2 Escalins

Saint-Domingue's monetary situation in 1802 was catastrophic. Napoleon had dispatched General Leclerc with 20,000 troops that January to crush the Haitian Revolution and restore slavery, and the colonial economy — already shattered by a decade of war — had no functioning mint of its own. The 2 Escalins was produced by countermarking and cutting Spanish colonial silver, a makeshift solution to a chronic shortage of recognized local currency.

Leclerc was dead of yellow fever by November of that same year, taking with him any realistic chance of French restoration.