Death Before Glory

by Martin Howard

  The French were estimated to be 6,000 strong, a mixture of regulars and militia spread between Basse Terre (Guadeloupe) and Grande Terre. Leith’s plan was to land three columns at separate points on Basse Terre and to prevent the enemy concentrating their forces. Accordingly, the first landing was made on 8 August at Anse Saint Sauveur to the south of Capesterre (see map 6). Here, 850 Royal York Rangers under Lieutenant Colonel Stark threatened the enemy’s rear. Later the same day, the 1st and 2nd Brigades were landed at Grande Anse on the southern tip of the island. This was facilitated by a preliminary bombardment from the sea, a gunboat being lost in the tremendous surf. French forces fell back inland to Dole, their morale undermined by rumours of Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo and the ineptitude of their commander Colonel Boyer-Peyreleau. On the morning of the 9th, British troops moved in two columns on Dole and Palmiste, turning the enemy flanks and forcing them back to their main position at Morne Houel where they had eight guns.

  Whilst the 1st and 2nd Brigades made progress to the south, Douglas landed the 3rd Brigade at Baillif to the north of Basseterre with instructions to seize the latter town and threaten the enemy’s rear. The light company of the 63rd pushed forward valiantly on to the heights, repulsing the attack of 300 of the enemy. Intelligence was now received that French troops on Grande Terre were endeavouring to reinforce their beleaguered comrades on Morne Houel. This also raised the possibility of the combined French forces falling back on the strong point of Fort Matilda and Leith promptly responded by sending a detachment of the 1st West India Regiment to line the banks of the River Gallion and block the French advance. Night fell, the men of both armies saturated by the torrential rain. After what Leith described as ‘these laborious movements’, the columns were readied for the attack on the formidable position of Morne Houel at daybreak. The French defenders were heavily outnumbered, less than 500 men of the 62nd Ligne remaining. At 11pm, Linois attempted to surrender but Leith refused. On the morning of the 10th, as the troops started to move off, a white flag was seen on Morne Houel. Leith’s demand that this should be replaced by the Union flag was met and the last fight against Napoleon’s soldiers was over.

  As the ex-Emperor sailed for St Helena on the Northumberland, the articles for the capitulation of Guadeloupe were agreed. The terms were harsh, the French having to give up all their eagles, flags, magazines, arms and ‘treasures’. Colonel Boyer-Peyreleau was discovered hiding in a wine cellar and, according to Captain John Anderson of the York Chasseurs, was treated with kindness. This was generous as the Bonapartists had planned to mark Napoleon’s 46th birthday, 15 August, by executing their Royalist prisoners. Leith gradually restored order, reporting to Bathurst that the ‘sanguinary phrenzy’ of the slaves incited by the French had dissipated. The third conquest of Guadeloupe had cost 16 men killed and 40 wounded.18

  Martinique and Guadeloupe were both restored to France in the second Treaty of Paris, signed on 20 November 1815. France was handled more severely after Waterloo than in the first treaty signed six months earlier, but the final distribution of the West Indian colonies was unchanged. Britain returned all its conquests except for Tobago, St Lucia, Trinidad and the former Dutch colonies of Berbice, Demerara and Essequibo. The restoration of Martinique and Guadeloupe helped to give the new Bourbon regimen some credibility and the retention of the St Lucia naval base enabled French colonies to be closely observed. These arrangements also acknowledged wider European sensibilities. The settlement proved to be successful; after a generation of almost constant war, Europeans now enjoyed a generation of near-continuous peace.19

  Recruiting to the Army. The West Indies was an unpopular destination and recruits were often reluctant and of poor quality.

  The capture of Tobago, 1793.

  Lieutenant General Sir Charles Grey.

  Vice Admiral Sir John Jervis.

  A View of Fort Louis, Martinique.

  The storming of Fort Louis in February 1794. Captain Faulkner leads his men across the beach.

  Plan of the military fortifications on Morne Fortune, St Lucia, 1781. Made for Commander-in-Chief Sir John Vaughan with a list of repairs appended.

  Batteries at the entrance of the Carnage, St Lucia. View from the La Toc battery.

  View of the bridge over the River Gallion from Fort Matilda, Guadeloupe, 1794.

  Victor Hugues recaptures Guadeloupe from the British in June 1794.

  A Maroon captain.

  A Maroon ambush on Jamaica, 1795.

  Lieutenant Colonel William Fitch who was killed in a Maroon ambush in 1795. The posthumous portrait shows Fitch with his sisters.

  Sir Ralph Abercromby.

  Rear Admiral Christian’s fleet battling the storms of late 1795.

  Toussaint Louverture.

  A coded letter written by Lieutenant Colonel Henry Clinton to his brother in London, 2 April 1796, Barbados. The letter describes plans for the attack on St Lucia. (National Army Museum)

  Lieutenant Colonel Henry Clinton’s sketch-map of the operations around Castries, St Lucia, April – May 1796. (National Army Museum)

  Polish troops in French service fighting black troops in Saint Domingue, 1802.

  Lieutenant General Sir George Beckwith.

  The British capture Martinique in 1809. A crude contemporary woodcut.

  A French view of the British attack on Martinique, 1809.

  A Private of the 5th West India Regiment.

  The 3rd West India Regiment in action against French troops on the Saints, 1809.

  Idealised view of Beckwith’s capture of Guadeloupe, 1810. Compare with Beckwith’s formal portrait, Illustration 20.

  Lieutenant Colonel Henry Clinton’s sketch-map of his voyage to the West Indies. He departed Portsmouth on 20 February 1796 and arrived at Barbados on 20 March. (National Army Museum)

  A street scene in St Pierre, Martinique, 1794.

  A typical market of the West Indies.

  The Torrid Zone or Blessings of Jamaica.

  French graveyard near Castries, St Lucia.

  SOLDIERS

  Chapter 8

  A Sense of Terror: Voyage and Arrival

  Most soldiers set out on their West Indian adventure with a heavy heart. The anxiety induced by the mere mention of the region was such that, on occasion, whole regiments took action to try and stay at home. In the mid-1790s units recruited in Essex and Newcastle refused to sign the muster book, the men of the 8th Regiment reported ill en masse, and rioting troops in Cork brought the city to a standstill, protesting that their conditions of service had been broken. When there was a delay before departure some chose to desert or disable themselves with self-inflicted wounds. Recruits from the militia were eventually promised that they would not have to serve outside Europe.

  This negativity is well reflected in the some of the diaries and journals written by soldiers destined for the Caribbean. John Moore acknowledged that the West Indies was ‘not popular’, but he was determined to ‘make no difficulties and not to give a handle to any people whatever to accuse me of backwardness’. Moore’s fortitude was shared by another officer who returned to Jamaica in 1807 after 33 years of active service. ‘I am a soldier and it shall never be said that John Irving sold out, because ordered to a climate where I have suffered so much, and which may be fatal to me’. Soldiers who were punished with West Indian service such as Andrew Bryson, convicted for treason after the 1798 Irish Rebellion, predictably took an even dimmer view of their fate; ‘…had it been left to myself I would have soon as been hanged as consented to have worn a Red Coat’. Sailors were no more optimistic. ‘We are bound for Grave’s End’ was a popular joke among tars leaving the London docks for the Caribbean. William Dillon admits that his fellow midshipmen were alarmed. Dillon’s colleagues were ‘talking of nothing else but the yellow fever’. ‘Death stares them in the face’, he tells us. There is no doubt that it was the profound fear of a lingering demise from disease that gave West Indian service its particular odium. George Pinckard,
an army physician who served in the region, describes the opinions prevalent in 1795:

  A degree of horror seems to have overspread the nation from the late destructive effects of the yellow-fever, or, what the multitude denominates the West India plague; insomuch that a sense of terror attaches to the very name of the West Indies – many, even, considering it synonymous with the grave; and, perhaps, it were not too much to say, that all, who have friends in the expedition, apprehend more from disease than the sword.

  Such discouraging sentiments I am sorry to find have not been concealed from the troops. The fearful farewell of desponding friends is every day, and hour, either heedlessly, or artfully sounded in their ears. People walking about the camp, attending at a review, or a parade, or merely upon seeing parties of soldiers in the streets are heard to exclaim, − ‘Ah, poor fellows! You are going to your last home! What a pity such brave men should go to that West India grave! – To that hateful climate to be killed by the plague! Poor fellows, good bye, farewell! We shall never see you back again!

  Assistant Inspector of Hospitals Hector McLean agreed that soldiers bound for the region were terrified by accounts of the infectious nature of yellow fever and that many thought themselves doomed.

  Well-connected officers might be protected from service in the Tropics. John Gaspard le Marchant was provisionally posted to the West Indies in 1797 with the 29th Light Dragoons, but he was instead appointed Lieutenant Colonel in the 7th Dragoons. ‘I would not have you go to a bad climate’, the King informed him, ‘and am glad of the opportunity of removing you’. Others escaped by serendipity. Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, was only spared a period in the Caribbean in 1796 by a sudden change in military planning which diverted his regiment, the 33rd Foot, to India.

  For some, the rousing prospect of adventure in a distant land outstripped all other considerations. Jonathan Leach remembers that the news of his regiment’s posting to the West Indies ‘caused some long faces among a few of our old hands who had previously served in that part of the world; but the greatest part of us being young and thoughtless, the order for moving, being a novelty, was received with pleasure rather than dislike’. For more thoughtful and ambitious men there was at least the hope of prize money and rapid advancement. Lieutenant Henry Sherwood of the 53rd was bent on gaining promotion, as he notes in his diary for 12 March 1798.

  Colonel Thornton was very kind and recommended my exerting myself to purchase a Lieutenancy which might be effected in a Regiment in the West Indies as the yellow fever was raging there and some difficulty found in filling up commissions in that country. He knew my determination was to run all risks in the way of my profession and so I ought to get on as fast as possible.

  These sentiments were shared by other European soldiers. Officier de Santé André Nicolas-Joseph Guilmot went to Saint Domingue to ‘make his fortune’, hoping that in such a remote place he might jump several grades in the medical hierarchy.

  Many had more basic aspirations, trying to convince themselves and those close to them that they were going to survive their exposure to the West Indies. George Pinckard, very well aware of the dangers, insisted that ‘not withstanding all the depressing rumours of the moment, and the trembling alarm of friends and relatives, I do not feel the slightest personal apprehension…I shall embark with confident assurance of returning to my friends and to old England’. Lieutenant Thomas St Clair, bound for Demerara, faced his foreign service with a ‘joyous heart’, undaunted by a lecture from his mother regarding the perils of the climate. In trying to reassure another anxious parent, Lieutenant Colonel Edward Pakenham resorted to quoting the literature of the enemy, ‘…I confess myself a disciple of the wise doctor Pangloss, viz “Every things for the best”. In 1806, Lieutenant Edward Teasdale of the 54th wrote from Colchester barracks to his mother that he ‘didn’t mind much’ about going to the West Indies, ‘…if I should never come back I leave it with you to dispose of what property I have left’.1

  The voyage to the Caribbean most often departed from the large naval stations of the south of England, the cities of Portsmouth, Southampton and Plymouth. Lieutenant Thomas Phipps Howard of the York Hussars found the Portsmouth of 1795 to be ‘one of the finest and most commodious’ ports in the country. The fortifications were extensive and formidable. The shops were well stocked and there were several good inns and a playhouse. He notes that the ‘principle commodity’ of the place was women, ‘…of which there is no want & constant market’. George Pinckard agreed that many of the local populace eked out an existence by fleecing the endless stream of hapless soldiers and sailors. The city, he says, verified its reputation for ‘unpleasantness and vulgar immorality’. During times of peace, grass grew in the streets but when a fleet arrived or departed it was suddenly busy with the emergence of ‘a class of low and abandoned beings, who seem to have declared war against every habit of common decency and decorum’. The doctor preferred Southampton and Quartermaster William Surtees of the Rifles describes the Plymouth of 1814 in surprisingly complimentary terms – ‘…we met with every kindness from the inhabitants in general who are upon the whole, I think, an excellent and a moral people’ – but it seems most likely that all the major ports were dens of iniquity.

  Embarkation was rarely straightforward. A naval captain, writing from Portsmouth in 1794, complains that the army’s officers were unable to embark their men in an organised manner. Too much was left to chance and even senior soldiers were ignorant of what a ship was capable of carrying. It had, he lamented, been so in all the wars he had participated in. Certainly, the eyewitness accounts of officers’ departures to the West Indies are often testaments to poor planning. The proficient John Moore became embroiled in the mess, as is revealed by his Plymouth journal entry for 4 March 1796; ‘The fleet was to sail the next morning; I had nothing prepared, and did not even know in what ship I could get a passage’. He obtained a berth on a transport only by gaining the help of a commissioner of the Transport Board; ‘It was not pleasant when I was going upon the King’s service to be obliged thus to solicit a passage…’ Pinckard had a ship but could not find it, spending a frustrating day with a medical colleague rowing across the fleet at Portsmouth. He eventually learnt from the Transport Office that it had sailed for Cork and he had to seek an alternative, ultimately embarking on the Ulysses at Spithead. He well relates the mounting anticipation and near chaos as the fleet prepared to depart.

  …multitudes pressing into, and overflowing the shops – people running against, or tumbling over each other upon the streets – loud disputes and quarrelling – the sadness of parting – greetings of friends, unexpectedly met, and as suddenly about to separate − sailors quitting their trulls [prostitutes] – drunkards reeling – boatmen wrangling – boats overloaded and upset – the tide beating in heavy sprays upon the shore – persons running and hurrying in every direction, for something new, or something forgot – some cursing the boatmen for not pushing off with more speed and others beseeching and imploring them to stop a minute longer.

  The sailing of the fleet was signalled by the firing of guns, but this system was prone to error. Surgeon James McGrigor describes the scene in Portsmouth in 1795 where 200 sail destined for the Mediterranean were mixed with Admiral Christian’s fleet bound for the Caribbean. ‘The signals now made were for the former; but this not being generally understood, much confusion ensued; so that a great many of the transports for the West Indies got under way, in the belief also, that the signal was for us’. McGrigor hired a sloop and, unable to find his own ship, the Jamaica, he opportunistically boarded the Betsey off the Isle of Wight and proceeded to Barbados. As this ship had also inadvertently left officers behind he was well lodged and the men of the 48th Regiment provided him with shirts and stockings and other necessities left ashore. In a similar vein, William Surtees and his comrades lost all their carefully acquired provisions when the ship they had joined sailed so precipitately that the vital supplies were thrown about
the deck and destroyed. The soldiers received little sympathy from the ship’s crew and Surtees was left to rue that such things were commonplace in a soldier’s life. ‘It was therefore vain to fret’.

  No doubt there must have been significant numbers of officers and men who set sail for the Caribbean uneventfully. It is the nature of eyewitness records that they emphasise the unfortunate or extraordinary. However, it does seem that uncertainty persisted once the troops were aboard, not least regarding their destination. Surtees, actually on a voyage to Barbados, believed that he was probably headed for America but no one could be sure, ‘…the nature of the service being kept a profound secret, we scarcely knew what articles of equipment to prepare’. Lieutenant Colonel Archibald Campbell of the 29th, awaiting his departure from Plymouth in 1795, bemoaned the fact that despite being embarked for a week he had no idea why. That it was a West Indian expedition did not become clear until the transports were off Cape Finisterre. Private John Simpson of the Black Watch watched the men of his regiment ‘breaking open their instructions’ in the Channel to discover that they were going to Barbados. When the York Hussars embarked at Portsmouth in 1795 they were pleased that they were bound for the English capital. On the third day afloat, staff officers read the orders that they were to proceed immediately to Saint Domingue. Norbert Landsheit admits that he and his German countrymen had not the least idea where this was; ‘…the colonel, who followed the cortege, explained that it was a place where gold and silver abounded; and that the King of England sent us to that favoured spot, in order that we might return, each man with a fortune’. Misinformation took various forms, perhaps the most extreme being the case of the 87th Regiment which, in 1797, was told that it was going to the Cape of Good Hope rather than its true destination of the Caribbean in order to ensure a more orderly and complete embarkation.2