By 1792, slave rebels controlled a third of the island. The success of the rebellion caused the National Assembly in France to realize it was facing an ominous situation. The Assembly granted civil and political rights to free men of color in the colonies in March 1792. Countries throughout Europe, as well as the United States, were shocked by the decision, but the Assembly was determined to stop the revolt. Apart from granting rights to free people of color, the Assembly dispatched 6,000 French soldiers to the island. A new governor sent by Paris, Léger-Félicité Sonthonax, abolished slavery in the Northern Province of Saint Domingue and had hostile relations with the planters, whom he saw as royalists. The same month, a coalition of whites and conservative free blacks and forces under French "commissaire nationale" Edmond de Saint-Léger put down the Trou Coffy uprising in the south, after André Rigaud, then based near Port-au-Prince, declined to ally with them.