The rebels knew from experience that newly arrived Europeans died in droves every summer during the rainy season, when mosquitoes thrived, and they planned to fully utilize the advantage that their immunity to yellow fever offered them. As Dessalines prepared to attack the French for the first time in March 1802, he reminded his troops: “The whites from France cannot hold out against us here in Saint-Domingue. They will fight well at first, but soon they will fall sick and die like flies.”[77]
