La Concorde

Posted by stephen lewis on Sunday 1st of September 2024 21:41

on 6 March 1799, 108 men from the two companies of coloured men embarked from Rochefort on one of three frigates, the Franchise, the Médée and 41 of the men boarded the Concorde. They were from the French colonised Caribbean (32 were from Guadeloupe, 25 from Martinique, 15 from Saint Lucia, 11 from other Windward Islands: Marie-Galante, Grenada, Saint Vincent. 3 were from Saint Domingue, 2 from French islands). Only one was born elsewhere than in a French colony, in Philadelphia. 13 were born in Africa, and therefore experienced kidnapping and enslavement. Among the Africans, the book suggests that Ignace, born in 1774, was perhaps related to Joseph Ignace who commanded the 1802 rebellion in Guadeloupe with Louis Delgrès. The Grenada battalion was formed in Grenada on 3 July 1796.

Eluding the British blockade off Rochefort, the squadron sailed southwards until it reached the coast of West Africa. There, they began an extended commerce raiding operation, inflicting severe damage on the West African trade. During this time, the squadron captured the Portuguese island of Prince (Príncipe). Eventually the strain of serving in tropical waters told on the ships and all three were forced to undergo an extensive refit in the nearest available allied shipyards, which were located in the Spanish-held River Plate in South America. At Montevideo the squadron assisted the French prisoners that had captured and taken into that port the convict transport Lady Shore which was carrying them to Australia.

After extensive repairs in 1800, the squadron almost immediately captured off the coast of Brazil the American schooner Espérance (Hope), which they used as an aviso and sent to Cayenne. (At the time, France and the United States had been engaged for two years in the Quasi War.
Military history played an important role in the French Revolution and during the period of the Directory, the Consulate and the 1st Empire. The need for men led to a greater integration of black and mulatto troops from the West Indies. The choice of military status then offered emancipation for armed service and participation in the maintenance of the slave order. At the end of the Ancien Régime, it can be estimated that there were about 50,000 black elements in the French armies who lived this link between carrying arms and freedom. Later, the First Republic wanted to amalgamate overseas colonial troops and regular troops, regardless of ethnic origins.

In his book “Coloured officers in the armies of the Republic and the Empire (1792-1815) from slavery to military conditions in the French West Indies) ”Bernard Gainot seeks to unravel the hopes, contradictions and disillusions aroused by this policy, through the destinies of three emblematic units: the American Legion in 1792 and equal rights, the companies of colored men in 1797 with the hesitations over integration, the pioneer battalion in 1802 or the denial of rights and integration.

Some of the careers of senior officers are particularly emblematic of the period and have been traced from their files in the War Archives. This was the case of General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, the highest-ranking man of colour in the Republican army; Commander Joseph Domingue, known as "Hercules", a slave from Cuba, an officer in the elite troops of the Consular Guard, commander of the Black Battalion of Mantua and who followed Napoleon Bonaparte in most of his battles; the black deputy Jean-Louis Annecy, a freed slave from Saint-Domingue, elected representative of the people under the Directory, deported to Corsica to die in the penal colony under the Consulate. If the military integration program was mixed in its applications and often ended in failures or tragic misunderstandings (think of the case of Delgrès in Guadeloupe, in 1802), the questions of the universality of the principles of equality, patriotism and ethnic identities were nevertheless raised at this time, through the concrete case of the military institution. Many of them remain relevant.