Napoleon, banished to St. Helena... [said] to his secretary, Emanuel Las Cases... "My greatest mistake was to try to subdue Haiti by force of arms. I should have let Toussaint-Louverture rule it."
I've actually heard it told slightly different, where he said the great mistake was arresting Toussaint after he surrendered in May 1802, but it's roughly the same mistake -- Napoleon tried to subdue Hispanola by military force, depose, then arrest, a popular dictator, and reinstitute slavery on the island.
What if he had not done this? Could Napoleon, for example, have reached an arrangement with L'ouverture? Or if not, would France had significantly benefitted from just letting the island go?*
Where would the French Empire go from there? And history for that matter?
*aside, obviously, from the troops who were abandoned there for months on end