40
Published in the United States of America, 1941.© Curtis Jacobs, 2003.
HTML last revised 22nd November, 2003.
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The Brigands' War - also called 'The Second Carib War' - took place in the Eastern Caribbean, particularly in the Windward Islands, between 1794 and 1798. Today, it is an almost forgotten episode in the history of the then mortal struggle between Britain and France throughout the eighteenth century, for control of this sub-region of the Caribbean.
The origins of this conflict, however, go back even further then the eighteenth century and into the very beginning of the European presence. Whereas the Spaniards quickly subdued the indigenous peoples of the Greater Antilles of the west Caribbean, those of the eastern Caribbean had held up the advance of European colonisation for two centuries. After the original Spanish colonisers had effectively passed from the scene, the indigenous peoples found themselves in a three-cornered contest between the rival colonialisms of Britain and France. This lasted from around 1625 to 1796.1
St Vincent was caught in the middle of this conflict. By the end of the seventeenth century, however, a new people had emerged on the island. According to Shephard, around 1675, a slave ship was wrecked on the coast of what is known today as Bequia. The survivors of this shipwreck were then accepted by the indigenous peoples who then inhabited the island. Through inter-marriage between the two peoples, a new people appeared. They were called the 'Black Caribs' as distinct from the 'Yellow Caribs,' the original inhabitants.2
These indigenous peoples and their African-descended cousins succeeded in keeping the Europeans at bay for a time, to the point where both British and French were forced to recognise St Vincent as one of several 'Neutral Islands' at the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.3 At the end of the Seven Years' War (1756-63), the British right to St Vincent was conceded by the French, along with Grenada, the Grenadines, Dominica, and Tobago. Together, they were called the 'Ceded Islands', which Britain organised as the 'Government of Grenada' in 1763.
The Seven Years' War was probably the most decisive of the Anglo-French colonial wars of the eighteenth century. The French lost to the British in India, North America (Canada) and the eastern Caribbean. However, the vanquished French never lost interest in these territories and only waited for time and circumstance for the opportunity to regain them.
If the French had, albeit grudgingly, accepted British rule of St Vincent, the so-called 'Black Caribs' did not. They challenged the British at every opportunity, even to the point of attacking those officials sent out to survey the land and organise the territory.
It was not surprising that open warfare broke out between the indigenous peoples and the British, who, under military pressure, were forced to propose terms of peace, which, were signed on 17 February 1773. This treaty was based upon the treaty between the British and the Maroons of Jamaica several decades before. Under the terms of the 1773 treaty, the indigenous people recognised George III as their sovereign. They were also required to come to the King's assistance in times of emergency. These terms would assume great legal significance more than twenty years later, but for the moment, the treaty confirmed the loss of some "4,414 squares of good land." They however retained their right to exist as an independent nation and to an area of reduced territory in the northern third of the island.4
Five years of uneasy peace followed, lasting until the War of the American Independence broke out in 1776. After France's entry into the war against the British, the indigenous peoples rose against their British rulers and assisted the French in recapturing the island in 1779. Under French rule, their lands were restored to them and in return helped the French in successfully resisting a British attempt to recapture the colony in 1780.5 Like the French of Grenada in 1783, the indigenous peoples and their French colonists were abandoned to the tender mercies of the British, to whom France ceded St Vincent at the Treaty of Versailles, which ended the War of the American Independence.
The restoration of British power in 1784 only served to exacerbate the tensions between the Black Caribs and British. The British rebuilt the military posts that had been constructed up to 1779 and which had been destroyed. The Caribs then revolted and it was only after reinforcements were brought in from Grenada that calm was restored.
British entry into the French Revolutionary War against France in 1793 made for renewed conflict in St Vincent. Matters came to a head in 1794, with the arrival of Victor Hugues and a small force from France. The French arrived off the coast of Guadeloupe in June 1794, only to find that the British under Grey and Jervis had already captured France's entire eastern Caribbean Empire.6 Hugues managed to land on Guadeloupe and captured the colony after fierce fighting. From this position, Hugues began to not only recapture lost French territory but also to take the war to the British. The period of Hugues's attempt to recapture territories lost to the British and to capture British territory, is called 'The Brigands' War.' William Dyott, a British Lieutenant whose first active service was in the Grenada theatre of Brigands' War - and who later became a General and aide-de-camp to King George III - described the 'brigands' in 1796 as "emancipated slaves and whites of extreme democratic principles."7
Hugues was officially sent out to the Windwards to implement the 'le Decret du 16 pluviôse' in France's colonies in the eastern Caribbean. This decree was, in effect, the ratification of the unilateral declaration of Sonthonax in St. Domingue of August 29, 1793. Faced with invasion by the British and threatened by internal enemies, the French Commissioner declared emancipation of the some half million enslaved Africans in the still French colony. This created an army of more or less similar size to resist the red-coated British invaders.
When Sonthonax's decision came before the French National Convention on the 16 day of pluviôse of the French Revolutionary calendar (February 5, 1794), the situation had changed. The British had invaded France's colonies in the eastern Caribbean. The Convention not only ratified the decision taken in St. Domingue; slavery was declared abolished in all of France's colonies and all persons domiciled therein, regardless of origin, Citizens of the Republic of France.8
This is the decree that Hugues was sent out by the French National Convention to implement in the Windward Islands - Les Îles Du Vent - from 1794. To aid him in this task, Hugues brought several powerful weapons: a printing press and a guillotine, which, according to the British military historian Sir John Fortescue, was the only guillotine that operated outside of France during the revolutionary period.9
Hugues's real objective, however, was to regain France's empire in the eastern Caribbean. In order to accomplish this task, Hugues adopted the strategy of recruiting to his cause those people and groups that had long had grievances living under British rule, and reviving long-standing relationships that existed between groups and the French. In St Vincent, the French faced the situation where there were people with whom they had maintained long-standing friendships and were also discontented with British rule. These made for a close alliance in 1794-95.
Hugues, however, was the representative of a country and government that on one level, had been locked in a struggle with Britain throughout the eighteenth century, and despite France being in the throes of revolution during this period, had not abandoned their ambitions for territorial expansion.
On the other hand, the groups nursing long-standing grievances over British rule were not, in the first instance, concerned with France's colonial ambitions. Their immediate aim was the redress of their respective grievances.
The documents that have survived show the complicated nature of the relationships that Hugues was required to cultivate and maintain as he strove for France's survival as a colonial power in the Caribbean. His situation was rendered even more uncertain after July 1794 - the revolutionary month of 'Thermidor' - when the leader of the Jacobins and his mentor, Maximilien Robespierre, fell from power and was himself executed on the guillotine. During the fourteen month period called 'The Thermidorean Reaction' Hugues faced the situation where the government in France had changed but in the colonies the government remained Jacobin. Had Hugues been in France, he would have certainly followed Robespierre, Saint-Just and Couthon to the guillotine. In the eastern Caribbean, however, he managed to maintain an aggressive French presence while France itself the Revolution was over and events were moving towards reaction. As such, his situation did not receive as high a priority in Paris as his British counterparts did in London.
The French documents on the period of 'The Brigands' War' are, collectively, one of the remaining frontiers for historians of the Anglophone Caribbean. In France itself, they lie in the Centre d'Archives d'Outre Mer (C.A.O.M.) at Aix-en-Provence, in pristine condition, strong evidence that they have not been studied much by historians during the last 200 years. They make interesting reading for several reasons. The first is that they were meant for the eyes of Frenchmen only. The authors of these dispatches knew that these documents were never certain to arrive safely in France. The British navy controlled much of the Atlantic, and French ships were likely to be captured before they reached France. As such, the language appears to have been deliberately garbled so as to confuse readers unfamiliar with the French language. While that was a useful technique to confuse the British, for researchers in the twenty-first century they present special problems of deciphering first, translating second.
The documents that relate to the French involvement in The Brigands' War are comprised of two main groups. The former is that set of dispatches between Guadeloupe and Victor Hugues and the revolutionaries at St Vincent. These documents are, in the main, are concerned with the keeping the Vincentians supplied with sufficient arms, ammunition and money. The latter are comprised of those from Guadeloupe and Paris. These are, in the main, reports of developments in the colony, and the progress of the French efforts to bring this territory under French control.
The documents consulted for the present paper are, for the most part, drawn from the latter. Time and circumstances did not permit an examination of the former in time for the present conference. They relate, for the most part, to the period June 1794 to August 1796. This covers the major period of The Brigands' War in St Vincent (March 1795 to June 1796).
The evidence strongly suggests that, although Hugues's agents had made contact with the major groups dissatisfied with British rule in St Vincent (and Grenada), the immediate drive to revolutionary violence did not arise from the instructions from Hugues himself. The actual impulse came in fact from Grenada. Fédon's Rebellion broke out during March 2-3, 1795. Within twenty-four hours, the revolutionaries had captured the Lieutenant Governor and members of the upper echelons of Grenada's colonial establishment. The Acting Governor, Mackenzie, immediately sent out messages of distress to all neighbouring colonies, both British and Spanish.
Seton, the Governor of St Vincent, upon receipt of the news from Grenada, immediately summoned Chatoyer and other leaders of the Carib community to a meeting. This was undoubtedly in accordance with the 1773 Treaty, which required the Caribs to come to the King's assistance in times of emergency. Unknown to Seton, Chatoyer and his followers were themselves planning similar revolutionary action to their Grenadian counterparts. Chatoyer and his followers, thinking that their plot had been discovered, stalled for time and later declined to accept Seton's invitation, all the while accelerating their own plans for armed revolution.10
Shephard observes that the Caribs' joining the war on the side of the French against the British was the subject of doubt, particularly during the period immediately preceding Hugues's arrival in June 1794. This proclamation from Hugues, demonstrates the appeal that the French overtures had upon the Caribs after June 1794:
LIBERTY - LAW - EQUALITY
The Commissioners, delegated by the National Convention to the Windward Islands, to General Chatoyer, chief of a free nation [i.e., the Caribs of St Vincent].
The French nation in combating with despotism is allied to all free people: it desires nothing but liberty. It has always sustained the Caribs against the vile attempts of the English. The time is arrived when the ancient friendship between the French people and the Caribs ought to be renewed. They should exterminate their common enemy, the English.
We swear friendship and assistance in the name of the French nation to you and your comrades... Attack! Exterminate all the English in St Vincent; but give means to the French to second you. We have nominated citizen Toraille Captain, and citizen Michael Mather Lieutenant of the Infantry of the Republic.11
This was a general proclamation. According to Dubois, Hugues appointed Chatoyer, Chief of the Caribs, general in the army of France. In this message, Hugues declared the French position on what was perhaps the most important issue before the Caribs since the start of British colonial rule:
Victor Hugues leur avait envoyé des emissaires pour les inciter à la révolte et nommé général leur chef: "Chatouillet" - Dites à notre frère le général Chatouillet que la nation Française leur rendra les terres que les Anglaises ont usurpées sur eux.12
Victor Hugues had sent emissaries to incite them to revolt. "Tell our brother general Chatoyer that that the lands usurped from him by the English will be returned by the French nation."
Taken together, Hugues drew upon the historical ties that existed between the French and the Caribs, and the prospect of even closer ties. However, from the standpoint of his quest to conquer the island from the British, Dubois may have lost sight of the fact that the Caribs possessed issues and resources of their own. The issues of equality and that of land tenure were longstanding grievances of the Caribs. They stood to be redressed whether or not the French had decided to make war against the British during the period of the French revolution. The Caribs' decision to cast in their lot with the French was a strategic alliance with a major European nation to settle grievances of long standing. With the 'decree of pluviôse' France had created the archetype of the first super-state. As the National Convention had declared all persons living in all of France's colonies Citizens of the Republic of France, she had extended her boundaries beyond the 'natural' ones of the Pyrennes and the Rhine. The Republic was extended to any colony, as Hugues declared "conquered or to be conquered." In this declaration issued by Hugues and Lebas in both French and English, the French intentions were clearly stated:
Time and the defeat of the English forces in Guadeloupe have weakened the remembrance of the heinous crimes, by which the vile Satellites of George had sullied the Windward Islands... we 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 Declaration, the Assassination of each and every Individual 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, in the first Notice thereof, perform this Act of Justice.13
Like Boukman in St Domingue, Chatoyer apparently did not live for long after the outbreak of the revolutionary struggle on March 10. He who lit the torch of revolution was believed killed on March 14. Duvallé had assumed command. In this Proclamation, published on "le 11 germinal, l'an 3" (March 31, 1795), Hugues, Goyrand and Lebas informed the entire Windward Islands that:
...ARRÊTENT que la nation Caraïbe ayant des traités avec la nation française, à laquelle elle a été constamment attachée, et qu'en vertu des pouvoirs a nous donnés, avons nommé le citoyen Duvalay (leur chef) officier des armées de la republique française, conjointment avec les citoyens Torailles et Michel Mathieu, republicains Français, leur enjuignons d'user de représailles envers les Anglais dans les Îles Saint Vincent, etc. etc., après leur avoir signifié le présent arrêté par un parlementaire.14
The outbreak of hostilities in both Grenada and St Vincent was something of which Hugues and Lebas advised France. In these dispatches, the two colonies, conceded by France to Britain in 1783, occupied a special prominence. In this dispatch to the President of the National Convention, Hugues and Lebas reported:
...La Guadeloupe, Ste. Lucie ont été conquises: St. Eustache & St. Martin sont sous la protection de la République Française. la Grenade St. Vincent & la Dominique ont été attaquées, les anglaises tremblent; et une quantité immense de prises remplissent nos ports.15
It does not require an expert in French to tell what Hugues reported to Paris: Guadeloupe, St Lucia have been conquered: St Eustatius and St Martin are under the protection of the French republic. Grenada, St Vincent and Dominica have been attacked; the English are trembling, and an immense quantity of prizes fill our ports.
This was excellent news to the men at Paris. This may have prompted Defermont, under the auspices of the Committee of Public Safety, to inform the Convention on August 15, 1795 that:
L'étendard tricolor flotte à St. Lucie, à la Grenade, à St. Dominique; à St Vincent nous avons reveillé les sentiments des Caribes qui ont déjà exterminé une partie de leurs oppresseurs... Les Anglais sont abhorrés dans toutes les Colonies.16
The reference to the large number of prizes was also an indication of another important aspect of Hugues's presence in the eastern Caribbean: his 'revolutionary piracy.' This policy was particularly directed towards the United States of America. As a French patriot, Hugues did not take lightly to the Americans' friendly neutral support of Britain during the French Revolutionary War:
On his own initiative, Hugues declared war on the United States, accusing them of selling arms and ships to the British. 'The very name of America,' he announced, 'inspires only scorn 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.'17
Using a small fleet, Hugues began to capture all ships that he and his captains regarded as enemies. The prizes were a source of revenue to the cash-strapped rulers at Paris. In the dispatch, Hugues seems to be demonstrating his usefulness to France's Thermidorian rulers in a period where Hugues, a Jacobin, was already a relic of a past regime.
Hugues sometimes used news from one island to inform and inspire their fellow revolutionaries in other islands. In this dispatch to the Grenada revolutionaries, dated "25 ventôse, 3r. année" (10 March, 1795) Hugues informed them of the proceedings in St Vincent:
Courage, freres et amis.... Exterminez les anglais, ils sont les Ennemis du genre humain... frappez fort. Saint Vincent et Sainte Lucie sont attaqués; Bientôt les anglais le seront partout; il faut que nous En effacions jusqu'au nom.18Courage, friends and brothers... Exterminate the English, they are the enemies of humankind... strike hard. St Vincent and St Lucia have been attacked....
The enthusiastic reception that the dispatches received in France notwithstanding, all was not completely well with the operations in the Windward Islands. There were tremendous logistical difficulties associated with keeping the revolutionary movements in these islands. This had been subject of several dispatches to Paris. In this dispatch, dated "30 brumaire, 4 année Républicain" (November 21, 1795), Hugues explained the problem to his superiors in some length:
St Vincent et le Grenade no sont poins encore en notre pouvoir. Nous savez que lorsque les attaquames notre progres n'etoit que de faire une diversion a fin d'obliger nos ennemis a diviser leurs troupes et de favoriser par ce moyen la conquête de Ste. Lucie. Nous avons continué de les tenir en échec dans ces deux iles qui sont le tombeau des forces qu'ils ne cessent d'envoyer d'Europe. Ils en attendent encore qu'on dit devoir être considérables. Nos armées les leurs sont toujours en presence; Si les notres eprouvens en revers, elles se hatent de la preparer par une victoire. C'est ainsi qu'affaiblissant nos ennemis nous Sommes parvenus a garantir la Guadeloupe d'une nouvelle invasion.
Tandis que nous occupions les anglais a défendre St Vincent et la Grenade nous eussions pu les attaquer a la Martinique. Tel étois notre projet; nous vous l'avions annoncé et il eut été effectué S'ils n'eusseus pas tenu la mer pendant tout l'hivernage. Neamois [sic] cet obstacle n'etoit pas insurmontable. Une autre motif nous a determiné a retarder cette enterprise; elle est hardie, il y a plus elle est téméraire. L'enthousiasme qui a contribué au Succés de toutes celles espece nous ayant paru se refroider par tes différens rapports que les anglo-americains faisoient du evenement (nous n'avez pas oublié que nous sommes restés 10 mois sans recevoir de vos nouvelles) qui se sont succédés en france [sic] par l'assurance que la nouvelle legation dans l'amerique Septentrionale tournois a son arrivée du prochain rapport du Decret du 16 Pluviose, par la vente que les anglais font des nous qui deviennent leurs prisonniers, chose qu'ils n'avoient pas faite jusqu'a present.19
From the number of issues that are referred to in this extract, this dispatch must rank among the most important. It does not require expert knowledge of the French language to understand the issues at work. Hugues's aims not only included the French re-conquest of Martinique and St Lucia, but also the conquest of Grenada and St Vincent. The importance to which Hugues attached to the latter is shown in the amount of space that St Vincent and Grenada occupied in his dispatch. The attacks on these two colonies were also in part a diversion to induce the British to draw some of their strength from Martinique, which they still held. This action, as the extract shows, was timed to be put into operation during the winter months, where it was usually logistically difficult for the British to send reinforcements out to the region.
The extract also shows Hugues's resourcefulness and sophistication in striving to maintain an aggressive French presence in the eastern Caribbean when national politics was slipping into reaction, and when his government lacked both the will and military resources necessary to devote to this cause. The French Commissioner was busily creating enough diversions for the British in order for them to scatter their forces throughout the archipelago. The conquest of the British territories of Grenada and St Vincent was secondary to Hugues's ultimate objective: to regain France's Antillean empire in "Les Îles du Vent."
Hugues's projects were undertaken during a period where even his position as relic of the defunct Jacobin regime was in serious doubt. Hugues was perhaps on his guard every occasion that a French ship appeared on the horizon.20
This dispatch shows how a local political conflict became inextricably enmeshed and subsumed in the diplomatic and military struggle between the two foremost western European nations of the time for the mastery of the Windward Islands. For Chatoyer, Duvallé and the Carib nation of St Vincent and the wider Windward Islands, the conflict was an opportunity to seek redress of the burning issues of the day in the face of the British threat to their existence. For Lebas, Hugues and those at Paris, it was, at the very least, "une diversion a fin d'obliger nos ennemis a diviser leurs troupes et de favoriser par ce moyen la conquête de Ste. Lucie;" at most, "une reconquête."
But things were not going as well as Hugues and Lebas would have liked. In this dispatch, dated "le 20 Messidor, l'an 3e" (8 July, 1795), Hugues and Lebas reported to the President of the French National Convention the loss of Soulhat:
...a St Vincent, nous allons faire un effort pour nous en assurer la Conquête; le commandant Soulhat... nous vous annoncions les blessures dans notre dernier, a été tué dans une attaque générale, mais nous esperons avoir notre revanche ainsi que le Dominique.21
In the paragraph immediately following the above, Hugues also addressed the matter of the operations in St Vincent and Grenada (which occupied the paragraph immediately before that of St Vincent) into perspective:
Le Comité de Salut public sentira que toutes ces diversions étoient absolument nécessaires pour diviser les forces de terre et de mer trop considérables de l'ennemi, et que ce n'est qu'on portant la guerre chez eux que nous pourrons reconquerir en entire toutes nos possessions.22
The two colonies of St Vincent and Grenada, on the face of it, occupied pride of place in the considerations of the French in the eastern Caribbean, that is to say, next in order after Martinique, Guadeloupe and St Lucia. In the dispatches to Paris, particularly between 1794 and 1796, showed this interest. They were always reported on immediately after the best-known French colonies. During the War of the American Independence, Grenada and St Vincent were captured by an improved French navy. As in the case of Grenada, the evidence strongly suggests that the French local officials were dissatisfied with the return of the two colonies at the negotiation table at Treaty of Versailles in 1783, which brought an end to the War. This importance was seen in this message sent to the British commander in Grenada in late 1795 by Charles Joseph Sugue, the French administrator of Grenada:
...a War, maintained by a System unknown in the Annals of the World, has given France two fine Colonies, those which she had lost under a cowardly and pusillanimous Government, will soon return to her power.23
These two colonies were obviously important to the French. They nursed ambitions to regain them since the end of the Seven Years' War. They both had communities that were discontented with British rule, and which took every opportunity to aid their French brothers and allies, particularly in times of war. In both colonies, they were subjected to intensified persecution after British rule was restored in 1783.
During the period of the Brigands' War, the contest between the rival colonialisms of France and Britain came to a head. In 1794, the French brought abolition to the eastern Caribbean. In St Domingue, where the Africans were in revolt since 1791 and had been emancipated since August 1793, the 'Decree of Pluviôse was the ratification of Sonthonax's unilateral decision. In the eastern Caribbean, the implementation of this decree meant nothing short of social revolution. Hugues's message of immediate and unconditional emancipation and automatic citizenship of the French Republic was a heady, powerful and almost irresistible to the enslaved masses and free coloureds living under conditions of institutionalised social inequality.
On the other hand, the French had imperial concerns that were not abandoned, even during the period of revolution and reaction at the end of the eighteenth century. Groups that decided to ally themselves with France in this struggle with Britain saw their concerns relegated to second place.
To complicate matters, Hugues tenuous position after the fall of Robespierre meant that he and his fellow Jacobins owed their allegiance to no immediate earthly authority, except a loyalty to themselves, or perhaps a devotion to the service of France itself. Hugues's adoption of 'revolutionary piracy' may have brought him riches, but at the same time slowed the reinforcement of Grenada and St Vincent to a trickle.24
The Brigands's War dragged on throughout 1795. Military operations mostly took place when there were reinforcements arrived from outside for both sides. The British were planning a major counter-offensive since August. However, a series of unfortunate delays prevented the arrival of the expeditionary force in the Caribbean - under the command of Abercromby - before March 1796. It had been nearly two years since Hugues arrived and seized the initiative from the British, and they were about to regain it for good.
During the period after Abercromby had received his original instructions and before his departure for the Caribbean, his orders changed at least four times. As he prepared to leave Britain, St Domingue has lost pride of place as the most important objective. That 'honour' had gone to two colonies in the eastern Caribbean:
Expulsion of the brigands from Grenada and St Vincent was now Abercromby's first objective. The capture of Demerara and St Lucia became the second objective. Guadeloupe, however, the center of French military activities and revolutionary propaganda in the West Indies, was left untouched.... St Domingue was similarly consigned to the background.25
St Vincent had become second only to Grenada in the considerations of the British political and military directorate. In the British counter-attack, the eastern Caribbean was the first objective.
When the fleet had arrived safely at Barbados, Abercromby did not go directly to Grenada and St Vincent. Instead, he sent in enough soldiers to have a holding operation in Grenada and concentrated his attention on St Lucia. This was an important strategic move. From late 1795, Hugues had delegated responsibility to Goyrand (pronounced "Gwa-Ran") who operated in St Lucia. Most of the day to day operations of the French forces were directed by this Commissioner, with Hugues still having overall control. St Lucia was one of the main sources of supplies to the two islands due south. Securing St Lucia would cut off the revolutionaries' main supply lines.
It took a month, and some 500 men lost, to bring St Lucia under control, but in the end, the British secured the surrender of Goyrand. After the conquest of St Lucia, the reduction of St Vincent and Grenada were but a matter of time.
From his headquarters in Guadeloupe, Hugues was able to obtain intelligence of remarkable accuracy. On the developments in St Vincent, Hugues reported to his superiors:
Le renfort de St Vincent est aussi de 1500 hommes, leur arrivée a été la Cause d'une succession de chocs très meurtriers, où, quoi que les avantages aient été partagés, les Anglais perdent beaucoup plus de monde que nous. Afin d'espérer une diversion utile a Ste. Lucie, nous avons donné l'ordre d'en venir hier aux mains et de harceler continuellement l'Ennemi.26
This dispatch from Hugues and Lebas is dated "le 24 floréal an 4." This corresponds to May 13, 1796. Hugues is clearly on the defensive. The British have put into the field an almost overwhelming superiority of force. All the French could hope for was to "harceler continuellement l'Ennemi" to "continually harass the enemy." This, however, only applied to Grenada and St Vincent. Through Hugues's heavy involvement in 'revolutionary piracy,' he did not pay as much attention to reinforcements to the two still [officially] British colonies as Guadeloupe. The ease of the British invasion showed the limitations of this policy. On the other hand, Guadeloupe, Hugues's headquarters, was strengthened with his recruiting of some 4,000 well-trained black and coloured troops since his arrival in June 1794. Security there was so tight that the British, despite several attempts, were unable to obtain information on the internal situation in Guadeloupe.27
Hugues, on the other hand, seemed able to gather intelligence almost at will. He was able to able to advise his superiors of the strength of the British, particularly when the expeditionary force arrived in the Caribbean in early 1796. In his dispatch of "24 floréal an 4" he informed Paris that "Cent quarante Batiments dont Sept Vaisseau de ligne, beaucoup de frégattes, de Corvettes et Quatre vingt Transporte se sont presentés devant Ste. Lucie et ont débarqués huit à dix milles hommes parmi lesquels Deux Légions d'Émigrés," on "le 7 floréal" (April 26, 1796).28
Within St Vincent, however, matters were not progressing to the satisfaction of Hugues and the other French commissioners. In a document dated "le 21 messidor an 3" (that is to say, July 9, 1795), entitled, "Notes Sur la Situation ou j'ai laissé les Îles du Vent a l'Epoque de 21 messidor, jour où j'ai quitté la Guadeloupe,"29 a now unidentified French official wrote the following entry under "St Vincent:"
Cette Ile a été attaquée par 50 Républicains auxquels S'étoient joints Les Caraïbes.
Le Commandant Chaulat chargé de cette expédition y a Laissé La vie ainsi que tous ses malheureux frères d'armes. Les Caraïbes que s'étoient Déclarés en faveur des français sont réfugiés dans le bois ou ils sont réduits a la plus affreuse misère. Les anglais les considerant comme des sujets.
From this dispatch, one obtains details of the French military involvement in St Vincent. The brunt of the fighting was obviously borne by the Caribs, with the French having a limited number of personnel, that is to say, up to that period of the Brigands' War. The final sentence, however, is an indication of the legal situation into which the Caribs were placed when they decided to bear arms against their British rulers. The observation that the British considered them - that is to say, the Caribs - "British subjects," pointed the way in which the Caribs were treated at the cessation of the internal war.
It was one thing to be dissatisfied with British rule. It was quite another matter to openly associate with subjects of another country with whom His Majesty was at war. This was, in British law, high treason:
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.30
This is known as "Serving or procuring others to serve Foreign States." Chatoyer, Duvallé and other Carib leaders had unambiguously accepted commissions in the French Revolutionary armed forces. They had also openly given aid and comfort to His Majesty's enemies, the French, during the period of The Brigands' War. But, in the case of the Caribs, there was another matter. One of the terms of the Treaty of 1773 required the Caribs to come to His Majesty's assistance in times of emergency. The Caribs had also failed to observe this term.
By the time of The Brigands' War, British jurisprudence on the question of treason had reached a high degree of sophistication. Bellamy, in his work, The Law of Treason in the Later Middle Ages,31 in tracing the evolution of the law of treason from the thirteenth century, writes that during that period there was a strong tendency to punish such offenders with such punishments as disembowelment, burning, beheading and quartering.32 East explains why, in British law, the authorities took a very dim view of high treason:
High treason, which by the very term denotes treachery or breach of faith, is a violation of the allegiance which is due from the subject to the king as sovereign lord and chief magistrate of the state. It is... 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.33
These considerations lay behind the French official who was the author of the report. It was the precise dilemma faced by the Grenada revolutionaries: were they French Citizens, or were they British subjects? From the proclamations of the French, it was obvious that they were regarded as Citizens of the Republic of France. For the British, they were subjects who had borne arms against their natural sovereign. The French military and civilian personnel were treated as honourable enemies on the battlefield. For the Vincentians, the British treated them as traitors.
After St Lucia was re-captured by the British and left under the command of Brigadier (later General Sir John Moore), the British moved to St Vincent in early June. Putting into the field nearly 4,000 men, the British were able to first secure the surrender of the French forces, then the Caribs a few days later. In these operations, as in St. Lucia, the British cause was aided by the services of a crack German mercenary army called the "Lowenstein Jagers."34 This corps was specially suited to mountain warfare, and first distinguished themselves in the capture of Morne Fortun‚ in St Lucia.35 In St Vincent, they were no less successful. Their presence did not escape the attention of Hugues and Lebas. In this dispatch dated "le 5 fructidor l'an 4me," (August 22, 1796), Hugues and Lebas informed their superiors of their presence:
C'est ici le moment de vous parler d'un essai que nous ...de faire; quelques allemands du corps de Lowenstein servant dans l'île St. Vincent à la ... du gouvernement britannique ont été faits prisonniers de guerre, ils sont laboureurs, nous leurs avons offert la liberté et de l'emploi dans la culture...36
By the time that Hugues and Lebas had prepared that dispatch, official French involvement in The Brigands' War in St Vincent had been at an end for nearly two months. Apparently, the French had had them taken to Guadeloupe, where they were made labourers. The Caribs were left in the lurch, and faced harsh retribution at the hands of the vengeful British. On 15 June, they sued for peace. Shephard comments:
It was utterly impossible for the English to come again to any terms of accommodation with these perfidious and deceitful people; it was a principle of their religion to wage inexpiable war, and such was their attachment to their old, and inseparable allies, the French, that they were ever ready to co-operate with them in any acts of sanguinary violence.37
By October 1796, some 5,080 Caribs had surrendered to the British, including Young Chatoyer, son of Joseph Chatoyer, who was killed early in the war. In February 1797, the survivors were transported from Bequia to Roatan Island, in Spanish held territory in Central America.38 Their embarkation at Bequia was, in a way, symbolic. It was off the coast of that island that their ancestors had been shipwrecked more than a century before. In 1804, an Act was passed in the St Vincent legislature that re-vested in the Crown the lands that they held at the time of the Treaty of 1773. By rising in rebellion, the Caribs had forfeited all claims to their lands. The Caribs remaining in St Vincent were later pardoned by an Act of the Legislature in 1805, but they lost all claims to the lands that they formerly occupied.39
After the end of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the French never made another attempt to bring St Vincent under their rule. They had by then been left behind in the struggle with Britain to be the dominant colonial power in the Caribbean. France lost much of her colonial empire in the Caribbean after 1800. They were reduced to Martinique, Guadeloupe and Cayenne, the latter on the South American mainland.
In the face of this loss to the British, French political and military historians have shown a marked disinterest in the period where their nation presented a strong but ultimately unsuccessful challenge to the British in the Caribbean. As such, the records of this period remain, in pristine condition, in the archives of their overseas territories at Aix-en-Provence in southern France. Together, they comprise a rich repository of material for students of Caribbean history. This observation is, of course, not new. At the height of the Second World War, Lowell Joseph Ragatz made this observation in an article, "Early French Records at the Archives Nationales."40 In this work, Ragatz told British West Indian historians of the presence of this rich trove of information. Perhaps, with declonisation and independence of the post-1945 period, such advice fell largely upon deaf ears.
The present paper is a work in progress. It is but the beginning of an investigation into the French records on Caribbean history. There is much to be done. Missing - at least - are the dispatches that passed between directly between the French at Guadeloupe and the revolutionaries in St Vincent. With access to these records, a new and fascinating chapter in the history of the eastern Caribbean will be opened.
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40 © Curtis Jacobs, 2003. Return to Conference papers.
HTML last revised 22nd November, 2003.