Invasion of Guadeloupe | |||||||
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Part of War of the First Coalition | |||||||
![]() Contemporary drawing of the capitulation of British troops in Guadeloupe | |||||||
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Belligerents | |||||||
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Commanders and leaders | |||||||
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The Invasion of Guadeloupe was a British attempt in 1794 to take and hold the island of Guadeloupe in the French West Indies during the French Revolutionary Wars. The British had negotiated with the French planters, Ignace-Joseph-Philippe de Perpignan and Louis de Curt, who wished to gain British protection, as France's National Convention was passing a law abolishing slavery on 4 February 1794. The Whitehall Accord was signed on 19 February 1794 while the British were securing Martinique in the Battle of Martinique (1794).
Troops led by General Charles Grey landed in Guadeloupe on 11 April 1794, assisted by a fleet led by Admiral Sir John Jervis. On 24 April French general Victor Collot surrendered the last stronghold at Basse-Terre, leaving the island in the hands of the British and their French Royalist allies. On 4 June a French fleet landed troops under the command of Victor Hugues who, with the assistance of French Republican locals, helped by the effect of yellow fever and other tropical diseases on the British forces, regained full control of the island by 10 December 1794.[citation needed]
Troops and people involved
- 6th Regiment of Foot[1]
- 43rd Regiment of Foot[2]
- Major-General Thomas Dundas (appointed governor of Guadeloupe, but died of Yellow Fever 3 June 1794)[citation needed]
References
- ^ "British Regiments and the Men Who Led Them 1793-1815: 6th Regiment of Foot". Napoleon Series. Retrieved 3 June 2012.
- ^ Sir Richard George Augustus Levinge (1868). Historical Records of the Forty-third Regiment, Monmouthshire Light Infantry: With a Roll of the Officers and Their Services from the Period of Embodiment to the Close of 1867. W. Clowes. pp. 85–91. Retrieved 14 January 2021.
- Fortescue, Sir John William (1906). A History of the British Army. Vol. 4. Macmillan and Company. p. 365.