More reinforcements arrived at the beginning of June in the form of the 3rd Battalion of the 60th, the unit refused a landing at Demerara, and a detachment of Malcolm’s Rangers. Governor Seton now sought to make gains on the eastern side of the colony. On the night of 11 June, a force under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Baldwin Leighton composed of detachments from the 46th and 60th Regiments, Malcolm’s Rangers, Island Rangers, all the southern and windward militia, and the Royal Artillery, marched out of Kingstown and halted at a river about four miles from their destination, the Vigie. This was the principal position of the enemy, a heavily fortified post on a ridge (vigie is the French for ‘look-out post’) forming the south-west side of the valley of Marriqua (Mesopotamia), one of the most heavily vegetated parts of the island. The troops were divided into four columns and, by daybreak, the enemy were completely invested. The British first forced their way into two redoubts, the Carib defenders taking flight. French troops from Guadeloupe now took up the fight, sallying from their defensive positions before being forced back by British forces threatening their flank. Thomas Coke, an early West Indies historian, evocatively relates the denouement.
Never did troops display greater gallantry than did the British militia and rangers on this occasion. The whole seemed as if activated by one soul. Two six pounders from adjacent situations were directed against the batteries and works of the enemy, with unabating perseverance. Early in the attack a mortar was brought forward which scattered its destructive materials among them with considerable annoyance, while the smaller arms kept up an uninterrupted discharge. Thus was victory undecided for about the space of five hours, when the shot, necessary to support their great guns, became expended; and most of those who were acquainted with their management were killed or wounded. In consequence of this change of circumstances, their resistance gradually diminished; until at length, they felt it expedient to beat the chamade…
British killed and wounded were about 60 and the enemy probably no less than 250. Leighton sent out rangers to scour the surrounding area and destroy Carib huts. Leaving the 60th to garrison the Vigie, he marched up the east coast of the island with the remains of his force and reached Mount Young on the 16th. Here, he fortified his position and sent out parties to devastate the countryside, the objective being to starve the enemy and push them into the interior.13
The Caribs were a resourceful race and they effected a passage across the mountains, a considerable number of them appearing on a hill near the British post at Chateau Belair on the leeward coast. The new enemy position dominated the smaller British hill and before long they had unfurled the flag de la liberté and had opened fire with a small field piece imported from St Lucia. It was apparent that decisive action had to be taken and Seton reinforced the post with a detachment of the 3rd Battalion of the 60th Regiment and another from the northern corps of militia. In early July, he directed Lieutenant Colin Prevost to attack the enemy position with what proved to be an inadequate force of about a hundred local militia and British regulars. The commander of the storming party, Lieutenant Moore, was soon fatally wounded, the leaderless troops became disordered, and an ignominious retreat followed. Desperate for reinforcements from Martinique, Seton was instead forced to order Leighton to transfer part of his force across the island to retrieve the situation. After an exhausting eight-hour march, Leighton led 200 men of the 46th and 60th in a second attack against the French above Chateau Belair and, overcoming stubborn resistance, drove them into the woods, capturing two guns and ammunition. The 46th lost 14 killed and 30 wounded, the British casualties around 60 in total. Probably outnumbered by four to three, it was a significant triumph for Leighton’s men, particular credit falling to the mauled 46th.14
British spirits were raised. Coke comments that the success ‘…compensated fully for recent disappointments and promised to greatly facilitate the annihilation of those who had wronged us’. This was overly optimistic and Seton now overstretched his position, setting up multiple ill-supported posts in the windward part of the island. The main body of troops, perhaps 400 fit for duty, remained around Mount Young under Leighton’s command. A further blunder was the failure to adequately defend Owia, a small town in the extreme north-east of the colony, which gave easy communication with French St Lucia. In early September, in the middle of the night during a thunderstorm, 600 enemy troops fell on the camp killing many of the black garrison and the commanding British officer. The survivors fled to Kingstown.15
Encouraged by this success, Hugues was hopeful of seizing St Vincent just as he had captured Guadeloupe and St Lucia. On the morning of 18 September, a French force of 800 men was landed from four vessels in Owia Bay. Hopelessly outnumbered, Leighton was ordered to abandon Mount Young and return to the vicinity of Kingstown. He slipped away leaving lights burning in the soldiers’ huts to deceive the enemy. Vaughan now responded to the deteriorating situation by sending Colonel William Myers to take command on the island. The new commander could initially do little more than cede more ground, evacuating posts to leeward and windward and concentrating his increasingly demoralised men around Kingstown, the Vigie and Dorsetshire Hill. The small force on the Vigie, 100 British regulars and 100 black troops, was especially vulnerable, both short of provisions and dangerously isolated from Kingstown. Myers was determined to support the position and he ordered Lieutenant Colonel Ritchie of the 60th to escort a convoy of 200 of his regiment, 150 St Vincent Rangers and 80 mules carrying the necessary stores. This detachment proceeded from Sion Hill on the afternoon of the 24th, continued as far as Calliaqua, and then ascended towards the Vigie. The enemy were in wait and after a brief exchange of musketry they were forced to fall back. Captain William Cooper Foster of the 46th gave orders for an immediate charge to press home the advantage but he was ignored, the troops instead giving way and fleeing in all directions. Sixty men were killed and taken prisoner and the stores were lost. Ritchie was wounded as he made a fighting retreat with a small band of 20 men. According to Coke, the unexpected reverse caused ‘consternation and dread’ in British ranks. It was obvious that the Vigie would have to be abandoned. A large detachment of the 46th and Malcolm’s Rangers was sent to Baker’s estate within 15 minutes march of the enemy. This feint provided the necessary distraction and the Vigie garrison marched through the night to Calliaqua from where they were moved to Kingstown in boats.16
While every effort was being made to strengthen posts around the town, an unexpected reinforcement reached the island. This was composed of the 40th, 54th, and 59th Regiments and the 2nd West India Regiment; the St Vincent Rangers were now drafted into the latter unit. Major General Robert Irving was sent from Martinique to take command. These soldiers were not in ideal condition for campaigning in the Tropics, little trained and stressed by the voyage from home, but Irving judged the situation of Kingstown so precarious that an immediate attack on the Vigie was imperative. On 2 October, the troops set out divided into two columns of 750 and 900 men with, as Irving relates, the intent to make a two-pronged attack on the hill. As usual in the West Indies, the terrain and elements combined as a second enemy.
I informed myself, from those best acquainted with the Country that a Height, called Fairbane’s Hill, commanded the Vigie; upon this I formed my Plan of Attack. The Grenadiers and Light Infantry, with Four Companies of the 40th Regiment, were to gain the Hill on one Quarter, whilst the 59th Regiment, supported by Two Three Pounders, were to force it on another, the Whole Marched at Three o’ Clock Yesterday Morning, so as to be at the Object by Day-break. The first Division gained the Heights early in the Morning, with considerable Loss, the 59th Regiment was early within fifty paces of the Enemy, and made several attempts to gain the Post, but the Natural Strength of the Ground, and the heavy Rain that unluckily fell at Day-break rendered the place inaccessible. The Troops having been exposed the Whole of the Day to great Fatigues, and the Weather being very unfavourable, from violent showers during the Day, and having no Possibility of providin
g the least shelter for them, I thought it most advisable to return to our former Quarters for the Night. Having sufficient Reason to suppose the Enemy had abandoned their Posts during the Night, I ordered out early this morning [3 October] a strong Detachment of the St Vincent’s Rangers to take Possession of it; as I have the Satisfaction to inform your Excellency [Major General Charles Leigh] that the British Flag now displays itself there.
British losses were inevitably heavy; 46 killed and 107 wounded, the 59th suffering about half of these casualties. The enemy were presumably also badly enough mauled to induce them to abandon the Vigie, one estimate being that they lost 250 men.
Irving may have snatched victory from defeat but the mood remained gloomy. The commander cautiously moved north up the east coast, establishing posts near Mount William and Mount Young, but he was inhibited by a number of concerns. His adversary had been reinforced from St Lucia, his own reinforcements might have to be switched to Grenada, and morale was deteriorating. Myers wrote to General Grey in November that ‘apathy and indifference’ had affected both the troops and the colony’s inhabitants. The latter were tired of the war and reluctant to give up their black workers to aid the British cause. The year ended with the British entrenched on Bellevue ridge (facing Mount William) hoping for the arrival of another ‘great expedition’, the subject of the next chapter.17
The initiative had been lost and at 3 o’clock on the morning of 8 January 1796 the enemy attacked a battery placed on a supposedly inaccessible tongue of land to the left of the Mount William camp. Despite taking the normal precautions of posting sentries and making patrols, Brigadier General Stewart, the officer in charge, was caught by surprise.
On the first Shot, I immediately ran out as fast as the Darkness would permit me and was met by Major [Henry] Harcourt, Field Officer of the Day. I found the Men all paraded and Brigadier General [William] Strutt who had just then received a Wound in his Face, exerting himself much with the 54th Regiment. I full proceeded to the Left, but, from the Darkness, could not distinguish the enemy from our own Soldiers…
Stewart did his best to marshal his men, but with many of his officers seriously wounded, all parts of the line eventually broke and he was forced to fall back south along the coast to Baiabu. Here he had no provisions and little ammunition and he necessarily continued his retreat to Kingstown 12 miles away. It was a shattering and costly defeat. From the five units engaged (the Royal Artillery, 40th, 54th, 59th, and the 2nd West India Regiment) there were 54 killed, 109 wounded and as many as 200 missing.18
A new officer, Major General Martin Hunter, was sent from Martinique to take command, but he could do little more than withdraw the remaining forces to the vicinity of Kingstown. On 19 January, he informed Major General Charles Leigh (the new commander-in-chief, see below) that he had concentrated around the posts of Dorsetshire Hill, Millar’s Bridge, Sion Hill, Cane Garden, Keane’s House, Fort Charlotte and Kingstown itself. The demoralisation of the army was highlighted on the 20th, when Lieutenant Colonel Prevost’s attempt to attack an isolated enemy piquet was frustrated by the refusal of all but eight men to follow him. There was, however, enough resolve to repulse a French counter-attack. Hunter warned Leigh that unless he was reinforced he would soon have to withdraw into Fort Charlotte, the only post he was confident of holding against the enemy’s full strength; ‘…the very hard Duty the Men and Officers are obliged to do cannot be supported for any Length of Time.’ At the start of 1796, the British were, just as on Grenada, hemmed into a small corner of St Vincent waiting for help.19
On Dominica, the British garrison was weak and debilitated by disease. Hugues sent 470 men to the island in early June 1795 but the Republican attack was botched. General Pélardy informs us that the assault force remained in the boats for five days before disembarking, thus losing any chance of surprise. They were eventually landed at Pagoua Bay on the north-east of the colony and a small British force made up chiefly of parts of the sickly 15th and 21st Regiments and a handful of local militia was dispatched from Prince Rupert’s Bay to intercept them (see map 9). The French invaders were divided and the British, led by Captain John Bathe of the 15th, soon surrounded both encampments and forced them to surrender between the 17th and the 19th with the capture of around 350 prisoners. On 22 June, Lieutenant Colonel Edward Madden wrote to Vaughan describing the subsequent mopping up operation.
There are a number of them [Republicans] in Two’s and Three’s in the Woods, that the English Negroes are in Pursuit of, and are hourly bringing some in – I am sending out small Parties of Militia (who have behaved uncommonly well) to the different Parishes in order to root them out entirely, and hope very soon to have to report to your Excellency that there is not a Brigand in the Island.
The efforts of the British regulars were also commendable, particularly when one considers that 40% of the rank and file were on the sick list and that the operation involved an exhausting march across the country. However, the key reason for the failure of the Republican attack was that the planter and black populations mostly remained loyal to the British. Hugues’s strategy was almost wholly dependent on the locals; without their help, French forces acting in isolation could achieve little.20
The crushing of the French attempt on Dominica was a welcome fillip, but in the summer of 1795, in his headquarters on Martinique, Commander-in-Chief Vaughan was beset by problems. A lack of manpower remained the major concern. Reinforcements arriving in March and April increased Vaughan’s total force in the region to 6,750 men. This was still well short of Dundas’s objective of an army 10,000 strong and only approximately two-thirds of the available force was fit for duty. The new arrivals, as Vaughan was quick to point out to Dundas, were of poor quality and unlikely to survive the sickly season. ‘It is only filling the hospitals and deceiving yourselves to send out raw or newly trained levies’. Unable to give any help to St Lucia, St Vincent and Grenada, the commander-in-chief was increasingly vulnerable on Martinique where his rapidly shrinking army was little deterrent against Hugues’ inspired insurgencies. In June, Vaughan finally received permission to raise West India Regiments on the island but it was too late for him to act as he soon became one more victim of disease.
Vaughan’s successor, Robert Irving, inherited a toxic command. The dramatic mortality continued and desperate appeals in early July to Major General Gordon Forbes to spare some of his 2,000 men bound for Saint Domingue fell on deaf ears. By 1 August, there were less than 3,000 fit soldiers in the Windward and Leeward garrisons. Just as Vaughan had done before him, Irving tried to impress the reality of the situation on ministers at home, informing Dundas that to retrieve St Vincent and Grenada and restore order to all the islands would require 20,000 men of whom only half would be likely to survive the campaign. With no hope of such reinforcement, Irving tried to mobilise the black regiments, but the planters were by now disillusioned with the British and little inclined to hand over their slaves. The arrival of the 40th, 59th, and 79th Regiments at the end of September was welcome but the new commander-in-chief, Major General Leigh, had no more answers than his predecessors. The constant threat was underlined by the landing of 60 Republicans at Vauclin on the south-east aspect of Martinique in early December. An initial sortie by a detachment of the 2nd Queens under the command of Major Lord Dalhousie was repulsed before a subsequent attack with the support of black rangers led to the capture of enemy forces and the hasty return of planned Republican reinforcements to St Lucia and Guadeloupe. Poyen attributes the French failure to the lack of local assistance.21
This completes the sorry account of events in the Windward Islands in 1795. Fortescue concludes that the campaign was, in its later stages, ‘perhaps the most discreditable that is to be found in the records of the British Army’. He places the blame on the shoulders of the politicians whose aspirations for military control of the colonies were not backed up by the necessary battalions. We must now turn to leeward and the island of Jamaica and the colony of Saint Domingu
e. We have made little allusion to Jamaica. Here, white society had so far been spared the worst ravages of the French Revolution, but the colonial population was nervous, provoked by the abolitionist campaign in England. The island’s Maroons, particularly the Trelawny Maroons in the north-east (see Chapter 2), were also agitated. Kept in check since a treaty of 1738, their control was now devolved to one man, Major John James, Superintendant General of the entire Maroon community. James was popular with the Maroons but he performed his duties in a desultory manner, apparently more interested in a property he owned 25 miles from Maroon Town (Trelawny Town). After a 57-year period during which the Maroons’ freedom and independence had been gradually eroded, the summer of 1795 provided the catalysts for revolt. They had three main grievances; the Assembly’s dismissal of the insubordinate James, the indignity suffered when two Maroon men were whipped for alleged hog stealing, and the desire for more land to support their growing numbers.
Death Before Glory Page 12
