Battle of Santomé

The Battle of Santomé was a major battle during the years after the Dominican War of Independence and was fought on the 22 December 1855, in the province of San Juan. A detachment of Dominican troops forming part of the Army of the South, led by General José María Cabral, defeated an outnumbering force of the Haitian Army led by Antoine Pierrot. The Haitians met defeat on the same day at Cambronal.[1]

Battles of Santomé and Cambronal
Part of the Dominican–Haitian wars
Date22 December 1855
Location
Savannah of Santomé, San Juan Province - Cambronal, nearby Neiba
Result Dominican victory
Belligerents
Dominican Republic Empire of Haiti
Commanders and leaders
José María Cabral
Francisco Sosa		 Antoine Pierrot †
Pierre Rivere Garat †
Casualties and losses
moderate 2,000 killed & wounded

1855–56 campaign

In November 1854, two Dominican warships captured a Haitian warship and bombarded two Haitian ports.[1] In August 1855, the Dominican Navy lost four warships in a hurricane.[1] In November 1855, Faustin Soulouque, having proclaimed himself Emperor Faustin I of the Haitian Empire, which he hoped to expand to include the Dominican Republic, invaded his neighbour again.

After initially retreating, the Dominicans struck back on the 22 December, in Santomé in the south. On the plain close to Las Matas, Dominican irregulars fought in pitched battle, wielding machetes and lances.[2] Almost 700 Haitians fell that day, and the rest, many of them wounded, were forced to retreat as far back as the Fortress of Cachimán, and then beyond the border.[2] The Haitians met defeat on the same day at Cambronal, and then a month later at Sabana Larga and Jácuba, in January 1856. Another rout at Savana Mula on Christmas Eve, a subsequent loss at Ouanaminthe,[lower-alpha 1] and a final defeat at Savana Larga spelled the end of Emperor Faustin I's dream of uniting Hispaniola under the Haitian flag.[2]

Nearly a century later, the Dominican despot Rafael Trujillo revived the old hatreds between the Hispaniolan neighbors by a sudden ruthless massacre of up to 67,000 Haitians.[4]

Notes
  1. A Haitian contingent of 6,000 soldiers was terribly defeated in the border town of Ouanaminthe. More than 1,000 men were killed, and many were wounded and declared missing on the way back to the capital.[3]
  1. Clodfelter 2017, p. 302.
  2. Matibag 2003, p. 118.
  3. Smith 2014, p. 81.
  4. "Parsley Massacre / El Corte - the Harvest". GlobalSecurity.org.

References
  • Clodfelter, Micheal (2017). Warfare and Armed Conflicts: A Statistical Encyclopedia of Casualty and Other Figures, 1492-2015 (4th ed.). McFarland.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Matibag, E. (2003). Haitian-Dominican Counterpoint: Nation, State, and Race on Hispaniola. Springer.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Smith, Matthew J. (2014). Liberty, Fraternity, Exile: Haiti and Jamaica after Emancipation. UNC Press Books.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

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