The West Indies, 1793-1810.

AMONG the leading objects contemplated by the British ministry in this war was the control of the East and West Indies, particularly of the latter, as among the most important sources as well as markets of British trade. In the present day, the value of the West India islands, and of all positions in the Caribbean Sea, is chiefly military or maritime; due less to the commerce they maintain than to their relations, as coaling ports or fortified stations, to the commercial routes passing through that region. It is scarcely necessary to add that whatever importance of this character they now possess will be vastly increased when an interoceanic canal is completed. During the French revolution, however, the islands had a great commercial value, and about one fourth the total amount of British commerce, both export and import, was done with them. This lucrative trade Great Britain had gathered into her hands, notwithstanding the fact that other nations owned the largest and richest of the islands, as well as those producing the best sugar and coffee. The commercial aptitudes of the British people, the superior quality of their manufactures, their extensive merchant shipping and ingenious trade regulations, conspired to make it the interest of the foreign colonists to trade with them, even when by so doing the laws of their own governments were defied; and to a great extent the British free ports engrossed the West Indian trade, as well as that to the adjacent South and Central American coasts, known as the Spanish Main.

In war, the control of a maritime region depends upon naval preponderance. When the opposing navies are of nearly equal strength, it is only by open battle, and by the reduction of one to a state of complete inferiority, that control can be asserted. If the region contested be small and compact, as, for instance, the immediate approaches to the English Channel, the preponderance of the fleet alone will determine the control and the safety of the national commerce within its limits; but if it be extensive, the distance between centres great, and the centres themselves weak, the same difficulties arise that are felt in maintaining order in a large and sparsely settled territory on land, as has till very lately been the case in our western Territories. In such circumstances the security of the traveller depends upon the government putting down nests of lawlessness, and establishing, at fitting stations, organized forces, that can by their activity insure reasonable safety in all directions.

In the War of the French Revolution, it soon, though not immediately, became evident, that the British navy could everywhere preponderate in force over its enemy; but it could not be omnipresent. The Caribbean Sea offered conditions peculiarly favorable to marauders, licensed or unlicensed; while its commercial value necessitated the preservation, and, as far as possible, the monopoly, of so fruitful a source of revenue. The presence of hostile cruisers not only inflicted direct loss, which was measured by their actual captures, but, beyond these, caused a great indirect injury by the friction and delays which the sense of insecurity always introduces into commercial transactions. The ideal aim of the British ministry was to banish the enemy's cruisers absolutely from the region; but, if this was impossible, very much might be effected by depriving them of every friendly anchorage to which they could repair to refit or take their prizes,—in short, by capturing all the French islands. This would put an end to the myriads of very small craft, which, being able to keep the sea but for a few days, depended absolutely upon a near base; and would greatly cripple the operations of the larger vessels by throwing them, for supplies and refuge, upon the United States, which then extended a benevolent partiality to French cruisers and their prizes.

The French islands had vividly reflected during the past four years the movements and passions of the mother-country; but only in HaÏti did the turbulence, extending through all classes of society until it ended in a servile insurrection, result in destroying the control of the home government. The disorder, amounting often to anarchy, which prevailed through the French part of the island, somewhat simplified the problem before Great Britain. It was the only base of operations to the westward then available for French cruisers; and, though too large to admit the thought of conquest under the climatic conditions with the force that could be spared for such an attempt, it was possible, without serious opposition, to occupy many of the ports commanding the principal trade routes. Such occupation deprived the enemy of their use, converted them into harbors of refuge for British commerce, and made them centres for the operations of British cruisers. Unfortunately the government, misled by the representations of French planters who saw their property threatened with destruction, conceived the hope of an easy conquest, or rather transfer of allegiance in the colony. In pursuance of this idea, several places were taken into possession, being either delivered or captured with an ease that showed how readily, in the then disorganized state of the island, most of the seaports could have been secured; but the motive being conquest, and not merely maritime control, the choice of objectives was decided by political or military, instead of maritime, considerations. The expected local native support followed the general rule noted in the last chapter, and proved futile; while yellow fever wasted the troops condemned to excessive exertion and exposure in so sickly a clime.

Had simple maritime advantages guided the British counsels, it would have been sufficient to note that Jamaica was the great centre of British interests in the western Caribbean; that outward-bound ships, entering the Caribbean through the eastern, or Windward, Islands, ran down with the trade wind along the south side of Haiti, where were two harbors, Aux Cayes and Jacmel, favorable as bases for privateers; and that the homeward trade passed through the Windward Passage, between HaÏti and Cuba, which was flanked by two HaÏtian ports, Tiburon to the south and Mole St. Nicolas on the north. These four were, therefore, particularly dangerous to British trade, and consequently, so far as position went, particularly advantageous if in British occupation. It is true that the topographical conditions of the ground about a seaport in an enemy's country may make the occupation very hazardous, except by the employment of more men than can be had; as was the case at Mole St. Nicolas, where the fortifications of the place itself were commanded by the surrounding heights. Yet it remained in the hands of the British from 1793 to 1798; and it may be believed that their interests would have been well served by strongly garrisoning these ports. [72] At the least they would so be lost to French cruisers. Instead of this, with the idea of conquest, the wholly insufficient forces sent were pushed down to the bottom of the bight of Gonaives, and the southern coast of the island was left in the enemy's hands. It is not desirable to give in detail the history of these petty military operations, nor of the civil commotions with which they were connected. Suffice it to say, that the course of events finally threw the government into the hands of a pure negro, Toussaint L'Ouverture. He continued to hold it till the Peace of Amiens, in 1802; and with him the British, in 1798, concluded a treaty by which they finally abandoned the island. Though the scheme of conquest had failed, their interference had opened the country to British trade and caused the loss of HaÏti to France, by contributing to the rise of Toussaint, the negro most capable of leading his race. He still professed fidelity to the mother-country, but he acted as one possessing independent power. The British, by the treaty, recognized the island as a neutral territory, and Toussaint, on his part, permitted them as well as neutral ships to trade with it. [73] He also prohibited the sailing of privateers from ports of HaÏti, as they seriously interfered with its commerce. [74] Under his strong and wise administration the prosperity of the island greatly revived, though without attaining the proportions of former days.

The islands known as the Lesser Antilles, which extend from Porto Rico in a southerly direction to Trinidad and form the eastern boundary of the Caribbean, are, from their small size, much more dependent than is HaÏti or Cuba upon the control of the sea. Though the aggregate commercial value of the whole group was far inferior to that of the French part alone of HaÏti, they had a distinct military advantage which made them, in that point of view and to the West Indies, more important than HaÏti itself. They were to windward of the whole Caribbean with reference to the trade winds, which blow unceasingly from east to west; and hence were much nearer in time, that supreme factor in military combinations, to the great western islands than the latter were to them. The same circumstance of the trade wind threw them across the path of vessels bound from Europe to all parts of the Caribbean, and thus facilitated the intercepting of supplies essential to the support and industries of the islands, for much of which they depended upon the mother-countries.

The largest, by far, of these islands, Trinidad, belonged in 1793 to Spain, at that time the ally of Great Britain. Its nearness to the South American continent gave it, as a distributing centre, marked commercial advantages, of which the unenterprising Spaniards made little use; but, as the trade winds blow from the north of east, it was not favorably placed for a naval station. The two next in size, and among the most fertile, Guadaloupe and Martinique, were French islands. Being in the centre of the chain and to leeward of none, except the outlying English Barbadoes, they were admirably situated for military control, and the strategic advantage of position was supplemented by the defensive strength of Fort Royal (now Fort de France), the principal harbor of Martinique; which was then, as it is now, by far the most powerful naval position in the eastern Caribbean. Besides them, France owned Santa Lucia, next south of Martinique, and Tobago. The military importance of these islands, combined with a distinct though minor commercial value, and the experience in past wars of the injury done to British commerce by privateering based upon them, made their reduction advisable to Great Britain; to whom belonged most of the other Lesser Antilles as well as the trade of the Caribbean. One of the first acts of the war, before sending a vessel to the Mediterranean or increasing the Channel fleet, was to despatch a squadron of seven sail-of-the-line to the West Indies, where there were at that time, except a few small cruisers, but two fifty-gun ships, one at Jamaica and one to windward,—a thousand miles apart. No fact shows more strongly how unprepared Great Britain was for war than the naval destitution of this region, at a time when France had three or four ships-of-the-line continually in her colonies. This British squadron sailed under the command of Admiral Gardner on the 24th of March, 1793; and there was a strong expectation that Martinique and Guadaloupe, which had hoisted the old royal standard of France upon learning the deposition of Louis XVI., would place themselves under British protection. This hope was disappointed, they having already resumed their republican allegiance, and Gardner returned to England in the fall, leaving a part of his squadron behind.

It was then decided to reduce the French islands by force, and on the 26th of November Sir John Jervis, afterwards Earl St. Vincent, sailed with a small force of ships-of-war carrying seven thousand troops destined for this service. Reaching Barbadoes in January, the expedition appeared off Martinique on the 5th of February, 1794, and after a series of successful operations the island capitulated on the 22d of March. A detachment was next sent against Santa Lucia, which was surrendered on the 4th of April. On the 10th of the same month the combined naval and military forces anchored off Guadaloupe, and on the 20th this island, with its off-lying dependencies, Marie-Galante, Desirade and the Saints, also submitted. Tobago having been seized with slight resistance in April, 1793, Great Britain was now in possession of all the hostile Windward Islands, except the petty St. Martin, part of which belonged to France. A considerable detachment of troops was next sent to Mole St. Nicolas to assist the undertaking against HaÏti; a reduction of the force in the Windward Islands which led to disastrous consequences, felt throughout the war by the islands and commerce of Great Britain. For on the 3d of June, when the British commanders had departed leaving a garrison in Guadaloupe, there appeared off the coast a division of ships, two being frigates and the others transports, which had left France in April, before the loss of the colonies was known. Landing without opposition, they established themselves firmly and gained possession of half the island before Jervis and Grey could appear. The struggle continued with varying fortunes during the following six months, but the British continually lost ground and wasted with yellow fever. This dire disease told likewise severely on the new French arrivals, but these found a native Creole population of nearly six thousand, the larger part of whom were faithful to the republic; whereas their enemies, out of a total original force of seven thousand, had, besides losses in battle and by disease, been obliged to spare garrisons for the captured islands and a detachment to HaÏti. These causes alone would seem sufficient to account for the recapture of the island; but the utmost credit must at the same time be allowed to the French officers concerned, and especially to the commissioner of the Convention, Victor Hugues, who accompanied the expedition. This man, who had at Rochefort filled the rÔle of public accuser, which in Paris gained for Fouquier Tinville a hideous immortality, seems to have embodied in himself the best and worst features of the men of the Terror, whose fate he escaped by leaving France betimes. In his report to the Convention he boasted of having put to death twelve hundred royalists in Guadaloupe. This horror partakes doubtless of the evident exaggerations discernible in the French accounts of a military operation which, not so adorned, would have been brilliant enough. Hugues's brutality is unquestionable, but to it he joined the vigor, audacity, and unscrupulous determination to succeed which carried the French armies to victory in all parts. The British were forced to evacuate their last port in Guadaloupe on the 10th of December, 1794.

Upon receiving news of Hugues's success the Directory hastened to send re-enforcements, and on the 6th of January, 1795, a number of ships-of-war and transports reached Guadaloupe and landed troops variously stated at fifteen to twenty-five hundred. Hugues, who had meantime organized a respectable territorial army, used the land and naval forces now at his disposal with great energy. Santa Lucia was retaken on the 19th of June, and insurrection fomented and maintained in Dominica, St. Vincent and Grenada, among the negroes, aborigines and old French inhabitants, to the great distress of the British. National vessels and privateers, having once more a secure base of operations, swarmed throughout the seas and inflicted great losses on the trade. All this disaster, which continued throughout the year, arose from not having quite enough men in Guadaloupe to put Hugues down before he had a foothold; and the British government was now compelled to send a far larger force to repair in part an evil, which a smaller number, at the proper moment, would have wholly prevented.

The disastrous result of the campaign of 1794 in Belgium and Holland, resulting in the conquest of the latter by the French, the overthrow of the House of Orange, and the alliance of Holland with France under a republican government, had both released the British troops employed on the Continent and thrown open the Dutch colonies to British attacks. Sir Ralph Abercromby, who had distinguished himself in the recent operations, was appointed to the command in the eastern Caribbean, and sixteen thousand troops were assigned to the expedition, which was to be convoyed by eight ships-of-the-line under Admiral Christian. They were to have sailed in September for a campaign in the drier and cooler winter months; but the usual difficulty in moving large bodies, particularly of sailing ships, delayed their departure until the 15th of November. Two days later the Channel was swept by a gale of hurricane violence, which caused the loss of many ships and lives, and forced all that survived to return to Portsmouth, a single transport alone reaching the destination at Barbadoes. On the 3d of December a second start was made, but almost equal bad fortune was met. After battling the ocean for seven weeks, Christian and Abercromby returned to England with part of the convoy, the remainder finding their way by driblets to Barbadoes; several, however, were taken by Hugues's cruisers. Abercromby then took passage in a frigate, reaching the island on the 17th of March, 1796; and was followed by the admiral, who arrived on the 21st of April with a fleet of transports. Santa Lucia was at once attacked, and on the 25th of May the French garrison capitulated. On the 11th of June, St. Vincent, and a few days later Grenada, which were in possession rather of insurgents than of enemies, likewise submitted. Prior to the arrival of Admiral Christian, Abercromby had sent a detachment of twelve hundred men against the Dutch colonies on the mainland, Demerara, Essequibo, and Berbice, which surrendered without resistance in April and May, and were laid open to British trade.

Great Britain had now resumed tranquil possession of all the eastern islands, except Guadaloupe. The strong organization which this had received from Hugues, and the re-enforcements that had been thrown in, indicated that prolonged operations would be needed to effect its subdual. The sickly rainy season was at hand, during which also hurricanes prevail, so that all reasons combined to postpone the attempt to the healthier months,—a decision which was amply justified by the great mortality from yellow fever which ensued among the troops, despite all the immunity from exposure that care and the cessation of campaigning could give. By the time that operations could begin, Spain had declared war against Great Britain; and the prospect of easily seizing her large and far more valuable islands diverted attention from Guadaloupe. The latter continued throughout this and the following war, until 1810, a thorn in the side of British trade. The recapture of Guadaloupe by the French, and the consequent evils, remain a pregnant warning against the folly of sending a boy to do a man's work; but underlying that miscalculation appears to have been the fatal error of relying upon local support to troops inadequate by themselves to the task before them. Desirous of doing many things at once, the British government easily accepted the assurances of a few royalists, as to the political dispositions of a most excitable and changeable race and the re-enforcements that could be raised among them. It was an exact repetition of the blunder which led to the invasion of the Southern colonies during the American Revolution; and the gist of the mistake is in the dependence upon unorganized forces to supplement the weakness of the organized force, which is not by itself alone sufficient to its undertaking.

It will not be denied that at times a diversion under such conditions may be attempted, if it does not take away force needed for serious enterprises. Upon this ground may perhaps be justified the attempted French invasion of Ireland in December, 1796, which, though on a somewhat larger scale, essentially resembled the expedition of Jervis and Grey against the West Indies. It also depended upon a local rising in favor of an insufficient force, upon the support of practically unorganized masses without military antecedents; but it was undertaken at a period when the tide of affairs elsewhere was running strongly in favor of France, and, whatever hopes may have been entertained of possible ultimate results, was essentially a diversion. The immediate aim was not a direct gain to France, but an indirect advantage, by accumulating embarrassments for Great Britain. A state entirely inferior at sea could not count upon lasting military control of a large island with an alien population; but it could hope that the insurrection of Ireland, concurring with disaster upon the Continent, might force a disadvantageous peace upon the arch enemy. The conquest of the smaller Antilles, on the contrary, was not properly a diversion, but an object of real importance to a great British interest. It was feasible for the greater naval power to take and hold them, being small; and their tenure, by relieving the navy of part of its work, would have facilitated the protection of Jamaica and its trade, as well as the general control of the western Caribbean. HaÏti was too large and too populated for conquest; but its power for injury could have been confronted with more substantial force had Guadaloupe remained a British garrison.

The alliance of Spain and Holland with France much increased the difficulties of Great Britain, by throwing open their colonial ports to French privateers. The extensive sea-coasts of Cuba and HaÏti became alive with them. In 1807 it was estimated that there were from two to three hundred depending upon these two islands, and unfitted, from their size, to go far from them. [75] The number testifies to the extent and value of British trade in that sea, although the privateer did not confine his depredations to the enemy, but preyed lawlessly on neutrals as well. The same authority illustrates the annihilation of French and Spanish commerce by stating that not more than two or three British privateers were sailing from Jamaica.

General Abercromby went for a short time to Europe in the fall of 1796. Upon his return a strong military and naval expedition was sent against Trinidad, but did not meet the resistance expected from the size and importance of the island. It capitulated on the second day, February 18, 1797, and with it the Spaniards lost four ships-of-the-line. Thence Abercromby moved, in April, against Porto Rico; but upon reconnoitring, the defences were found too strong, and the troops were re-embarked after losing two hundred men. This ended the colonial expeditions in the West Indies for the first war. Quiet possession was taken of the Dutch colonies of Surinam and CuraÇoa in 1799 and 1800; and in 1801, when Sweden and Denmark became involved in hostilities with Great Britain, their West India islands were also given up without resistance, but no further fighting took place.