In 1843, a revolt, led by Charles Rivière-Hérard, overthrew Boyer and established a brief parliamentary rule under the Constitution of 1843. Revolts soon broke out and the country descended into near chaos, with a series of transient presidents until March 1847, when General Faustin Soulouque, a former slave who had fought in the rebellion of 1791, became president. He purged the military high command, established a secret police, and eliminated mulatto opponents. In August 1849, he grandiosely proclaimed himself as Haiti's second emperor, Faustin I. Soulouque's expansive ambitions led him to mount several invasions of the Dominican Republic. The new emperor had been called a "rey de farsa" by the Dominicans. The white and mulatto rulers of the Dominican Republic he considered as his "natural" enemies, and he could never consolidate his rule without this conquest, for his reign had been founded on domination and would stand only by it. When in 1849 Soulouque led his first invasion into the Dominican Republic, President Buenaventura Báez declared war on Haiti. The invasion included two marine campaigns. Soulouque launched his last campaign in December 1855. In January of the following year, a Haitian contingent of 6,000 soldiers was terribly defeated in the border town of Ouanaminthe. More than 1,000 men were killed, and many were wounded and declared missing on the way back to the capital. The failure of that expedition hurt Soulouque's image at home. When he rode into Port-au-Prince with what remained of his army he was loudly cursed by women who had lost their sons, brothers, and husbands in the war. Four years later, he was deposed by General Fabre Geffrard, styled the Duke of Tabara.