Polish troops fought for Haiti's independence and none of the Haitians I've talked to knew this
I'm Polish and I've been living in the Dominican Republic for 3 years now. A while back I learned that Napoleon sent Polish troops to Saint-Domingue to help crush the Haitian Revolution — but many of them ended up switching sides and fighting alongside the Haitians instead.
Some of their descendants reportedly still live in Haiti today, in a village called Cazale, where locals are known to have lighter skin and blue or green eyes because of that history.
I mentioned this to a few Haitian people I've met here in the DR, and none of them had heard about it before. It made me really curious how well-known this part of history actually is among Haitians themselves versus how it's remembered (or not) elsewhere.
Does anyone here know more about this? Is it a well-known story in Haiti, or is it something that's mostly forgotten too?