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revised 11th May, 2005.
nous vous avons marqué que les anglais l'etoient retirés dans les forts de Ste. Lucie, le Gibraltar des Antilles. ils n'ont pu resister l'impétueuse valeur des Républicaines le gros-ilet, le morne de la Vigie et la batterie eustache formant la clef des ouvrages de morne fortune furent importés d'assaut et lorsque tout était prepare pour un assaut general...
13 thermidor an 3 [that is, 31 July, 1795]
au même [that is, au Citoyen feydon)
nous vous l'avons prédit, citoyen, vous vous [sic] êtes désunis, vous avez été vaincus. ralliez vous donc que l'amour de la République remplace les desirs ambitieux. nous allons vous Envoyer des forces pour reparer les pertes que votre désunion vient de vous faire Eprouver. mes collegues qui sont a Sainte Lucie Se concertent pour cela; En attendant je vous fais passer quelques livres Et 50 moïdes pour vous dans la position ou vous êtes reduits.
The above-cited extracts have been taken from two dispatches that were sent from Guadeloupe in July 1795. The recipients were in different places. The first was sent to the Committee of Public Safety in what was still very much revolutionary France. The second is part of a dispatch sent to Julien Fédon, leader of the abortive revolution in Grenada that today bears his name.
The sender, however, is the same. His name is Victor Hugues. Sent roughly a year after his arrival at les îles du vent - the Windward Islands - Hugues was, by the end of July 1795, well into his ultimately unsuccessful effort to regain France's eastern Caribbean empire. In addition, both extracts place the island of St Lucia as central to the prosecution of the event known today as 'The Brigands' War'.
The Brigands' War took place in the eastern Caribbean, roughly from 1794 to 1798. It was one of the sub-episodes of the world-wide conflict called the French Revolutionary War (1792-1802). In the eastern Caribbean, it represented, in part, the final great contest between Britain and France for control of the eastern Caribbean. The major combatants were Britain and France, but to state categorically that it was solely the clash between those two most rival colonialisms would be an oversimplification. The Brigands' War also brought to a head the question of the indigenous peoples, particularly the so-called 'Black Caribs' of St Vincent. There was also the question of the persecution of the French Roman Catholics, both white and coloured, in Grenada and to a lesser extent in St Vincent.
Perhaps most important, The Brigands' War brought to the forefront of the eastern Caribbean the question of slavery. By the start of the French Revolutionary War, the enslaved Africans dominated the demographic profile of the eastern Caribbean, as in the rest of the Caribbean as a whole.
The Brigands' War was also a military conflict. The theatre of war was not only the island territories of the eastern Caribbean but also the seas that surrounded them. The two major colonial - and military - powers, Britain and France, were locked in a mortal struggle for mastery in not only the eastern Caribbean, but also in the wider Caribbean.
The evidence strongly suggests that the term 'brigand' may have originated in St Lucia itself. The term may have been first used by the British governor of St Lucia after their capture of the colony from France in April 1794. He is believed to have used the term to refer to those Europeans and former slaves who not only refused to recognise the British capture but continued the struggle against the British occupying forces and their supporters. In 1796, William Dyott, a British field officer who served in Grenada during the closing phases of Fédon's abortive revolution, described the 'Brigands' as:
The so-called 'Brigands' were emancipated slaves and whites of extreme democratic principles.1
St Lucia is an important area of interest to students of 'The Brigands' War' for two very important reasons. The first is that it was in this island - in the eastern Caribbean at least - where the British encountered for the first time the changing pattern of colonial warfare that had been engendered by the French Revolution. In previous wars, the established pattern had been for the enemy naval and land forces to capture the capital and other towns of a colony with which their country was at war. With capture, the rest of the colony fell into line.
With 'The Brigands's War' the pattern had changed to what Abercromby described as a 'war of posts'. This was fought out often in areas of primeval rain forests, against a cunning and elusive enemy, adept at irregular warfare. European armies and their commanders, trained according to their own conventions of warfare, were at first unaccustomed to this war that promised neither quick nor easy victories.
The second reason was that St Lucia occupies an important strategic location in the military considerations of both French and British commanders alike. Situated between Martinique to the north and St Vincent to the south, it held the key to the south-eastern Caribbean in the peculiar geo-political-military conflict that was the Brigands' War. St Lucia seemed so important to Victor Hugues - who was himself referred to as the "Robespierre of the Antilles" - that he called the island "the Gibraltar of the Antilles".
St Lucia itself had long been highly coveted by both British and French, who repeatedly fought for possession of the colony, particularly during the eighteenth century. The island as its inhabitants had been part of the two-hundred-year resistance to the complete European colonisation of the eastern Caribbean. Such was the determined resistance that at the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, the island was declared a 'neutral' colony.
The struggle for mastery of the eastern Caribbean reached an important juncture in 1763, with the Treaty of Paris. This brought a formal end to the Seven Years' War (1756-63). This war, fought mainly between Britain and France and on at least three continents, decided which was to be the dominant colonial power in India, North America and the eastern Caribbean. The French lost ground to the British on all fronts. Direct colonial rule came to an end in India, Canada, Grenada, the Grenadines, Dominica and Tobago. The French who chose to live under British rule later posed serious problems of governance for their rulers.
In St Lucia, however, French rule was confirmed by the Treaty of Paris. The colony remained in French hands until the outbreak of the War of the American Independence (1776-83), when it was captured by the British in 1778, one of the few British successes in the fighting itself. The colony was, however, returned to France at the Treaty of Versailles in 1783.
Eric Williams observed that the outbreak of revolution in France struck the society of St Domingue, its most valuable colony, "like a thunderclap".2 The evidence suggests that St Lucia had been similarly affected. The social climate seemed to have hardly settled after the disruptions of the War of the American Independence when its local tensions were exacerbated by the outbreak of the French Revolution. The developments in France from 1789 onwards began to be reflected in St Lucia. Revolutionary sentiment proved dominant. The colony was granted an Assembly which was later called "La Fidèle", by way of recognition of its identification with the Revolution.
For St Lucia, matters took a serious turn with the execution of Louis XVI in France on January 21, 1793. By February 1, France and Britain were at war, or, to be more precise, Britain joined the First Coalition against France, which had declared war since the previous November. This meant that all of France's Caribbean territories were open to attack and conquest. St Lucia, already in the throes of revolutionary turmoil, was unable to offer a united defence to external attack, and was captured in early April, 1794. By then, however, the situation had changed, both in France and the Caribbean.
On August 29, 1793, in response to external attack by the British and internal attack by the counter-revolutionaries from within, Sonthonax, the French commissioner in St Domingue, declared a general abolition of slavery in the colony. This unilateral decision reached the floor of the National Convention at Paris on February 4, 1794, almost exactly a year after Britain joined the First Coalition. The National Convention not only ratified Sonthonax's decision but declared slavery abolished in all of France's colonies and all persons living therein, Citizens of the Republic of France. The day on which this decree was passed was "16 pluviôse an II"- France had adopted the 'Revolutionary Calendar' two years before. The decree became known as the 'décret du 16 pluviôse'.
This changed the character of the war in the Caribbean. The British, who were still committed to the upholding of slavery, were then regarded as the "red-coated enforcers of the old order". This gave an ideological dimension to the British conquest of St Lucia. To resist British rule was to resist the institution of slavery.
The anti-slavery struggle was about to enter another phase. On April 23, the day on which France was in the process of losing its last colonial possession in the eastern Caribbean to British arms, a small flotilla carrying about 1400 men, sailed from France, managed to elude the British naval blockade and arrived off Guadeloupe in early June. On board were three commissioners delegated by the National Convention. One of them was named Victor Hugues.
Since the publication of General Sir John Fortescue's work, A History of the British Army, there has been some controversy as to the ethnic origins of Victor Hugues. Fortescue described him as a "mulatto".3 This was accepted by C.L.R. James in his work, The Black Jacobins. Research over the last quarter century has established that Hugues, was white, or, European.4 Colonel Dubois comments:
Nous ne possédons pas de portrait de lui [Victor Hugues], mais les témoignages contemporains sont peu flatteurs: petit de taille, laid et fort mal tenu, yeux obliques et visage grêle. Il donnait par contre une expression d'energie et d'autorité extraordinaires: sa seule presence terrifiait instantanément rentrer le plus mutins dans le devoir. Au moral un despote sans pitié et sans scruple, mais d'un courage indomptable, d'une volonté de fer et d'une farouche opiniâtreté.5
Hugues and his companions also carried on board two very important articles:
le décret de 16 pluviôse an II (4 février 1794) proclamant l'emancipation des esclaves, et une guillotine neuve.6
The arrival in the eastern Caribbean of such a powerful document as the French abolition of slavery in the hands of such an extraordinary personality like Victor Hugues made for an escalation of the war in the eastern region. Whereas in St Domingue the decree of 16 pluviôse was but a formality, the French decree in the eastern Caribbean was nothing short of social revolution. This brought another dimension to the conflict. In any colony owned or conquered by France, slavery was abolished and all persons living therein, regardless of origin, were automatically declared "Citoyens" - Citizens - of the Republic of France.
Meanwhile, aboard the French fleet, there was a period of indecision amongst the leaders of the expedition as to what was to be the next move, that is, everyone, except Victor Hugues:
Mais non Victor Hugues: "La Convention nous a envoyés à la Guadeloupe, et c'est à la Guadeloupe que nous irons et tous ceux qui enfreindront ses ordres seront considérés comme traîtres à la Patrie." Le debarquement est décidé.7
The French caught the British by surprise. Guadeloupe was captured after fierce fighting. The British were forced to retreat. With the French recapture of Guadeloupe, Hugues began a campaign to not only recapture France's territories lost to Britain but to capture British-held colonies. Soon, the British, after a year of brilliant victories in which they captured France's entire colonial empire in the eastern Caribbean, found themselves in danger of losing important parts of the empire that they held even before they entered the conflict against France.
The present paper is based upon a series of dispatches written by Victor Hugues, Gaspard Goyrand and Lebas between 1794 and 1798 to the authorities in France. The majority of the dispatches were written by Hugues. He was the most dominant French personality in the eastern Caribbean during the period of 'The Brigands' War.' From an examination of some of the other records dating from this period, the dispatches are likely of two sets. The first set is comprised of the dispatches exchanged between Hugues and the revolutionaries in St Lucia. The second is made up of those exchanged between Hugues and his colleagues at Guadeloupe and later St Lucia to the authorities in France, particularly the National Convention, the Committee of Public Safety and the Ministry of the Marine. The latter documents, by their very nature, contain information on the prosecution of the war in the entire eastern Caribbean.
An examination of these documents shows that they were meant to confuse the uninformed and untrained reader if they fell into the possession of those for whom they were not intended. They are written in a garbled handwriting, and the authors did not always observe the canons of French grammar. In addition, they carried dates of the revolutionary calendar adopted by the France in 1792. This latter feature, it is believed, was a further means to elude deciphering, should they find themselves in the hands of those for whom they were not intended. The revolutionary calendar was not well known and understood by the British at the time, and may often have appeared confusing to the uninformed reader.
In the late twentieth century, the work of the researcher is made more difficult by having to first read and understand eighteenth century French, then decipher the revolutionary calendar (abolished by Napoleon Bonaparte after 15 years' use), to place the date within the Gregorian calendar.
Hugues's strategy for the recapture of France's lost territory and to wrest territory from the British was simple but effective. The first thing he did was to rid Guadeloupe of all the anti-republican sympathisers, armed and trained the republicans, both white and black, to defend Guadeloupe from an expected attack from the British. When that was finished, and his position was consolidated, Hugues set about organising the recapture of the French Caribbean still in British hands. At the same time, Hugues made contact with all groups in the French and British territories who had long been dissatisfied with British rule. Pride of place went to Grenada and St Lucia, colonies that possessed significant communities of French people who had long been dissatisfied with British rule, and which had been captured by France during the last war, only to see them returned to Britain at the negotiating table.
In the midst of his activity, Hugues and the French in Guadeloupe received stunning news from France. In July 1794, the month of 'thermidor' in the French revolutionary calendar, the so-called "Reign of Terror" had come to an end. Robespierre, Saint-Just, Couthon and other leading Jacobins died at the guillotine. The French Revolution was over. France then began to slip into a period of reaction. The situation then existed where there was a 'reactionary' government in Paris and a 'Jacobin' - revolutionary - government in the colonies. For Hugues, if he had been in France, would have certainly followed his mentor Robespierre to the guillotine, or been sent off to Cayenne.
The evidence suggests that Hugues and his superiors in Paris had an uneasy relationship. France entered a period called by the historians 'The Thermidorean Reaction', a fourteen-month period where the worst excesses of the 'Reign of Terror' were abandoned. Nevertheless, France had not revoked the 'decree of 16 pluviôse'. The general outline of French foreign policy remained largely intact. The war with Britain continued and with it, the need to maintain an aggressive, imperial presence in the Caribbean. This was probably the reason why the Directory - the government in France - allowed Hugues to remain in office for four years after the fall of Robespierre.
For Hugues, the fall of Robespierre, his mentor, and the Jacobins, meant that there was no one person, or political organisation, to which he owed his loyalty. There was the loyalty to the service of the French Republic, and, of course, to himself.
For those colonies that were once held by France, Hugues devoted a special attention. The two most important colonies were Martinique and St Lucia. Whilst making contacts and fomenting resistance against British rule. Hugues waited for the arrival of reinforcements from France.
Hugues sent a dispatch to France dated "le 14 nivôse l'an 3me de la république française" or, according to the Gregorian calendar, January 2, 1795. His mood was almost cheerful and optimistic.
L'arrivée des forces de france promettait de nouveau Succès, et j'esperai en deux mois effacer le nom d'Anglais dans les Colonies du Vent, mais je ne sais pas quel genie malfaisant preside aux operations Maritimes en france, it semble qu'avec les forces des anglais on aurait pû eussent pû les contrebalancer.8
One of the earliest dispatches that Hugues sent to France was dated "le 20 messidor, l'an 3e de la république française" (July 8, 1795). After complaining that "Il y a bientôt huit mois que nous n'avons reçu de nouvelles d'Europe" Hugues went on to report that:
la Guadeloupe et Ste. Lucie ont été Conquises, Ste. Eustache, et St Martin sont sous la protection de la République française, la Grenade, St Vincent et la Dominique ont été attaquées, partout les Anglais tremblent, et une quantité de prises remplissent nos ports.9
"Guadeloupe and St Lucia have been conquered ... everywhere the English tremble, and an immense quantity of prizes fill our ports." This must have been welcome news to the men in Paris. Hugues was also advising France's new rulers of his indispensability as their chief protagonist in the eastern Caribbean. In this dispatch, Hugues also provided his superiors with intelligence of British troop movements and the names of their commanders. He also reported the arrival of "nôtre collegue Goyrand" and his success despite the efforts of the British.
The last phrase of this particular extract may also have been meant to please. It also indicates another dimension to the conflict. Hugues had launched a campaign of 'revolutionary piracy' in the eastern Caribbean. When he arrived in the Caribbean, Hugues discovered, to his obvious chagrin, that the newly-established United States, the nation that France had spent so much on money and blood to bring into being, had sided with her old 'enemy' Britain, in the French Revolutionary War. Officially neutral, the United States was unofficially giving significant material assistance to her former mother country. Hugues, was, to put it mildly, less than pleased at such goings-on. Accordingly, he launched his 'revolutionary piracy' on the so-called 'neutral' shipping. David Mitchell comments:
On his own initiative, Hugues declared war on the United States, accusing the Americans of selling arms and ships to the British. 'The very name of America,' he announced, 'inspires only scorn and horror here. The Americans have become the reactionary enemies of every ideal of liberty, after fooling the world with their Quaker play-acting. We shall have to remind this treacherous nation that but for us, who squandered our blood and our money to give them their independence, George Washington would have been hanged as a traitor.'10
Only the Dutch were spared in Hugues's campaign of 'revolutionary piracy'. The captains of captured American merchant ships were forced to sign certificates that the cargoes captured on board their vessels were British property. Laurent Dubois observes that by 1794, there were 30 'corsairs' based in Guadeloupe, and during the next three years, some 800 ships were captured. Some 3500 former slaves worked on these vessels.11 By the time that he was recalled to France in 1798, the effectiveness of Hugues's 'Brigands' War' on their shipping induced the American government to declare war on France in American waters, which in practice meant a declaration of war on Victor Hugues himself, who, Mitchell observes, refused to follow instructions from the 'counter-revolutionary' Directory at Paris. At one occasion, Hugues even considered declaring war on the Directory itself, "in the name of the true Revolution".12
Hugues's dispatches were, of course, secret. Publicly, however, Hugues, Goyrand and Le Bas were printing and distributing proclamations from time to time, giving news of the progress of the conflict in the eastern Caribbean, sometimes from Europe. Generally speaking, the dispatches denounced the actions of the British, often identifying their commanders by name. The following proclamation was one of the earliest. It was from "Des Commissaires délégués par la convention nationale de france" and was addressed "aux commandans en chef des forces britanniques, VAUGHAN, CALDWELL, THOMPSON, STEWART ET LINDSAY". It carried the date "le 4 ventôse, troisième année" (or, February 22, 1795). It opens with typical Jacobin belligerence:
Le tems at le défait des forces anglaises à la Guadeloupe avoient affoibli le souvenir des crimes atroces dont les vils satellites de GEORGES ont souillé les îles du vent.
The proclamation then proceeded to address the situation in St Lucia itself:
Ils se sont montrés aussi barbares que ces cannibals. Ils viennent d'ordonner, à Ste. Lucie, la mort des soldats de la république, leurs prisonniers. Une telle cruaté nous force de venger nos frères et d'user de represailles.
The reprisals that the three French Jacobins declared must have sent ripples of fear amongst the British:
En consequence, nous déclarons formellement aux commandans en chef des forces britanniques dans les îles du vent, qu'après cette notification officielle, l'assasinat d'un seul républicain (de quelle couleur qu'il soit et dans quelqu' île que ce puisse être) sera expié par la mort de deux officiers Anglais prisonniers. La GUILLOTINE remplira au premier avis cet acte de justice.13
Translated, the immediately preceding paragraph runs something like this in English:
In consequence of which, we do hereby give solemn notice to the commanders in chief of the British forces in the Windward Islands, that from and after the date of this our official declaration, the assassination of each and every republican (of whatever colour he is, and in whatever island it may happen), shall be expiated by the death of two English officers, our prisoners. The GUILLOTINE shall at the first notice thereof perform this act of justice.
The proclamation also gave notice of the leaders of the revolutionary movement in St Lucia:
We do further signify to all the Commanders and Agents of the British Government, that Citizen Marinier, Commander at St Lucia, is an Officer in the French service, and that the citizens Massade, Lieutenant in the navy, and Lambert are our Delegates in that Island and invested with our power.14
Hugues's citing of names in such public documents was a double-edged sword. In the logic of the French revolutionaries, it was important that they made public the names of their associates. As far as the French were concerned, these people who were of republican loyalties were granted protection by the Republic, particularly in the light of the "décret du 16 pluviôse". The decree extended citizenship to all in France's colonies. In the context of the 'Brigands' War', Hugues and his fellow commissioners interpreted this to include those colonies "conquered or to be conquered." However, in the context of British law, such public declarations were regarded as high treason. By 1795, British jurisprudence on high treason had reached a high level of development and sophistication. As British law was based mostly upon precedent, a number of cases in the history of British law had established categorically what acts made for charges of high treason to be proffered against a person.
For example, if a man was "adherent to the King's enemies in his realm, giving aid and comfort in the realm or elsewhere", he was guilty of high treason. Edward East gives his opinion on this matter, citing precedents from the reign of Queen Anne:
it is further provided that by stat. 2&3 Ann. c. 20, f 34 That if any officer or soldier shall out of England or upon the sea, correspond with any rebel or enemy, or give them advice or intelligence, by letters, messages, signs, tokens, or otherwise, or shall treat or enter into any condition with them, without authority to do so, shall be guilty of high treason.15
Marinier, Massade and his comrades may have also been brought to book on another charge: "serving or procuring others to serve foreign states". Again, East gives his opinion:
Entering into the service of any foreign state without the consent of the King, or contracting with it any other engagement which subjects the party to an influence or control inconsistent with the allegiance due to our own sovereign, such as receiving a pension from a foreign prince without the leave of the King, is at common law a high misdemeanour, and is punishable accordingly.16
"High treason" has been defined as:
a violation of the allegiance which is due from the subject to the King, as sovereign lord and supreme magistrate of the state. It is, as Lord Hale says, the greatest crime against faith, duty and human society, and brings with it the most fatal dangers to the government, peace and happiness of the nation.... This offence, therefore, which includes felony, is the highest known to the law, and subjects offenders to the greatest ignominy and punishment.17
By publishing their names, Hugues, Goyrand and Le Bas were implicating these revolutionaries with high treason. With the British holding St Lucia, the republicans who were in contact with the agents of revolutionary France were, under British law, guilty of high treason. However, the British did not possess unlimited supremacy of the territory and could only enforce the law until their rule could be unchallenged.
As confident as Hugues and his colleagues were over the granting of French citizenship to all people living in France's colonies "conquered or to be conquered", other evidence suggests that they were not fully decided upon this citizenship. Laurent Dubois describes the ambivalence of Hugues in his handling of the question of citizenship:
Hugues's mission was to create a new society where virtue, rather than race, would be the basis for social advancement and where legal equality would form the bedrock of the constitutional order. But, for Hugues, as for other administrators at the same time and later, emancipation raised serious philosophical, political, and economic problems: how could slaves, who had consistently been denied all legal and social rights, become citizens ready to use and defend those rights? And, how could the colonial plantation economy, deemed central to the economy of France, be maintained? Hugues confronted the problem posed by the transition from slave to citizen, and from slave labor to free labor, through a combination of liberation and repression. He limited the rights of the ex-slaves, invoking the needs of the endangered nation to argue that, since ex-slaves were incapable of being full citizens, it was their responsibility to serve the nation according to their particular, and limited, capabilities.18
To be fair to Hugues, he left mainland France with only general orders to free the slaves, maintain plantation production and carry on the war against the British. He did not receive from the Committee of Public Safety any detailed instructions for putting these somewhat contradictory instructions into practice.19 In the crowded, busy years of the war against the British, certain things appeared to have been subordinated to what he and the rulers in France considered the main objective: the regaining of France's colonial empire. Dubois's article in the William and Mary Quarterly does not address the question as to the condition of the former slaves-turned-citizens of the other areas of the eastern Caribbean that were to be brought under French rule in the period of what Blackburn calls "revolutionary emancipationism," where abolition was sponsored by a major power.20 This helps to explain his later dispatches to the French authorities in Paris, where he likened such struggles in such places as St Vincent, Grenada and St Lucia as diversions.
When the recapture of St Vincent had been consolidated, Hugues then dispatched Goyrand to administer the colony. It was then that the island's geo-political-military position began to be emphasised. According to all reports, Goyrand administered the colony according to the highest republican traditions. It was from this colony that Hugues left the day to day running of 'Brigands' War' in St Vincent and Grenada further south.
As we have seen, the success of the French ever since the arrival of Victor Hugues had placed the British on the retreat in Guadeloupe, St Lucia, Grenada, St Vincent and to a lesser extent, Dominica. In the western Caribbean, Britain was also on the defensive in St Domingue after a series of early victories. In Jamaica, the last Maroon War had broken out. In short, from a high point at the beginning of June 1794, when British arms had carried the French before them, Britain stood in danger of losing her much of her Caribbean empire herself! The situation seemed desperate. Led by the West Indian lobby in Britain itself and sympathetic ears in the government, a counter-attack was being planned.
By August, 1795, plans for a large British expeditionary force had reached an advanced stage. The commander-in-chief was chosen. He was General Sir Ralph Abercromby. Roger Buckley comments on the British choice:
One authority on the war described Abercromby as the best officer then in the British army. A glimpse of Abercromby's service record, however, reveals an undistinguished career and forces one to conclude that if indeed he was its best officer, the British army was totally lacking in senior commanders with field experience. Almost sixty years old when France declared war in 1793, Abercromby had retired from the army on half pay in 1783. His experience in the field was limited to the three years 1760 to 1763, as a subaltern and aide-de-camp in Germany during the Seven Years' War. He never sought active service in the American Revolution because he sympathised with the rebel cause.... The great expedition of 1796 was thus entrusted to an aging officer, who had not served on the battlefield for thirty years and who had never commanded more than a single regiment.21
Abercromby's appointment must have presented the British political directorate with a peculiar irony. A man who supported the American Revolution less than 20 years ago was chosen to lead a British counter-revolutionary force into battle in the Caribbean.
As Buckley rightly pointed out, Abercromby may not have been on a battlefield for three decades, but he had under his command a number of junior officers who were both able and talented. The best of these officers was John Moore. Buckley describes him as "a perfectionist ... a gifted leader and a great trainer of troops."22 The revolutionaries at St Lucia would soon meet him on the field of battle.
As we have seen, the British had begun to assemble what would turn out to be the then largest ever military expedition ever to leave England in August 1795. By October, the fleet was ready to depart. For five months the force was visited by one disaster after another, which caused delays, as well as losses of ships and men, that is, before a single shot was fired in anger.
It was during one of those delays that a German mercenary unit arrived at England, after a hazardous trip from mainland Europe, where one of their transports was wrecked off Calais, France. This unit, though raised in Germany, was comprised of Alsatians, Swiss, Dutch and Germans, who made up the largest single group. These mercenaries were called the "Lowenstein's Chasseurs" or "Lowenstein Jägers", the French word, "chasseurs" and the German word "Jägers" having the same meaning in English: "hunters". This was a mercenary unit raised by a German, Prince Lowenstein-Wertheim. With its members coming mainly from west and central Europe, they had a special aptitude for mountain warfare. They were originally only contracted to serve in Europe but later agreed to be sent out to the Caribbean.
Lowenstein's Jägers' entry into the Caribbean theatre was not without incident. They too became victims of what historians call today "Christian's Gales", that period of particularly bad weather at the end of 1795 and the beginning of 1796. They were named for Admiral Christian, the commander of the fleet to the Caribbean. Atkinson comments:
Misfortunes continued. On leaving England for the West Indies, Lowenstein's had to face the famous gale known as "Christian's storm", in which the transport Aurora foundered, though again the men were rescued; while, when the expedition got off again, in February, another transport went down with 100 of "Lowenstein's Jägers", about as many being saved.23
By the time that the expedition left Britain, however, Lowenstein's Jägers were on board.
In the meantime, Abercromby's instructions from the War Office had changed no less than four times:
a fourth set of instructions, drawn up in early February in accordance with later news from the West Indies, made the expulsion of the enemy from Grenada and St Vincent the first object, the capture of St Lucia and Demerara the second and relegated St Domingue to the background.24
Guadeloupe, that centre of French revolutionary activity and propaganda in the eastern Caribbean, and Hugues's headquarters, was similarly placed into the background.25 The reasons why the British chose to leave such an obvious military objective as Guadeloupe alone are not clear. However, part of the answer must lie in the fact that security in Guadeloupe was so tight that the British found great difficulty in obtaining intelligence from that colony. The British knew that the island was well fortified and defended by mostly former slaves.
Despite Abercromby's instructions that Grenada and St Vincent were the first [political] objectives, when he arrived at Barbados on March 17, 1796,26 he only sent relief forces to Grenada and St Vincent. Instead, he chose to devote his attention to the conquest of St Lucia. This colony was a good choice for the British. It location made easy the French supply of men and materiel to the movements in Grenada and St Vincent. Taking St Lucia would cut off the supply and communication lines from the two principal objectives.
For the part of Hugues in Guadeloupe and Goyrand in St Lucia itself, their intelligence-gathering system had also advised of the coming of Abercromby's expeditionary force. In anticipation of attack, the two French commissioners decided to prepare their respective islands for a sustained British siege. As such, supplies to St Vincent and Grenada had slowed to a trickle. In addition, Hugues's campaign of 'revolutionary piracy' had, perhaps, gone too far, in that his resources had been so much allocated to this activity that he did not give St Vincent and Grenada the attention that they needed to resist the British.27 His quest for personal enrichment may well have cost him the Brigands' War. For his attack on St Lucia, Abercromby, in his own words, took with him some 7,273 men "fit rank and file".28 Goyrand and his republican defenders were waiting.
The siege of St Lucia lasted a whole month. Fortescue summed it up thus:
Thus St Lucia was recovered, so far as surrender could ensure it, having cost the British thirty-nine officers and five hundred and twenty men killed, wounded and missing. It was, as Abercromby confessed, a barren conquest. The island except as a military post ceased to be of any value; and there was every reason to suppose that the brigands still hiding in the jungle would give much trouble.29
As the island was so mountainous, it may not have been surprising that the Lowenstein Jägers played an important part in the British capture of St Vincent. It was the only unit that Moore mentioned by name.30
Goyrand and his republicans had put up a determined defence of the island, but, in the end the British had an overwhelming advantage. But, as Fortescue correctly observed, many of the republicans refused to surrender. They retreated into the St Lucian rain forest, determined to carry on the struggle against the British occupying force. Thomas Moore was left with a force of some 4,000 men to complete the pacification of the island, while Abercromby and the rest turned their attention to the putting down of the revolutionary movements in St Vincent and Grenada.
Victor Hugues, in Guadeloupe, was not pleased at these developments. In a dispatch sent to the Minister of the Marine, dated "le 24 Floréal, an 4e de la République française" (13 May, 1796), his fellow commissioner LeBas wrote to Paris:
Le Sept de ce mois, Cent cinquante Batiments dont Sept Vaisseaux de Ligne, Beaucoup de frigates, de Corvettes, et Quatre-vingt Transporte se sont presentés devant Ste. Lucie, et y ont debarqués, huit a Dix mille hommes parmi les quels Deux Légions d'Emigrés. Depuis le Commencement du Siege, trios jours, (le 10e, le 13e, et le 15) ont étée Signalés par des actions très vives et très meurtriérs. A la 1re, Nous avons perdu Deux cents Républicaines, Attaqués par des forces infiniment Supérieuses, accablés par le nombre. Ils ont Vendus Chèrement leurs Vies et se sont faits tuer plutôt que d'abandonner le Poste don't la déffaute leur avait été confiée. La Seconde nous a Contée Soixante hommes, Mais l'Ennemi à été mis ...avec une Perte considerable. A la troisième, le Genéral Abercromby à été Vigoureusement repoussé. Croyant qu'il était facile de vaincre des françaises Antilles, Son dessein était d'enlever le Morne fortune de vive (?) force. Le Major Malcombe Commandant une des quatre Colonnes qui avait assaillés le fort, a été tué Sur une des Batteries où il était parvenu avec une troupe de Noirs sous ses Ordres. Il laisse une nom éxecré dans Les... (?), Un Colonel et Douze à Quinze cents hommes tués dans cette action attendant notre Victoire.Pour réparer leure Pertes et pour Convertir l'attaque en Siège Reglé, les Généraux Anglais ont tires de Le Grenade un Régiment et de le Cavalerie il s'occupie de l'Établissement de ses Batteries et de ses retranchements qu'il n'énlevera certainement pas sans empèchement.31
On this occasion, it was Le Bas who was the signatory to the dispatch. Writing from Guadeloupe about a military action in St Lucia, the quality of the French intelligence was remarkable. They were able to furnish such details as the deaths of prominent people in the fighting. Compare Le Bas's dispatch of May 13, 1796, on the death of Colonel Malcolm:
le Major Malcombe Commandant une des quatre Colonnes qui ont assaillés le fort, a été tué Sur une des Batteries où il était parvenu avec un Troupes des Noirs Sous ses Ordres.
With the words of Fortescue, who wrote in 1906, and who, the evidence suggests strongly, did not read Le Bas's dispatch:
Among the killed was Colonel Malcolm, the excellent officer who may be called the father of our African regiments ... he had raised his irregular corps of negroes after the capture of Martinique.32
Whereas Le Bas noted that Malcolm leaves "un nom éxecré", Fortescue, predictably, notes that "his name ... deserves record rather as one of those officers ... whose skill, courage and magic of leadership can turn the rawest of material into the most devoted and efficient of officers."33 With St Lucia in British hands, and Moore left there with about 4,000 men to complete the neutralisation of the 'Brigands', Abercromby and the rest of the Expeditionary force left for the island of Carriacou, from whence they co-ordinated the suppression of the revolutionary movements in St Vincent, then Grenada.
In the same dispatch, Le Bas had also taken time to inform his superiors of the fate of Goyrand:
Les nouvelles que notre Collegue nous a donné le Vingt deux Sont des plus ... Vous jugerez de sa disposition pas de réponse à la Sommation des Généraux Christian et Abercromby.34
The pacification of St Lucia was a tougher assignment than Moore imagined. With the assistance of his troops, he in time managed to subdue it. He even contracted yellow fever, from which he later recovered. But in his battles with the 'Brigands' a certain interaction occurred between the British field officer and these people who refused to accept their conquest. Like the field officers in Grenada and St Vincent, Moore began to not only learn, but to appreciate their military tactics.
Moore subsequently left St Lucia, but, the evidence suggests, he took St Lucia with him. As he returned to the Napoleonic Wars that broke out in Europe, Bonaparte's ambitions took him to Spain. His attempt to conquer Spain and place his brother on the Spanish throne provoked national resistance against the French occupation. This conflict was called by Napoleon "the Spanish ulcer". Historians also called it "The Peninsular War". Britain entered the conflict on the side of the Spanish. Moore was one of the officers sent out to the Iberian Peninsula.
Moore was ready for such an assignment. In the period since he had left St Lucia and the Caribbean, he had put some of the most important principles he had learned during 'The Brigands' War'. He re-organised the British light infantry, making their clothes lighter and less cumbersome. The also developed new strategies of warfare, based upon what they had learnt trying to ferret out the 'brigands' of St Lucia. For Moore, Spain was not unlike St Lucia, with its hilly terrain. The military conflict was almost ideal for the techniques learned while serving in a small island in the eastern Caribbean.
The Duke of Wellington, the British commander-in-chief, is believed to have been the first to give this type of warfare a name: "guerrilla warfare". The term "guerrilla" is derived from the Spanish word "guerra" the word for "war". The word "guerrilla" means literally "little war". Guerilla warfare has now become a widely used term that has even attracted the attention of the political scientists.
Moore did not survive the Peninsular War. He was killed at Corunna in 1809. The poet Charles Wolfe wrote this poem on his burial in Spain. The poem goes, in part:
Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note
As his corse to the ramparts we hurried
Not a soldier discharged his farewell shot
O'er the grave where our hero we buriedWe buried him darkly at dead of night
The sods with our bayonets turning
By the struggling moonbeam's misty light
And the lanthorn dimly burningNo useless coffin enclosed his breast
Not in sheet or in shroud we wound him
But he lay like a warrior taking his rest
With his martial cloak around him.35
In the context of the military situation of the moment, Moore was buried in a surreptitious manner, almost like a Brigand chieftain who had fallen in battle on 'The Morne'.
The Peninsular War was the turning point for Napoleon Bonaparte and his designs for control of Europe and the world. From that point, he went into military decline, which his military and political career saw its final chapter on a battlefield called Waterloo.
This paper is a work in progress. Much work remains to be done on this pivotal but fascinating period in the history of the Caribbean. There exists a rich trove of records in the Centre d'Archives d'Outre-Mer at Aix-en-Provence, France, that is largely unexplored by historians, particularly those of the Anglophone Caribbean.
1 Reginald Jeffrey (Editor), Dyott's Diary: A Selection from the Journal of William Dyott, Sometime General in the British Army and Aide-de-Camp to His Majesty King George III (London: Archibald Constable and Company Ltd., 1907), Vol. I, 97.
2 Eric Williams, From Columbus to Castro: The History of the Caribbean 1492-1969 (London: André Deutsch Limited, 1970; 1997), 246.
3 J.W. Fortescue, A History of the British Army (London: Macmillan and Company Limited, 1906), Volume IV 1789-1901, 370.
4 For example, Laurent Dubois, "'The Price of Liberty': Victor Hugues and the Administration of Guadeloupe, 1794-1798", William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Volume 56, African and American Atlantic Worlds (Apr., 1999), 363-392.
5 Colonel Dubois, "le Robespierre des colonies ... Victor Hugues 1762-1826", Revue Historique De L'Armée (Martinique - Guadeloupe - Guyane , Ministère Des Armées, Paris, VIIe Dix-Neuvième Année - Numero I, Fevrier 1963), 92.
6 Colonel Dubois, "le Robespierre des Antilles...", 92.
7 Colonel Dubois, "le Robespierre des Antilles...", 92.
8 Victor Hugues et Le Bas, Commissaires délégués par la Convention aux Iles du Vent, le 14 nivôse, l'an 3me., C7A 48, 4.
9 Les Commissaires délégués par la convention nationale aux îles du vent: au Président de la Convention Nationale, Basseterre, le 20 messidor, l'an 3e de la république française, une et indivisible, 21.
10 David Mitchell, Pirates (London: Thames and Hudson, 1976), 164.
11 Laurent Dubois, "The Price of Liberty", 378.
13 Proclamation, Au Port de la Liberté [Guadeloupe], le 4 ventôse, troisième année républicaine. See also. W.O. 1/83, 145.
14 Proclamation, Au Port de la Liberté, le 4 ventôse. See also W.O. 1/83. 145.
15 Edward H. East, Pleas of the Crown (London: Professional Books Limited, 1903 and 1972), 77.
16 East, Pleas of the Crown, 81.
17 East, Pleas of the Crown, 48.
18 Laurent Dubois, "'The Price of Liberty': Victor Hugues and the Administration of Freedom in Guadeloupe, 1794-1798", 366.
19 Dubois, "The Price of Liberty", 379-80.
20 Robin Blackburn, The Overthrow of Colonial Slavery 1776-1848 (London: Verso Publications, 1990).
21 Roger Norman Buckley (Ed.), The Haitian Journal of Lt. Howard, York Hussars, 1796-1798 (Knoxville: The University of Tennessee Press, 1985), xxxi.
22 Buckley, The Haitian Journal, xxxi.
23 C.T. Atkinson, "Foreign Regiments in the British Army", Journal of the Society of Army Historical Research, Vol. XXII, No. 86, Summer 1943, 248.
24 Fortescue, A History of the British Army, Vol. IV, 482.
25 Buckley, The Haitian Journal, xxxiv.
27 Duffy, Soldiers, Sugar, and Seapower, Ch. 9.
29 Fortescue, A History of the British Army, Vol. IV, 492.
30 Fortescue, 492. See also Duffy, Ch. 9.
31 Les Agents particuliers du directoire executive, aux îles du vent, Au Ministre de la Marine et des Colonies, le 24 Floréal, an 4.
32 A History of the British Army, Vol. 4, 490.
34 Les Agents particuliers du directoire executive...le 24 Floréal, an 4.
35 Charles Wolfe, "The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna".
© Curtis Jacobs, 2005.
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