there was no distinction between "civilians" and soldiers because the people he targeted fought in the colonial National Guard. you would've known this if you had read the sources I linked though. from WP:

In a 2005 article titled “Caribbean genocide,” historian Philippe Girard argued that during the first four months of 1804, “on Dessalines’s orders, soldiers rounded up white planters, their families, French soldiers and the urban poor known as petits blancs, and killed them. Neither women nor children were spared.” Drawing heavily on Girard’s claims, podcaster Mike Duncan, in Season 4 of “Revolutions,” offers a sensationalized account of what he calls the “genocidal massacres” of 1804. He alleges that Haitian soldiers raped all the White women and concludes that Dessalines committed a “heinous crime.”

Did Dessalines execute French soldiers and colonists? Yes. But this fact has been exaggerated and taken out of historical context.

When the French evacuated in late 1803, they did not concede defeat. Instead, a small contingent of troops relocated to the city of Santo Domingo and began threatening to reinvade and “annihilate” the Black population. Dessalines soon learned of these plans. He also learned about support among White colonists for the recent French expedition. In this context, he ordered the execution of people who had “taken an active part in the different massacres and assassinations” by the French army. But, rather than targeted executions for the defense of the country, terrified colonists claimed to have witnessed the “massacre” of all the White people.

Historical documents reveal, however, that many White people remained in Haiti after this alleged genocide. For example, a partial census from October 1804 lists more than 600 White people in the district of Gros Morne alone. That same month — after all the White people were allegedly killed — a British captain claimed that 200 White women were in imminent danger of being “massacred” in Cap Haitien.

Claiming that Dessalines targeted civilians is also misleading. Many of those he executed fought in the colonial National Guard — militia units of male planters and merchants — which supported the French military expedition. Such claims also downplay the violence of colonialism. Settlers were enslavers, and as historian Vincent Brown has shown, slavery was war. Anti-colonialism is not genocide.

this rhetoric sounds like the Israeli hasbara painting settlers as innocent civilians when most of them either served in the IDF or are currently reservists.