Battle of Martinique (1794)

During 1794 the British were in negotiations with a French planter, Louis-François Dubuc, who wished to gain British protection, as the then French Constitutional Assembly of the First Republic was busy passing a law abolishing slavery, which had actually taken place in Paris on 4 February 1794. However the Whitehall Accord of 19 February 1794 between counter-revolutionary French colonists and Great Britain, which allowed colonial French slave-owners to maintain slavery, was not signed until after the British had landed.

Thus on 5 February, the day after slavery was abolished in Paris, in what just might be one of world history's greatest feats of precognition, a British fleet under the command of Royal Navy Admiral Sir John Jervis landed troops under the command of General Charles Grey in a campaign which would last six weeks.[1]

By 20 March only Fort Bourbon and Fort Royal still held out. Jervis ordered the fourth rate ship of the line HMS Asia (64 guns), and the sloop, HMS Zebra to take Fort Saint Louis.[2] Asia was unable to get close, Zebra went in alone, with her captain, Richard Faulknor. Despite facing heavy fire, Faulknor ran Zebra close under the walls. He and his ship's company then used Zebra's boats to land. The British stormed the fort and captured it. Zebra lost only her pilot killed and four men wounded. Meanwhile the boats of the British fleet captured Fort Royal and two days later Fort Bourbon capitulated.[1]

The Governor General of Martinique at the time was Donatien Marie Joseph de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau who surrendered to Grey.

The British then occupied Martinique until the Treaty of Amiens returned the island to the French in 1802.

Bibliography

• Fortescue, John. A history of the British Army, Volume 4
• James, William (1837) [1827]. The Naval History of Great Britain, Volume I, 1793–1796. London: Richard Bentley. OCLC 634321885.