Also known as: les Suisses, Suisses, The Swiss, Swiss affair, Deportation of the Suisses
Last updated: April 26, 2026
The Suisses were the corps of armed enslaved auxiliaries recruited by free people of color around Port-au-Prince in 1791 after the Diegue assembly, named by analogy to Swiss mercenary service. After the West Province concordats forced white concessions, white authorities demanded the Suisses be removed; some free-colored leaders accepted deportation rather than insist on their freedom. Roughly 213 Suisses were embarked on the Emmanuel of Nantes, most were killed in the roadstead of Le Môle, and only a small remnant survived — making their fate one of the clearest early demonstrations that elite free-colored alliance could not be trusted to secure Black freedom.
Consented to the deportation of the Suisses, the enslaved auxiliaries, marking the moral limit of free-colored strategy
The Suisses
Part of the broader South Province military mobilization of Black and free-colored fighters.
Connected to the complex free-colored and Black military politics of the revolution's early phase.
Part of the broader free-colored political mobilization that the Suisses and earlier concordats had catalyzed.
Part of the broader free-colored republican military network that emerged from the Suisses and concordat politics of the early 1790s.
Lambert appears in the controversy over the fate of the Suisses — the episode that exposed tensions inside the free-colored coalition's relationship to enslaved people.
Connected in Ardouin to the decision to consent to the deportation of the Suisses — enslaved fighters who had served the free-colored cause and were abandoned when their usefulness ended.
Connected in vault sources to the Suisses episode — the fate of enslaved auxiliaries whose abandonment revealed the limits of free-colored revolutionary commitments.
Connected to the Suisses crisis in the North Province political landscape.
The Suisses crisis and the burning were part of the same November 1791 West Province collapse
The Suisses
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"The Suisses." 1791. Rasin.ai, 2026. https://rasin.ai/connections/events/the-suisses. Accessed 2026-05-05.