 6, 1806, a British squadron of eight vessels under Sir John Duckworth badly defeated a French squadron, also of eight vessels, in a hotly contested fight off Point Palenque to the southwest of Santo Domingo City.
Although Ferrand was personally liked, discontent began to brew in the country. The inhabitants were loyal to Spain and chafed under foreign rule; many believed there was danger of Haitian invasion so long as the French remained; certain tax exactions stirred up animosity; and the stories of Spain's resistance to Napoleon's aggressions inflamed the spirits of the leading men. Conspiracies ensued, fomented principally by a Cotui planter named Juan Sanchez Ramirez, who had emigrated in 1803, but returned after four years of exile, and the Spanish flag was formally raised in Seibo in October, 1808. Ferrand immediately set out to quell the uprising and on November 7, 1808, met Sanchez Ramirez at Palo Hincado, about two miles west of Seibo. He was vigorously attacked by the revolutionists, his native troops deserted, and his other troops were cut to pieces. Seeing that all was lost and that all his work was ruined, Ferrand blew out his brains with a pistol.
The revolutionists received assistance from the governor-general of Porto Rico and from their former enemy Christophe, who had made himself king of northern Haiti; a British squadron took Samana, the only post held by the French outside of Santo Domingo City, and raised the Spanish flag; and Sanchez Ramirez laid siege to the capital, where the French general Barquier had assumed command, while British vessels blockaded it by sea. The siege lasted almost nine months, during which the besieged suffered greatly from want of provisions, being reduced to eating dogs and cats, and the surrounding country was devastated by sorties and foraging parties. The severest fighting took place about San Geronimo castle, on the shore three miles west of the city, which was taken and retaken. In the sixth and seventh months of the siege the city was repeatedly bombarded from land and sea, but without result. At length Sanchez applied to the governor of Jamaica and a British force under Sir Hugh Lyle Carmichael was sent to his assistance. It landed at Palenque and took up a position in San Carlos. A general assault had been determined upon, when the brave little defender of the city, realizing the hopelessness of further resistance, agreed to capitulate to the English. On July 9, 1809, the French flag was lowered and the country again became a dependency of Spain, and in 1814 Spain's dominion was confirmed by the treaty of Paris.
Spain had been busy fighting the French within her own borders, and when normal conditions were restored had her hands full in keeping order and in trying to bring her revolting colonies of America back to obedience. She had little time for affairs in Santo Domingo, and did nothing to ameliorate conditions. The colony was left to vegetate in absolute poverty. This second Spanish era came to be known as the period of "Espana boba," "stupid Spain," as the home government remained so indifferent to the colony's affairs. The only redeeming feature was the return of a number of exiled families. Sanchez Ramirez, who had been proclaimed governor-general, was confirmed in the office and held the same until his death in 1811, being succeeded by Spanish military officers.
In the first years of the new Spanish colony there was an undefined attempt at uprising on the part of a few white hotheads, and an attempt to incite the slaves against their masters on the part of a few black ones, but in both cases the ringleaders were captured and put to death. The great struggle for independence in South America gradually influenced the minds of the inhabitants of Santo Domingo; Bolivar's brief visit to Haiti also had its effect, and secret separatist societies began to be founded. In the beginning of 1821 a conspiracy was discovered and numerous arrests made. Plotting continued nevertheless, stimulated by a prominent lawyer, José Nuñez de Caceres, who dreamed of making the country a state of Bolivar's Colombian Republic. On the night of November 30, 1821, the conspiracy culminated in an uprising in the capital; most of the troops had been won over to the cause of independence and offered no resistance; the rest were taken by surprise; and the revolutionists without difficulty made themselves masters of the gateway "Puerta del Conde" and of the other gates and forts. The Spanish governor was placed under arrest and put aboard a vessel sailing for Europe, and the Colombian flag was raised. Public proclamation was made of the independent and sovereign State of Spanish Haiti, affiliated with the Republic of Colombia, and José Nuñez de Caceres assumed the office of political governor and president of the State, while the provincial assembly became a provisional junta of government.