Death Before Glory

by Martin Howard

  The grip was tightened on 9 February when St Pierre in the north capitulated to a detachment of the 63rd Regiment under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Barnes. The troops had been carried up the coast in a small naval convoy and marched into the town unopposed, accepting the surrender of the French National Guard commander. The bombardment of Fort Desaix commenced at 3pm on Sunday, 19 February; 14 pieces of heavy cannon and 28 mortars and howitzers opened fire. Sailors helped to construct and man the British batteries, among them James Scott.

  The embrasures were unmasked, and at the prescribed moment bang went one of the twenty-four pounders, and the swallow-tailed flag proudly fluttered over our heads. The next shot was the signal to commence, and in one instant the din and roar of shot and shell from all quarters was stunning. The besieged appeared determined to keep pace with us; their fire was well kept up, and the accuracy with which they dropped their shells into our battery obliged us now and then to discontinue the fire of some of our pieces to repair our embrasures and parapets. For four hours the discharge was uninterrupted, when the guns became so heated that we were forced to slacken our fire.

  Thomas Browne believed that 500 shells and large quantities of roundshot were fired into the fort in the course of the day.

  Behind the walls, Villaret was undaunted, ‘We have replied [to British fire] with a vivacity and a precision which has astonished the English…’ Over the next days the British bombardment continued relentlessly, Villaret estimating on the 21st that he had received more than 2,500 roundshot and shells in the previous 24 hours. The French commander ordered a sortie against British forward positions, but this achieved little and when one of his powder magazines blew up the situation was deteriorating rapidly. By the 23rd, Villaret was forced to admit that the enemy fire was ‘more lively than ever’ whilst his own had been almost extinguished by the loss of cannons and the poor state of the batteries. At daybreak on the 24th, three white flags appeared on the ramparts and the French flag was hauled down. Villaret had accepted the inevitable and was ready to talk. His initial demands were rejected, but the articles of capitulation – that the garrison should march out with the honours of war and the commander and his aides-de-camp be allowed to return to France – were soon agreed.

  Total British casualties for the Martinique campaign amounted to around 550 of all ranks killed, wounded and missing. The heaviest losses were suffered by the 7th, the 23rd, and the Light Infantry Battalion, the latter unit made up mostly of black troops. A hospital return for the month of February shows 380 admissions for gunshot wounds and a slightly larger number of disease cases, mainly ‘fevers’ and ‘fluxes’. There remained the fate of the 2,500 French prisoners. They were marched down to the transports on the 25th, their behaviour catching the attention of Drummer Richard Bentinck, ‘…though having so shortly before parted with their Eagles [four regimental eagles were captured by the British], [they] were seen laughing and singing and dancing on the decks, just as they would have done in any little cabaret near Paris…’

  Their optimism was misplaced. It had originally been agreed that they would be sent to Quiberon Bay and exchanged, but Napoleon’s refusal to release British captives scuppered the arrangement and all those who were fit enough to make the voyage, over 2,000 men, were dispatched to England. On his return to France, Villaret was tried and stripped of his rank. Beckwith and Cochrane basked in the glow of a well-managed and triumphant campaign. The general declared that his 27-day command at Martinique would be a source of pride for the remainder of his life and he thanked the navy for their ‘indefatigable exertions’. The admiral reciprocated, stressing the amicable collaboration between the services, ‘…British troops led on by such officers as we have had the Happiness of serving with in the Reduction of this Island, are invincible…’13

  The smell of success rarely lingered long in the spice-scented air of the Caribbean and Beckwith was soon grappling with the usual manpower issues. He requested a 3,000 strong garrison for Martinique but Prevost’s division was sent back to Nova Scotia and he was under pressure to provide soldiers to help man the fleet. In early April, a French squadron of three sail of the line and two frigates from L’Orient took shelter in the Saints, islands to the south of Guadeloupe (see map 6). Here they were blockaded by Cochrane. Beckwith immediately sent a corps of 2,800 men under the command of Maitland to cooperate with the navy in the reduction of the islands and capture of the French shipping. Maitland sailed from Fort Royal Bay on 12 April and landed two days later on Terre en Haut (Terre-de-Haut), the most easterly of the small island chain. The French garrison on the Saints was surprisingly strong, but it did include a significant number of raw conscripts destined for the 66th ligne. These forces were usually distributed between the several French forts on Terre en Haut and the neighbouring smaller island of Cabrit.

  Once ashore, Maitland found that the enemy were established in force on Mount Russell, at 800 feet the most elevated point on Terre en Haut. This was a daunting natural obstacle, the slope at an angle of 50 degrees and covered with bush and prickly pear. The invaders were distracted by a cannonade from Cabrit. Maitland ordered the rifle companies of the 3rd Regiment and of the 4th Battalion 60th Regiment to dislodge the enemy, a task they performed with élan, inflicting heavy losses. The British general now had the high ground, able to survey the French forts of Napoleon and Morelle on the northern aspect of Terre en Haut and the troublesome works on Cabrit. Batteries were constructed and a fire opened on the French squadron which soon fled, chased by Cochrane.

  It was difficult to make progress along the west side of the island and Maitland therefore re-embarked the bulk of his troops and landed close to Fort Napoleon. A detachment left ashore was ordered to descend from Mount Russell to dislodge the enemy and protect the landing site. Mortar batteries pounded the enemy forces. On the night of the 15th, French piquets were driven from a ridge between the forts of Napoleon and Morelle and the short campaign was in its final phase. The denouement is described by Maitland.

  …about eight next morning [17 April] the enemy advanced from Forts Napoleon and Morelle to recover this Ground. A Sharp Action took place, the whole of the York Rangers and the Rifle Companies of the 60th supporting our Black Troops. The Ground lay open in great Part to the Grape Shot from Forts Napoleon and Morelle and to Round Shot from Islet de Cabrit, but all our Troops were undaunted; none were more brave or active than the Flank companies of the 3rd West India Regiment, and a Flank company of the 8th West India under Major Allen. The enemy was driven back with loss and our Possession of the Ground completely secured.

  By noon the French had surrendered and by late afternoon the forts were flying British flags. Maitland’s slick occupation of the Saints had cost only six men killed and 68 wounded. Poyen gives French losses as six killed, two wounded and eight sick, but this is very likely a gross underestimate.14

  Beckwith had the small prize and now he wanted Guadeloupe. He was given lukewarm approval for the new campaign in September, ministers specifying that it must be ‘easy of accomplishment’. His soldiers were sickly but he could still bring together just over 7,000 men, the small army divided into two divisions and a reserve. The First Division, under the command of Major General Thomas Hislop, was made up of a 3rd Brigade (2nd Light Infantry Battalion, 90th, 8th West India Regiment) and a 4th Brigade (detachments of 13th and 63rd, York Light Infantry Volunteers, 4th West India Regiment): the Second Division, under Major General George Harcourt, of a 1st Brigade (1st Light Infantry Battalion, 15th, battalion companies 3rd West India Regiment) and a 2nd Brigade (Grenadiers Battalion, 25th, 6th West India Regiment): and the Reserve, under Brigadier General Charles Wale, of the 5th Brigade (Grenadiers Battalion, Royal York Rangers, Royal Artillery). We have less detail of French forces on Guadeloupe. General Ernouf probably had 8−9,000 men for the defence of the whole colony. They were mostly stationed near to the critical stronghold of the town of Basseterre. Beckwith later estimated that he was opposed by 3,000 troops in t
his area.

  Cochrane and Beckwith sailed from Martinique on 22 January 1810. After a 48-hour delay at Prince Rupert’s, Dominica, due to some transports having fallen to leeward, Guadeloupe was reached on the 27th. The First Division and Reserve anchored near the islet of Gozier and came ashore near Capesterre (see map 6) meeting no opposition. Hislop’s force then marched south and reached Trois Rivières; the French briefly threatened to defend some fortified positions but they abandoned these posts ‘with precipitation’ leaving the ordnance behind. Remaining at Trois Rivières until 2 February to allow the landing of provisions from the fleet, the corps then marched in two columns to take the heights of Palmiste a few miles to the east of Basseterre. On the following day, Beckwith crossed the River Gallion and posted his men on the roads leading northward from the town.

  The Second Division under Harcourt had made a feint against Trois Rivières before heading north and landing at Vieux Habitants on 30 January. Harcourt’s corps moved inland threatening the rear of Ernouf’s right flank and forcing the enemy back over the Bridge of Noziere on the River Noire. By 3 February, Ernouf was hemmed in. Basseterre and its fort (the Fort Matilda of 1796) was the key to the colony and the French general had concentrated his troops, mostly militia and new recruits, in the mountains to the north-east. This position allowed him to threaten the British flanks and force his enemy to tackle him before approaching the town. He was now faced by the British First Division on a ridge to the south and the Second Division a little further to the west on the ridge of Beaupaire. A French sortie was beaten back with some ease, but Beckwith hesitated to make a direct assault. Ernouf had intelligently selected and fortified his position, his left apparently covered by the mountains and a river in his front. Beckwith was faced with a difficult decision.

  The Enemy being now compressed within narrow Limits, the Difficulty, (and that a considerable one), was the passage of the River Noire, to the Defence of which he had paid the utmost Attention; it appeared to me to be necessary to turn his Left by the Mountains not withstanding all the Obstructions of Nature and of Art which opposed this decision.

  The onerous task was given to General Wale and the Reserve, who immediately benefitted from some luck. Wales’s dispatch reveals that he met an ‘intelligent Guide who promised at the Forfeiture of his own Life to lead my Brigade across the River [Noire] at less than Half the Distance of the originally intended Route…’ The guide’s only condition was that the march should be made in the day as the road was difficult. At 4 o’clock on the 3rd, Wale set off with the Royal York Rangers, the Grenadier Battalion ordered to make a diversion to the left.

  We proceeded to the Banks of the River without meeting any Resistance from the enemy but a few random shot and shell. The Pass of the River de la Pere [actually the River Noire, a branch of the des Pères] was by Nature most difficult, and was made still more so by Abbatis lined by Troops and every possible Obstruction thrown in our Way. Here it was the Enemy opened their Fire of Musketry; but our brave Troops, superior to all Difficulties, soon forced this Passage. Having passed the River, we continued our March for about 100 Yards through rugged Rocks and Bushes, when the front Companies branched off into three Columns rapidly ascending the Heights, the three leading Companies reserving their Fire till they gained the same, the Remainder firing to their Flanks on the Enemy, but still following the Van; as we approached the Summit of the Height, the Ascent became more difficult, and about 500 of the enemy’s best Troops poured down upon us a most destructive Fire.

  Major Henderson, with the Three Companies who first ascended the Heights, found the Enemy posted behind Abbatis and Stockaded Redoubts. This intrepid Officer did not return the Fire of the enemy till within about Twenty-Five Yards Distance, and immediately closed with them, followed by the rest of the Regiment, and in a few minutes completely routed them; it was about One Hour and a Half from our being first engaged with the enemy.

  It was 90 minutes that settled the fate of Guadeloupe. Beckwith’s bold strategy and the bravery of the Reserve had left Ernouf with little choice but to surrender which he promptly did, the capitulation being signed on 6 February. The garrison, by now much reduced in size, was accorded the honours of war. Ernouf was sent to England before being exchanged and returned to France to face the inevitable inquest into the loss of another French Caribbean possession. British losses were 52 killed, 250 wounded and seven missing. The gallant Royal York Rangers suffered almost half of these casualties. Enemy losses were estimated at around 600 sick and wounded and a ‘considerable number’ killed and missing. It was a second notable triumph for Beckwith which, as he pointed out in his dispatch, had been achieved in eight days against a strong enemy position in difficult country with little artillery support. The British commander quickly followed up the subjugation of Guadeloupe by seizing the much smaller islands of St Martin and St Eustatius in mid-February. The two minimal garrisons, a mixture of French and Dutch troops, surrendered without resistance.15

  In early 1810, Fortescue’s vision of the Caribbean as an ‘English lake’ was close to fruition. Beckwith was left to oversee several years of relative inactivity in the region. The threat from France was almost non-existent but West Indian waters remainder troubled. There were 17 separate British garrisons on the islands and there remained the potential for a repeat of the insurrections of 1795; in 1811, an uprising on Martinique was quickly suppressed. Beckwith’s calls for high-quality reinforcements – two good British battalions – fell on deaf ears, the Secretary of State for War, Lord Liverpool, informing him that there would be no additions to the 10,000 troops in the Leeward and Windward Islands. Men were urgently needed for the Peninsula and to replace those lost from ‘Walcheren fever’. In vain did Beckwith retort that the West Indies was ‘a perpetual Walcheren’. The Government trusted that British naval superiority was a sufficient deterrent to French attack. In truth, the West Indies had been relegated to the second division of military policy, overtaken by the wars in Europe and insecurities at home. In late 1813, Castlereagh confided to Lord Cathcart that, ‘Antwerp and Flushing out of the hands of France are worth twenty Martiniques in our own hands’.

  The hostilities in Europe culminated in the defeat of Napoleon in 1814 and the negotiation of the Treaty of Paris in May of the same year. Louis XVIII was restored to the throne of France and the former Emperor forced to accept the victors’ demands, his abdication being followed by incarceration on Elba. The terms of the treaty were surprisingly generous to France, the allies being willing to agree a moderate peace to conciliate the vanquished and to allow the establishment of secure government. This philosophy was reflected in the arrangements for the West Indies where all the captured French colonies were returned except St Lucia and Tobago. Dutch colonies were also handed back. British ministers were not entirely convinced by this magnanimity, but they were talked round by Castlereagh, even allowing the payment of a million pounds to Sweden to give up a claim on Guadeloupe so that this island could also be unequivocally French.

  In the event, the allies achieved little by such moderation. Factions in France remained loyal to Napoleon and British celebrations at the demise of her nemesis were cut short by his escape from Elba and landing in southern France in March 1815. The subsequent Hundred Days campaign and Napoleon’s final defeat are ground well trodden by historians, but it is less well known that there was also fighting in the West Indies, the last action in the third British invasion of Guadeloupe taking place 53 days after the Battle of Waterloo.16

  Military intervention was catalysed by the presence of significant numbers of Napoleonic sympathisers on the islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe. When the news of Napoleon’s escape filtered through to the Caribbean, Britain had to act to ensure the French colonies’ continued allegiance to Louis XVIII. Sir James Leith, the commander in the Leeward Islands, was making a tour of the area in a frigate when he received intelligence of the extraordinary events in France. He quickly returned to Barbados to prepare the army for an
y necessary action. On reaching Martinique in late May 1815 he found the situation on the island to be critical.

  …for the troops of the line, consisting of thirteen hundred men, who possessed the forts, showed too much of the same disposition which had manifested itself in France. The majority of the officers were decidedly for Bonaparte, some putting up the tri-coloured cockade, and others, with similar sentiments, less avowed, pretending that they only wished to return to France.

  Fortunately, the island’s French governor, the Comte de Vaugiraud was a staunch royalist and had already taken steps to defuse the situation, threatening that any disobedience would be punished as an act of mutiny against Louis XVIII. Leith quickly reached a cordial agreement with Vaugiraud such that 2,000 British troops were landed on the colony to occupy Fort Royal, Fort Bourbon and other key posts. This was an auxiliary force, the island remaining under the sovereignty of the French King and Vaugiraud in charge of its government. The local militia, 6,000 strong, and the British officers adopted the cocarde blanche in a demonstration of their allegiance. On 10 June, Leith wrote to the Secretary of State, Earl Bathurst, reassuring him that the island was pacified.17

  Vaugiraud urged Admiral Comte de Linois, the governor of Guadeloupe, to follow his example. At first, Linois also professed fidelity to his sovereign but he fell under the influence of his second-in-command, the Bonapartist Colonel Boyer-Peyreleau. On 18 June 1815, the day of Waterloo, the tricolour was raised and Guadeloupe declared for the Emperor. Receiving news of the coup, Leith immediately collected as many troops as he could find to suppress it. The general, a Peninsular veteran, had to be obdurate as his naval colleague, Rear Admiral Sir Charles Durham was dubious of attempting a landing at that time of year, July through to September being the hurricane months. The British expeditionary force was assembled on the Saints. It was divided into three brigades, commanded by Major Generals Sir Charles Shipley, Edward Stehelin, and Robert Douglas and made up of the following units; 1/15th, 1/25th, 1/63rd, The Royal West India Rangers, The York Chasseurs, Royal York Rangers and detachments of the 1st West India Regiment.