The general insurrection of the slaves which soon followed was undoubtedly the work of the same insidious instruments employed in spreading the flame of rebellion, disseminating discord, confusion and anarchy in the minds of all those who were susceptible of receiving the impression.
Many of the black inhabitants were French speaking and had easy connection with Republican sympathisers. On 2 March, the rebels seized the towns of Goyave and Grenville (see map 7). Many of the white inhabitants were massacred. The complacent governor, Ninian Home, was captured whilst traversing the island and held as a hostage by Julien Fédon, the mulatto who led the uprising. Fédon was quick to exploit his prize, issuing a grandiloquent proclamation, ‘…the tyrant Home, late governor of the island, Alexander Campbell [a local estate owner] and a great number of English having been made prisoner that their heads and the heads of all others shall answer for the conduct of those in authority’. The acting governor, Kenneth Mackenzie, was forced to concentrate his small force, probably some 500 regulars and militia, in and around St George’s. According to Turnbull, the insurrection now became more widespread, thousands of blacks and French sympathisers rallying to Fédon’s call.3
On St Lucia, there was similar unrest. The island was the most prorevolutionary of the colonies and Hugues’s demand that the inhabitants join the Republicans on pain of death was widely heeded. The British governor, Charles Gordon, was unpopular and the British commander, Brigadier General James Stewart, reported that the brigands were gaining ground. He held only the town of Castries and Morne Fortune (see map 5). This alarming news trickled through to Vaughan at Martinique. Unable to give simultaneous help to both islands, he decided that Grenada was the more urgent priority, actually removing 150 men from the St Lucia garrison and sending them to St George’s under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Colin Lindsay of the 46th. Lindsay found that Mackenzie had already launched operations against Goyave but that little had been achieved. Reinforcements had arrived in the form of marines landed from three British men of war and also around 40 Spanish troops from the garrison of Trinidad. Lindsay reviewed the local militia, declaring that he was satisfied with their appearance. On 15 March at four o’clock in the morning, he marched off at the head of 400 regulars and militia to attack the rebels’ camp at Belvidere close to Morne Felix. On the 17th, contact was made with about 150 enemy who were charged and chased into a wood. Lindsay’s letter to Mackenzie, written the next day, gives no hint of impending tragedy.
My Dear Sir
I have great pleasure in testifying to you that nothing could be better than the behaviour of the militia in yesterday’s affair which did not cost anything near the number of men we expected to lose. They showed the best countenance; and every soldier in our regular troops remarked that nothing could be better. Our whole loss is one Captain wounded, two rank and file killed, and sixteen wounded, chiefly of the ninth regiment who bore the brunt of the attack. We hope to be in their camp tomorrow.
I remain, sir, your humble servant
Colin Lindsay
Fédon’s men lost about 20 killed and 40 wounded. Very heavy rain now rendered further forward movement impracticable and, in the early hours of the 22nd, Lindsay committed suicide. Whether this was because of the anxieties of command – he was frustrated both by the adverse weather and desertions from the militia – or illness is impossible to know. This popular and respected officer was replaced by Lieutenant Colonel John Bridges Schaw, but the opportunity had been lost. The Spanish troops were called back to Trinidad and Schaw judged that his remaining force was not sufficient for offensive operations. He withdrew to St George’s and the island was effectively controlled by the enemy, now 5,000 strong. Mackenzie was forced to wait for reinforcements whilst British vessels attempted to stop Hugues landing arms and stores.4
Hugues’s emissaries were also creating havoc on St Vincent. Here, both the French planters and the native Caribs had historical grievances against grasping British planters and they were ready converts to the Republican cause. French officer Moreau de Jonnès, sent to St Vincent by Hugues to stir insurrection, speaks of the Caribs’ ‘national hatred’ for the English. The natives were no match for regulars in a pitched battle. When King Chateaugai threatened the capital Kingstown in March 1795, he was routed by a combined force of sailors and soldiers under the command of Captain Skinner of the Zebra and Captain Dugald Campbell of the 46th. The chief was killed and the Caribs suffered a hundred casualties. The Carib chief was not much helped by his allies. He had been supported by a battalion of infantry sent by Hugues but, according to Moreau de Jonnès, these men were a motley mixture of criminals from colonial depots, naval deserters, and runaway slaves. Vaughan, in a communication to Dundas, described the British losses as ‘small’. Despite this success, and the antipathy of many of the island’s blacks to the Caribs, Governor James Seton ceded most of the colony to the brigands. Denied the means to raise a black regiment, he kept his regulars, a handful of men from the 60th and 46th, and local militia of doubtful loyalty, in Fort Charlotte which guarded the entrance to Kingstown (see map 8).5
Dundas’s promised reinforcements finally arrived at Barbados on 30 March but these were deficient in both quantity and quality. Instead of the anticipated 11 battalions there were only five, adding up to 2,700 men. Most of the troops were recent recruits, many of them little more than boys, equally unfit to bear arms or to survive the climate. Vaughan judged the 45th to be particularly weak, unsuited for service in any part of the world. He quickly decided to disperse the battalions around the various islands to try and check the insurrections. Thus, the 25th and 29th were sent to Grenada, the 34th and 61st to St Lucia, and the 41st to St Vincent. Including the units retained on Martinique, the total force in the Windward Islands in April was now 5,000 strong. The broad strategy was to occupy enough of the insurgent islands to starve the rebels of arms and stores from Guadeloupe. The weakened bands of brigands might then be driven inland, where a combination of British military strength and starvation would induce them to surrender.
Before describing the outcome of these operations it should be noted that, despite the chronic shortage of manpower in the region, Dundas had eyes on the Dutch colonies, proposing that a force of 600 men, the 3rd Battalion of the 60th, should be sent to Demerara 500 miles from Vaughan’s base. There was no clear military objective; the minister was urged to take the colony by British merchants. Dundas did acknowledge to Vaughan that the security of the British islands must be prioritised and when the Dutch government refused to allow the 60th to land, the small detachment was sent on to Barbados. The outspoken Vaughan decried the Government’s attachment to the opinions of ‘self-interested merchants’, criticised the poor quality of the new battalions, and warned that unless black regiments were raised the islands would soon be lost. ‘The French blacks will invade us and gain ours by the promise of freedom’.6
The arrival of the additional two regiments on St Lucia allowed Brigadier General Stewart to take the offensive and attempt to recover lost ground. On 14 April, he landed at Vieuxfort on the southern extremity of the island (see map 5) with a force composed of a portion of the 9th, 61st and 68th Regiments, a company of the Black Carolina Corps, and one company of the new black corps of Malcolm’s Rangers – in all, about 600 white and 400 black troops. After some skirmishing, Stewart entered the town on the 16th, the brigands abandoning a large amount of stores and ammunition. He now pushed on towards the enemy’s strongest point at Soufrière on the west coast. Progress via the towns of Laborie and Choiseul was difficult, the marches severe and the four pieces of artillery having to be dragged over steep wooded terrain by soldiers and seamen. On the 20th, the flank companies of the 9th and Malcolm’s Rangers fell into an ambush from which they gallantly extricated themselves at some cost to their assailants. Two days later, Stewart sighted the enemy’s stronghold, well protected by the natural obstacles of mountain and swamp and also man-made breastworks and barriers.
The Brit
ish commander, realising the strength of the centre of the enemy position, made turning manoeuvres to both right and left before cautiously sending a company of the 61st in advance of the guns on the road. This induced the enemy to open fire, which in turn led the rangers and other British soldiers to reply, thereby wasting much of their ammunition. The brigands now advanced along the road towards the British guns, showing great coolness and determination; only after suffering heavy casualties in two separate attacks were they repulsed by the light infantry of the 61st and 68th. Unfortunately these two companies made a precipitate pursuit of their foe and in turn suffered significant losses at the parapet of the defences. Vaughan later communicated that ‘the contest continued warmly for seven hours and although the greatest exertions were made by the British they were finally compelled to retreat to Choiseul’. Stewart had little choice but to fall back, his ammunition spent and his men short of provisions and exhausted. Commissioner Goyrand, Hugues’s man on the scene, declared that, ‘The musketry of a handful of Republicans replied so well to the enemy artillery of two 6-pounders that the enemy general ordered the retreat as night approached…His losses are at least 600 men killed, wounded or made prisoner’. This was very likely exaggeration as the brigands made no serious effort to pursue the retreating force. British returns suggest losses of 30 killed, 150 wounded and five missing between 14 and 22 April. There was no denying that this was a serious British reverse, made more ominous by the unexpected obduracy and organisation of their adversaries. Not wishing to divide his main force, the chastened Stewart withdrew first to Vieuxfort where he placed a predominantly black garrison, some 200 strong; he then assembled the remainder of his troops around Morne Fortune in the north.7
The British foothold on St Lucia was tenuous. Stewart’s force was demoralised and diminished by yellow fever whilst the enemy was strengthened by the receipt of artillery from Guadeloupe. In early June, Goyrand’s men easily captured the post of Gros Islet and then, on the 9th, a key battery on Morne Fortune was seized. When, on the night of the 17th, the Vigie (a fortified peninsula to the north of Castries) also fell, it was clear to Stewart that he would have to evacuate the island. The peninsula was vital to maintain communications around the Carénage (the harbour of Castries). In the early hours of the 19th, the garrison of 1,200 was embarked onto HMS Experience and a transport at the mouth of the Carénage. The ships remained out of gunshot range and evacuated the fleeing army to Martinique. Goyrand was quick to draw parallels with the fate of Prescott at Basseterre, ‘…for the second time, in a short period, the English ships thus spared their generals the shame of a capitulation’. The flight was so hasty, the emissary noted, that the English had had to leave behind 60 sick and 36 women and children. Goyrand, who appears to have been more generous than Hugues, arranged for them to be returned the following day.8
The fall of one island encouraged Republican influence and insurgency on its neighbours. British operations on Grenada, where the force had also been strengthened from Barbados, recommenced at the start of April just before the events described on St Lucia. The new campaign opened inauspiciously. When Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell of the 29th landed his own regiment and the 25th at Goyave he was called to interview by Mackenzie, who divided the force into three, the plan being to advance simultaneously from Goyave, St George’s and Grenville against Fédon’s stronghold on Mount St Catherine in the north (see map 7). Mackenzie was, as Fortescue pointedly reminds us, a ‘civilian’, and his methods were judged to be ‘too Austrian’. Campbell was ordered to make a direct assault with 300 raw recruits and 150 seamen. This was against his better judgement as the enemy camp was atop a sheer mountain, very well fortified, and defended by several hundred rebels. He later wrote to Lord Cathcart, ‘…the service was in storming the stronghold of the insurgents, which ended in proving which must of been the opinion of every military person before it commenced, a matter without any probability of success’. The outcome is well described by eyewitness Gordon Turnbull.
Everything was now prepared for the assault which was made on the morning of the 8th [April]. Our troops were led on by Lieutenant Colonel [John] Hope; and, on their advancing, the enemy abandoned the lower post at Belvidere and retreated to the ridge of the mountain, on which they had two guns, but one much more advanced, that is to say, lower down on the ridge than the other. This was the first object to which the movements of a company of the 9th under Captain Stopford, on one side, and a part of the seamen led on by Captain Watkins, on the other side of the ridge, were pointed. The first was supported by Lieutenant-Colonel Hope with a party of the 29th and 58th, and the last, by a detachment of the 25th under Lieutenant Colonel Dickson. Both columns pressed forward with great ardour. Captain Stopford, notwithstanding the extreme difficulty of the ascent, had got within twenty yards of the gun, when he fell. Mr William Park [a civilian; editor of the Grenada Gazette], who had gallantly engaged in the enterprise as a volunteer, fell almost at the same instant. The troops now being exposed to a heavy and galling fire from the enemy, and finding it impossible to make their way through the fallen trees, were forced to retreat. On the other side, Captain Watkins, with Captain Blackett and thirty-five brave seamen had actually got within a few yards of the gun; but observing that Colonel Hope with his detachment was retreating, and the rest of the seamen not having come up, they were also under the necessity of retreating.
The withdrawal was well covered by a detachment of the 68th but three officers had perished and 80 rank and file were killed or wounded. Turnbull attributes the debacle to a combination of the wet ground littered with felled trees, the lack of adequate artillery support, the inexperience of the troops, and the failure to gain any element of surprise. Fédon massacred his prisoners including Governor Home and 50 British inhabitants captured early in the course of the attack. The rebel leader’s army now increased by 10,000 men as the island’s black population willingly joined the brigands.9
Hearing of the setback, Vaughan sent Lieutenant Colonel Oliver Nicolls to Grenada. His acting rank of Brigadier General left no doubt as to who was now in charge of the British military effort. Campbell voiced the general relief; ‘Brigadier General Nicolls has lately rescued us from the command of a president of the Council who on the death of the military governor assumed the military command and issued orders for attack & c. with all the confidence of a veteran’. At first this change in command produced the desired effect. Nicolls discarded Mackenzie’s strategy of dispersal and multiple attacks and instead concentrated his forces driving the enemy from Grenville and setting up strong posts in the town and also at Sauteurs and Goyave. He additionally raised five black corps each of 50 men. By the end of July, Nicolls had secured the principal harbours and the coast was under British control. There was hope that the rebels might be starved into submission and thus bring an end to what Campbell referred to as a ‘blackguard war’. However, British resources were stretched and manpower dwindling by the day since the arrival of the sickly season; between the 7th and 23rd on the month, more than 250 men died of disease, reducing the army’s effective strength to less than 900. The mortality among Campbell’s men was so great that he feared that ‘a few weeks will put a period to the existence of this deserted battalion’. The only reinforcement was a small detachment of the 68th from Martinique whilst the insurgents received more arms and provisions from Guadeloupe, thereby undoing much of Nicolls’s laudable work.
The increasing British weakness culminated in a jolting reverse. On the night of 15 October, the rebels attacked an apparently strong British post on the heights above Goyave. This was manned by a captain, two subalterns, four sergeants, and 60 rank and file, and commanded the town and the harbour. The senior officer, Lieutenant Colonel Schaw of the 68th, later penned a detailed letter to Nicolls justifying his own part in the ‘unfortunate business’. Schaw’s account is confused but it seems that the piquet was surprised by an attack made on more than one front and, after initial losses, all attempts to rec
over the hill by the 68th were foiled by the enemy’s superior numbers and their capture of a field piece from which they fired grapeshot. Schaw also invokes the steep and slippery state of the hill after incessant rain, but presumably this must have been equally the case for his audacious foe. The officer withdrew his men to St George’s, 12 miles distant. About 40 sick from the 25th and 30 from the 68th were left at Goyave and fell into enemy hands. The return of the 68th also shows two sergeants and 34 rank and file missing following the action.10
Events far from the Caribbean now impacted on the struggle for Grenada. A French commissioner from Guadeloupe landed on the island. Extolling the more enlightened principles that had replaced the philosophy of terror in France, he demanded the arrest of Fédon for the atrocities committed by the rebels. From this time, the Republican war effort was to be humane and conducted with the primary aim of abolishing slavery. This change of direction, whilst commendable, increased British anxieties relating to the loyalty of the black populations on their colonies. As it was, Fédon escaped capture and remained at the head of an increasingly powerful rebel army, which continued to harass Nicolls’s men. Even with reinforcement from Martinique, the British force at the end of 1795 amounted to less than 700 effectives. Republican reinforcements now had little problem landing on the island and, in late February 1796, two schooners of men arrived from Guadeloupe and invested Pilot Hill, the British post commanding Grenville Bay. The prompt evacuation of this strongpoint with the abandonment of five guns was attributed to a lack of water, but it was more likely caused by a shortage of defenders. In early 1796, British fortunes were at low ebb, Nicolls grimly hanging on to St George’s and fearing his ejection from the colony.11
On St Vincent, there was intense fighting between April 1795 and January 1796. Vaughan informed Dundas of the uprising on the island: ‘In St Vincent the Charibbs [Caribs], instigated by the French, and joined by most of the French inhabitants, sensed a favourable time, most treacherously, to attack the English inhabitants of that Colony. The arts of cruelty which they have committed upon defenceless men, women and children, are beyond description, and burning every plantation in their power’. At the beginning of April, Governor Seton was reinforced by the arrival of the seasoned 46th Regiment and the enemy were driven back allowing the British to establish posts outside Kingstown at Calliaqua, Chateau Belair and Sion Hill (see map 8). Hugues supplied the Caribs from Guadeloupe and Goyrand sent men and munitions from captured St Lucia. It was, in Poyen’s words, a ‘war of extermination’, the Caribs massacring their prisoners and the British hanging captured Caribs, whom they regarded as rebellious subjects. Later in the month, Seton was able to eject the Caribs from their main camp, the attack carried out by a detachment of the 46th supported by black rangers and seamen. On 7 May, seven or eight hundred enemy appeared on the heights above Calliaqua and Seton anticipated an attack on Kingstown. Captain John Hall of the 46th commanded a party of a subaltern and 33 rank and file of the regiment, 40 militia, 40 of the corps of black rangers, five artillerymen and a 14-pound field piece, his mission to take possession of Dorsetshire Hill to the east of the town. At one o’clock in the morning, they were attacked by 300 French and Caribs and forced to retreat to Sion Hill. Realising his position to be untenable, Seton ordered a further attack at daybreak on the following day. A hundred men of the 46th and militia under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Seton of the rangers successfully stormed the hill through a hail of grapeshot. In the two attacks, the British lost 30 wounded and three killed whilst 23 French and 19 Caribs were found dead on the field.12
Death Before Glory Page 11
