The Epic Last Stand of Louis Delgrès: “Live Free or Die”
- Paul D. Wilke
- 4 days ago
- 23 min read
Updated: 14 hours ago
I. Introduction
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
–Leonard Cohen, Everybody Knows
Louis Delgrès knew the end was near. Two weeks of fighting the French had pushed his little army out of Guadeloupe’s capital, Basse-Terre, and up the slopes of the nearby La Soufrière volcano. There, on the D’Anglemont plantation at Matouba, they dug in for a final stand. Outgunned and outnumbered, they had fought courageously.
But surrounded and with nowhere left to retreat, courage alone wasn’t going to be enough. Delgrès couldn't go any farther in any case; a wounded knee meant he couldn't walk or ride anymore. He resolved to kill himself rather than be captured and executed. Several hundred of his companions made the same choice.
With time short and the final French assault imminent, they prepared their own funeral pyre. That done, they held hands and waited for the end. When the attack came, the rebels detonated the gunpowder, creating a massive explosion that killed them all instantly, and many in the French vanguard.
But that was it. Glorious as it was, this ended the revolt. Over the coming weeks, the French ruthlessly mopped up the remaining resistance and began systematically re-enslaving Guadeloupe’s population, exactly as Napoleon intended.
So what? Another lost cause from a forgotten corner of the world. Why care about this one? Like many readers, you may not know who Delgrès is, so he must not have mattered too much. But that’s not quite true. That’s why I’m writing this.
This is one of those butterfly-effect moments in history, where something that seemed insignificant at the time, like Delgrès’s spectacular finale, reverberated far beyond what anyone imagined. The explosion at Matouba became a signal and a symbol for others in the region battling against slavery.
This was more than just a rebellion. Napoleon had decided in 1802 to reimpose slavery. No European empire had ever tried to re-enslave its citizens after emancipation. But to be fair, no nation had ever emancipated its slaves before. If you lived as a former slave or a free person of color in one of France’s colonies, your options were quite bleak: death, slavery, or armed resistance.
Delgrès and his followers chose the latter, much like their brothers and sisters on nearby Saint-Domingue. They demonstrated that when everything is about to be taken away, the only choice may be how to die, and how to make that death count for something.
Delgrès fought for the universal principle that no human being should ever again be owned by another. Such a conviction put him far ahead of his time, a forerunner of the anticolonial struggles that would one day sweep the world.
His story has rarely been told in English. I want to do something about this. We have so few unambiguous heroes from the past. Louis Delgrès is one of them.
He lost the battle and the war, but won the future despite it all.
II. “All Men Are Born and Remain Free and Equal in Rights.”
We know little about Delgrés’s early years. Born free to a mixed-race couple in 1766 in the French territory of Martinique, he joined the colonial militia at 17 in 1783. As an homme de couleur, a free man of color in a pre-revolutionary French colony, he would have had limited opportunities in the rigid racial caste system that existed.
A tiny minority of white elites ruled over vast enslaved black populations in France’s Caribbean colonies. A small but influential class of hommes de couleur occupied an uncomfortable middle space. They could own businesses and property, even slaves, yet remained bound within a racial hierarchy as rigid and exclusionary as any later apartheid system.
If not for the French Revolution, we would know nothing about Delgrès. He would have served in the militia, perhaps owned a farm, got married, and died in quiet obscurity.
All of that changed after 1789, when the French Revolution upended the world he knew.
The Revolution's 'Declaration of the Rights of Man' opened with the words, "Men are born and remain free and equal in rights." Such a statement was unprecedented and electrifying for talented young men like Delgrès, who eagerly flocked to the republican cause.
As revolutionary ideals of liberty and equality crossed the Atlantic, those oppressed solely for the color of their skin imagined a different world, and in some places, like Saint-Domingue, they took action to make it a reality. The shockwaves from the 1791 slave revolt there spread throughout the Caribbean, overturning the old racial order. For the first time, enslaved people seized power for themselves.
Delgrès emerged during this time as a patriotic defender of the Republic. He was among those who, while exiled in Dominica, took part in the first racially integrated election in French history, which the National Assembly in Paris later ratified. Republican commissioners such as Léger-Félicité Sonthonax to Saint-Domingue and Victor Hugues to Guadeloupe arrived to implement the Republic’s revolutionary policies, including the abolition of slavery in 1794, the Revolution's noblest achievement.
All people, no matter the color of their skin, now possessed the same rights as any French citizen, on paper, at least. This gave the two commissioners enormous initial popular support. They used this groundswell of support to raise ‘people’s armies' of freed slaves and mulatto militiamen like Delgrès, who fought passionately over the coming decade in defense of the Republic’s interests in the region.
Delgrès and his friend Magloire Pélage, both committed republicans, shared parallel careers that would tragically diverge near the end. Captured during the British invasion of 1794, they were deported to France, where they joined the Antilles Battalion, and returned the next year to retake Guadeloupe. (1)
By 1800, the two ended up stationed on Guadeloupe, with Pélage serving as second-in-command under General Bethencourt and Delgrès as his deputy. After a decade of fighting France’s wars, they were experienced combat veterans, proud republicans, and highly respected by the troops they commanded.
But cold winds of reaction were blowing from Europe. The emancipatory Republic the two men served for so long began slipping by 1800 into a Napoleonic authoritarianism increasingly sympathetic to the interests of displaced slave owners rather than to consolidating the Revolution’s gains.
III. “Vivre libre ou mourir!”
By 1800, the people of Guadeloupe found themselves in an impossible position. The radical Republic that emancipated them in 1794 gave way to something less democratic and more steeped in racial hierarchy. For those who came up through the ranks serving a more inclusive version of the Republic, the changes were unsettling. Rumors began spreading about how Napoleon intended to revoke the 1794 emancipation decree and reinstitute slavery. (2)
There was some truth to this, though Napoleon remained savvy enough not to reveal his true intentions. By 1800, a powerful pro-slavery lobby of displaced colonial landowners had Napoleon’s ear. Among them, a man named Gurnier, a former white planter from Guadeloupe, told him that blacks were “a people of children who had no understanding of liberty.”
In a revealing letter, he wrote that they had been foolishly made free without ‘‘placing next to the boon the responsibilities that had to be fulfilled to deserve it.’’ (3) This was all part of the case men like him were making in Paris to return the plantations to white ownership and black forced labor.
The implications of a possible reversal of the 1794 decree were troubling. Would ex-slaves accustomed to freedom be sent back to work in grinding misery once again? The prospect seemed absurd to many. Yet, a rising chorus of voices believed that the First Consul meant to do exactly that. (4)
Guadeloupeans thus faced a difficult choice: loyalty to France, no matter what, or to the ideals of 1794, even if France betrayed them. Men like Delgrès and Pélage existed uneasily in this space between loyalty and ideals. They had given their lives to the Republic and were rewarded with rights and opportunities previously unheard of for men of color.
All this is to say, for many, France wasn't the obvious villain at the time. They remembered another, better France, and it was hard to let go of that.
That’s where things stood in 1801 when Napoleon’s new governor, Admiral Jean-Baptiste Raymond de Lacrosse, arrived to take control. At last, the rumors could be put to rest. His actions would indicate how Paris intended to govern the island. It quickly became apparent that he meant to roll back the gains of the republican years.
He reimposed strict racial hierarchies and began deporting officers of color whose loyalty he even remotely suspected. He appointed plantation managers to oversee salary payments to cultivators. The problem? They skimmed a commission from those salaries, a practice deeply resented by the plantation workers. (5)
But what really stoked resistance to Lacrosse was his whitewashing of the colonial army, composed mostly of colored soldiers. White troops arriving from France were given better rations and higher pay than their local colonial counterparts. When General Bethencourt, the highest-ranking military official, died of fever in 1801, most expected his deputy, none other than Magloire Pélage, to be promoted to the position. (6)
Instead, Lacrosse appointed himself and made Louis Delgrès his aide-de-camp. When some officers protested this move, Lacrosse had them arrested and deported. He soon convinced himself, without evidence, that every officer of color was plotting against him and should be deported as well, starting with Pélage.
In October 1801, he ordered the midnight arrest of Pélage and other high-ranking officers. The arrest was bungled, and the fugitives fled to rally the garrison to their cause. That became easier when they discovered a letter from Lacrosse revealing how he was shipping deportees to Madagascar. At this point, uncertainty hardened into open rebellion. No doubt they understood where they would be going if they failed.
Pélage found himself in an awkward position. Revolt just wasn’t in his nature. He would always remain a loyal servant of France, no matter the personal cost. Finding himself the reluctant rebel, he tried to negotiate with Lacrosse, who still couldn’t seem to grasp how badly he had misplayed his hand.
Instead of seeking compromise, he blamed Pélage for everything and demanded his resignation. But Lacrosse was no longer in a position to be making demands. Most of his units were made up of colored troops, and they were melting away by the hour.
A black officer named Ignace soon captured Lacrosse and marched him out to Fort Charles. An odd scene played out. As the captive governor entered the fort, Pélage had all of his troops assembled in formation. He shouted “Vive la République!” and “Vive le capitaine général Lacrosse!”, but the troops responded with something else. Cries of “A bas Lacrosse!” (Down with Lacrosse), and “Vivre libre ou mourir!” (Live free or die) rang through the fort. (7)
Pélage’s discordant attempt to demonstrate his loyalty, at a moment when the governor was completely at his mercy, had backfired. Ignace whisked Lacrosse away and locked him in a room to keep him from being murdered by the outraged soldiers.
What about Delgrès? For the moment, he stuck by his hated boss, going as far as to argue for his release. Duty and honor demanded he serve his commander to the best of his ability, and Delgrès did so. However, Ignace and some others persuaded him to join the rebels.
At last, Delgrès reportedly gave in: “All right! I am with you, but on the condition that we will defend ourselves to the death, unless we are offered a treaty that covers the past and assures the future.” This was a big deal; for now, the rebels gained one of the most respected men on Guadeloupe, revered for his character and conviction. (8)
Pélage now did something that probably saved Lacrosse’s unworthy life but would cost him later. He deported the governor and elevated himself to the position on an interim basis, supported by a governing council of leading citizens.
This decision would come back to haunt him, for Lacrosse didn’t sail quietly back to France. He ended up in the nearby British colony of Dominica, along with two other magistrates Napoleon had dispatched to co-govern Guadeloupe. There, the three seethed and plotted their revenge.
From Dominica, they wrote a scathing letter to the colonial minister, Denis Decrés, listing the traitors who needed to be dealt with. Among them were Pélage and Delgrès. “They want to reign over these islands like the nègres of Saint-Domingue. . . . Their pretensions are such that they say loudly that the island is theirs by right of conquest and that it is up to them alone to govern it.” Napoleon, already planning to retake Saint-Domingue from Toussaint Loeverture's rebels, wasn’t about to let that happen somewhere else. (9)
In the spring of 1802, General Antoine Richepanse sailed with 3,500 battle-hardened veterans and orders to crush the rebellion and reestablish French control. Meanwhile, Pélage was struggling to hold a fragile governing coalition together, professing loyalty to France while trying to fend off radicals demanding greater autonomy. (10)
Delgrès, now the commander at Fort Charles, believed Pélage’s policy of appeasement would be disastrous to former slaves and mulattos like himself. He also loathed the idea of raising arms against the country that had given him so much.
That’s where things stood right before Richepanse’s force arrived in May. Guadeloupe’s population was split between those still loyal to Paris, like Pélage and Delgrès, and those convinced that resistance was the only way to preserve their freedom.
Something had to give, one way or another, and it soon would.
IV. "We are soldiers and French, we must only know obedience."
The arrival of Richepanse’s army in Guadeloupe on 6 May could not have contrasted more sharply with Leclerc’s in Saint-Domingue back in February. Leclerc encountered bitter resistance from the start that wouldn’t end until the French defeat almost two years later.
Pélage didn’t know it, but Napoleon had issued Richepanse instructions similar to Leclerc’s. He was to make soothing proclamations guaranteeing liberty for Guadeloupe’s people of color while occupying the key ports and forts and decapitating the leadership through arrests, deportations, and, if necessary, executions. The final stage would be the reinstatement of slavery, though this last step wasn’t explicitly stated. (11)
Pélage welcomed the French with open arms. As Richepanse’s troops disembarked in Pointe-à-Pitre, an honor guard and a military band playing “Air de la grande famille” greeted them. But the welcome soured almost immediately.
Richepanse ordered the band to stop playing, then sent the black soldiers to the back of the formation, behind the whites, to be disarmed, stripped of their uniforms, arrested, and packed into prison ships waiting in the harbor.
General Gobert later wrote how Guadeloupe’s soldiers and administrators were treated "with a great deal of disdain, presuming that they were all guilty." Ignace, the officer who had arrested Lacrosse, sought Pélage out to demand an explanation. His boss responded, ‘‘We are soldiers and French, we must only know obedience; be certain that justice will be rendered to us." Ignace stormed off in disgust. (12)
Richepanse ordered the remaining colored troops stationed in forts around Pointe-à-Pitre to gather on the Stiweson plain outside the city, where they were also disarmed and taken away to the prison ships. (13)
By now, word was spreading. Some, including Ignace, fled west to link up with Delgrès in Basse-Terre, where he gathered the remnants of the now-depleted colonial garrison to fight back. There could be no negotiation or compromise.
He told his men, ‘‘They want to take our liberty, my friends; let us defend it with heart, let us prefer death to slavery.” (14) As Delgrès began preparing for the imminent French arrival, he issued a remarkable proclamation addressed “TO THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE” as a “CRY OF INNOCENCE AND DESPAIR.”
I’ll quote the beginning and end because it is an eloquent and inspiring call to arms against racist oppression. Really, you get the sense here that he understood how long the odds were in the coming fight.
Delgrès was writing for posterity as much as to Guadeloupe's people of color.
“These are the greatest days of a century that will always be famous for the triumph of enlightenment and philosophy. And yet in the midst of them is a class of unfortunate threatened with destruction, which finds itself obliged to raise its voice toward posterity so that she will know, once they have disappeared, of their innocence and misery."
[....]
Divinity itself cannot be offended that we are defending our cause, which is that of humanity and justice.… And to you posterity! Shed a tear for our sorrows, and we will die satisfied." (15)
And so it began.
V. "Death a thousand times more acceptable than the slavery they had come to give them."
Richepanse’s strategy resembled that of U.S. Grant’s 1864 spring campaign: to engage his opponent without pause and hammer him into submission through relentless attrition. He believed (rightly, it turns out) that defeating Delgrès was the key to victory. A solid plan, and his small army of well-trained, battle-tested soldiers would execute it skillfully in the coming weeks.
Delgrés, meanwhile, had little choice but to react and defend. He lacked a navy and possessed far fewer firearms and battlefield cannons. He did have a core of seasoned colonial veterans, but much of his force was composed of former slaves armed with nothing more than sticks and machetes. (16) It was probably the best strategy if he wanted to wage a conventional campaign—which he did—but, given the imbalance in power, the odds would be long.
After securing Pointe-à-Pitre and the eastern half of Guadeloupe, the French flotilla arrived on 10 May and began disembarking a few kilometers north of Basse-Terre. Richepanse also sent General Sériziat overland from Pointe-à-Pitre with orders to approach Fort Charles from the north and east. These two forces were meant to pinch Delgrès on his flanks.
The first day's combat set the tone. The French lost 120 men but still managed to push the insurgents back into Basse-Terre. The next day saw savage street fighting, with both sides now taking significant casualties. Again, French superiority was decisive, and by the end of the day, the rebels had been forced to retreat to Fort Charles, a few miles south of town.
After two days of hard fighting, both sides had taken heavy losses. As he prepared to assault the fort, Richepanse tried to undermine resistance by issuing a proclamation meant to debunk rumors that Lacrosse was going to put the population 'back into chains.'
He promised that ‘not even the slightest attack’ would be made on ‘the liberty that all French citizens enjoy without distinction.’ Those who laid down their arms would be welcomed back as free French citizens; those who resisted would be destroyed. (17)
This was a lie. He had no intention of doing anything of the sort. He came for the singular purpose of putting them “back into chains.” But his offer appealed to many. It didn't hurt that Pélage's support lent credence to everything Richepanse promised. Pélage even sent a delegation of officers of color to convince his old friend to lay down his arms and end his futile resistance.
Delgrès refused, responding: ‘‘We are her [France’s] children, and we will not raise an angry hand against her. But she forces us today to fight against her rights, or rather those who interpret them, against those who disrespect us and go against her noble principles by acting arbitrarily, without the wisdom and justice that she grants her children.” (18)
One of Richepanse’s battlefield commanders, Jean-François-Xavier de Ménard, wrote later how Delgrès ‘‘despaired to fight the French but that all those he commanded found death a thousand times more acceptable than the slavery they had come to give them.” (19)
The safety of Fort Charles proved illusory. As the fighting in and around Basse-Terre had raged over the last two days, General Sériziat’s force had been closing in from the northeast. Sériziat encountered fierce resistance from insurgents under Palerme but eventually managed to occupy the heights above Fort Charles. This made Delgrès’s position untenable.
Here we get the first hint of division among the rebels. Palerme’s insurgents wanted to engage in a scorched-earth campaign, burning plantations to the ground as they retreated and killing or imprisoning any white property owners and their families.
Emblematic of this more ruthless approach was a pregnant mulâtresse named Solitude, described as the ‘wicked genius’ of Palerme’s insurgents. One story describes how she impaled a rabbit that escaped and held up its twitching body before the white prisoners, telling them, "Here is how I will treat you when the time comes." Such guerrilla tactics echoed those of the insurgents on Saint-Domingue, where the struggle for freedom had already consumed tens of thousands of lives. (20)
Delgrès, however, insisted on fighting a conventional campaign to minimize civilian casualties. He refused to wage a scorched-earth war. This was noble, chivalrous even, but it meant fighting his enemies on their strongest terms: on a conventional battlefield against a professional European army.
VI. "This act of appalling courage."
The fighting shifted to the plantations on the heights surrounding Fort Charles. The French were trying to occupy them so they could bombard the fort from above. Delgrès understood this and sent units to defend the nearest plantations.
Pélage convinced Richepanse to free the 600 soldiers imprisoned on the ships and have them do some of the heavier fighting on the French side. They did so with some gusto, perhaps wanting to prove their worth so they wouldn’t be imprisoned again.
Remember, Richepanse had promised he didn’t mean to take their liberty. This still seemed plausible to many.
The 600 men Pélage had freed fought well and took the pressure off the French, who had been doing most of the heavy fighting. They captured several plantations held by Delgrès. The noose tightened.
On 19 May, something curious happened. A fire started in Basse-Terre, now under French control. Delgrès requested a truce to put it out. Richepanse agreed, and under a flag of truce, the two sides paused hostilities to cooperate in putting out the flames. The fire extinguished, they saluted and returned to their fortifications to continue the war.
By now, however, French artillery on the heights above Fort Charles began raining shells down and inflicting heavy casualties. There was no choice but to retreat once again. The rebels slipped out of the back of the fort opposite the French lines and split into two groups.
Ignace and Palerme led a group of about 400 to Pointe-à-Pitre to try and rouse the population to their cause. Delgrès stayed behind to buy time by keeping Richepanse’s main force occupied. It was a desperate plan, but, again, probably the best under the circumstances, since the French offensive was slowly battering the remnants of Delgrès’s army to pieces.
Ignace carried out the plan, traveling along the coast, burning and ravaging his way to Pointe-à-Pitre, with General Gobert in hot pursuit. Once Ignace made it to Pointe-à-Pitre, he dug in at Fort Baimbridge and prepared for Gobert's arrival. In the meantime, Palerme detached and headed inland with his followers to wage a guerrilla campaign.
General Gobert caught up on 26 May and assaulted Fort Baimbridge. This first attack was repulsed with heavy losses. However, the second breached the defenses. As French troops poured into the fort, Ignace, finding himself cornered by three soldiers, took his own life.
He shouted, “You will not have the honor of taking me alive,” before shooting himself. Gobert did have the honor of mounting his head on a pike in Pointe-à-Pitre. The 250 survivors of Ignace’s army were all executed by firing squad. (21)
Meanwhile, Delgrès had moved north into the highlands above Basse-Terre, to a place called Matouba, where he dug in at the D’Anglemont plantation. This was a strong defensive position, for the approaches on both sides were covered by deep ravines.
Unfortunately, the destruction of Ignace’s force doomed Delgrès and his cause to defeat. He had no one left to buy time for, though he didn’t know it, and no help coming to save him, though he likely suspected as much.
This became the final phase of a last stand, as the French methodically surrounded the plantation. The rebels couldn't do anything about it. By 28 May, Delgrès was trapped.
As the French moved in to finish him off, we are fortunate to have a firsthand account by Richepanse’s battlefield commander, General Ménard, who led the assault. What’s striking about Ménard’s after-action report is the grudging respect and admiration he held for his opponents.
He called them “villains,” but his description paints another picture, one of desperate courage and grim conviction, something a professional soldier like him could respect in an enemy.
From Ménard: "The activity, the courage, even recklessness of the négres since the beginning of the attack, the unanimous cry of 'live free or die,' that they often repeated, the care they took to remove the white color from their flag to symbolize their independence clearly announced that their situation was desperate and their resistance would be terrible." (22)
He went on to describe how it all ended when his infantry launched their final assault on the defenders dug in around the plantation. “We charged after them with fixed bayonets. Already a few of the bravest had crossed the ditch surrounding it when a terrible explosion showed us one of the most horrible scenes that war can produce. D’Anglemont had just exploded.” (23)
Ménard learned of Delgrès’s final moments from one of the few survivors. The prisoner told how, moments before the French attack, barrels of gunpowder were positioned in such a way as to maximize the damage when ignited. Before lighting the fuse, Delgrès paused long enough to let his prisoners go. A considerate touch, though most of them didn't get far enough away to survive the blast.
Then it happened: “The blacks, holding each other by the hand, encouraged one another by shouting, 'No slavery!' as they lit their own funeral pyre.” Ménard concluded his report by stating, "This act of appalling courage ended the war by destroying all at once, with one blow, the leaders of the revolt, their elite soldiers, and the rest of their ammunition." (24)
Survivors of the explosion were rounded up and executed. One of the prisoners was the pregnant mulâtresse Solitude. She languished in prison until giving birth to her child into slavery that November. The day after, she too was executed.
Richepanse bragged in his report back to Paris: "The leaders are dead, all the rest are disarmed, submissive, and returning to the work they never should have left." (25)
He had good reason to be proud. From a military standpoint, he had waged a skillful campaign, and his army had performed superbly. From start to finish, the reconquest of Guadeloupe had taken less than a month. Over the next few months, Richepanse ordered mass executions and deportations to make damn sure no resistance ever reemerged. He was, if anything, thorough.
In July, with the main opposition crushed, he officially reimposed slavery on the island before dying of yellow fever in September. Lacrosse, arriving with scores to settle, took over and finished the grim work his predecessor had started, while also making sure to stamp out any revolts that popped up, something he did with medieval relish. Captured arsonists who torched plantations were themselves burned alive; assassins were ripped apart on the wheel. (26)
By 1804, the last insurgent leaders accepted a deal for safe passage to leave Guadeloupe. Most took it and left. Slavery remained in place until emancipation at long last came, permanently this time, in 1848.
What about dutiful Pélage? He still had to answer for the 1801 insurrection against Lacrosse. His usefulness now at an end, Richepanse had him arrested and shipped off to France. He spent the next 15 months in prison before being acquitted by a Parisian court in late 1803. He lived on his military pension in Paris until 1808, when he was reactivated—at his own request—as a colonel in the French army and sent to fight in Spain, where he died in 1810, loyal to the end.
VII. "Magnanimous warrior!"
Delgrès's life ended at Matouba, but not his legacy. Some survivors imprisoned on ships near Saint-Domingue escaped and told the tale of his demise. This couldn't have come at a more delicate time for Leclerc, who was so close to victory after most of the rebel commanders, including Toussaint Louverture, had surrendered to him in May.
Though it's too much to credit Delgrès's sacrifice for the eventual French defeat in Saint-Domingue, his example was both an inspiration and a warning to the rebels. Rumors of his heroic stand—and of slavery’s return on Guadeloupe—reenergized resistance like nothing else. The Black population of Saint-Domingue now understood that their lives and freedom depended on winning.
Leclerc had intended to hide his real plan until he had complete control of the island. That was now impossible. The tide began to turn. In about a year and a half, the French would be driven off the island, and the first Black Republic of former slaves would be established.
But for the Guadeloupeans, no one else was coming to save them. Slavery endured until abolition in 1848.
Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Haiti's first ruler, honored the 'brave and immortal' Delgrès, who chose to be "blown into the air with the fort he defended, rather than accept their offered chains. Magnanimous warrior! That noble death, far from enfeebling our courage, serves only to rouse within us the determination of avenging or following thee." (27)
Delgrès became a symbol to those fighting against slavery and racial oppression in the Caribbean. They never forgot him or his sacrifice. To white European Frenchmen, he was nothing but a defeated traitor who chose the wrong side in a lost cause.
But time passed, the world moved on, and slavery eventually went away. On Guadeloupe, Fort Charles (renamed Fort Richepanse after the war) became Fort Delgrès in 1989. In April 1998, during the sesquicentennial anniversary of the abolition of slavery, two plaques were unveiled in the Panthéon in Paris.
One was dedicated to Toussaint Louverture, the other to Louis Delgrès, "hero of the struggle against the re-establishment of slavery in Guadeloupe," who died "so that liberty could live." (28) At the unveiling ceremony, the Minister of Justice praised him as a "precursor to decolonization."
So maybe heroes don't always win the fight. But sometimes, posterity makes it right.
Eventually.
Everybody knows.
Louis Delgrès's Proclamation (full text)
To the Entire Universe
The Last Cry of Innocence and Despair
These are the greatest days of a century that will always be famous for the triumph of enlightenment and philosophy. And yet in the midst of them is a class of unfortunates threatened with destruction, which finds itself obliged to raise its voice toward posterity so that she will know, once they have disappeared, of their innocence and misery.
The victim of a small number of bloodthirsty individuals who have dared to trick the French government, a crowd of citizens, always loyal to the fatherland, has found itself enveloped in an accusation put forth by the author of all its miseries.
General Richepanse, the extent of whose powers we do not know, since he has presented himself only as an army general, has so far announced his arrival only through a proclamation whose expressions are so broad that, even as he promises protection, he could kill us without departing from the terms he has used. In this style we have recognized the mark of the Admiral Lacrosse who has sworn his eternal hatred of us....Yes, we would like to believe that the General Richepanse, too, has been tricked by this treacherous man, who uses daggers as well as slander.
What are the acts of authority with which we have been threatened? Are the bayonets of those brave soldiers, whose arrival we have been awaiting and who previously were directed against enemies of the republic, to be turned against us? Ah! Rather, if we consider the actions the authorities have already taken in Point-à-Pitre, they are instead killing people slowly in prisons. Well! We choose to die more quickly!
Let us dare say it. The fundamental principles of the worst tyrants have been surpassed today. Our old oppressors permitted a master to emancipate his slave. But it seems that, in this century of philosophy, there exist men, grown powerful thanks to the distance that separates them from those who appointed them, who only want to see men who are black or who take their origins from this color in the chains of slavery.
First Consul of the Republic, warrior-philosopher from whom we expected the justice we deserved, why have we been abandoned to mourn how far we live from the land that produced the sublime ideas we have so often admired? Ah! Without a doubt, one day you will know our innocence. Then it will be too late. Perverse men will already have used the slander that they have poured upon us to consummate our ruin.
Citizens of Guadeloupe, you for whom a difference in the color of the epidermis is enough of a title so that you do not fear the vengeance that threatens us—unless they force you to carry arms against us—you have heard what motivates our indignation. Resistance to oppression is a natural right. Divinity itself cannot be offended that we are defending our cause, which is that of humanity and justice. We will not stain it with the shadow of crime. Yes, we are resolved to defend ourselves, but we will not become aggressors. Stay in your homes, and fear nothing from us. We swear solemnly to respect your wives, your children, your properties, and to use all our power to make sure others respect them.
And you, posterity! Shed a tear for our sorrows, and we will die satisfied.
Signed, the commander of Basse-Terre, Louis Delgrès
Works Cited
“An Historical Account of the Black Empire of Hayti.” Google Books, Google, www.google.com/books/edition/An_Historical_Account_of_the_Black_Empir/EKw-Z44oTrIC?hl=en&gbpv=1. Accessed 1 Nov. 2025.
Beatriz Wallace and Kyle Wilkinson and Bootstrap contributors. “Aimé Césaire and the Digital Cahier.” francophone.duke.edu, francophone.duke.edu/sites/francophone.duke.edu/fdh-archive/Cesaire.html#line10.19. Accessed 1 Nov. 2025.
Cormack, William S. Patriots, Royalists, and Terrorists in the West Indies: The French Revolution in Martinique and Guadeloupe, 1789-1802. University of Toronto Press, 2019.
“The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.” Elysee.fr, 16 Nov. 2012, www.elysee.fr/en/french-presidency/the-declaration-of-the-rights-of-man-and-of-the-citizen.
Dubois, Laurent. Avengers of the New World. Harvard University Press, 2004.
Dubois, Laurent. A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787–1804. Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture, 2004.
Dubois, Laurent, and John D. Garrigus. Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789–1804: A Brief History with Documents. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006.
Dubois, Laurent. “Haunting Delgrès.” Contested Histories in Public Space, 16 Jan. 2009, pp. 311–328, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11sn80v.21.
Forrest, Alan, and Matthias Middell. The Routledge Companion to the French Revolution in World History. Routledge, 2018.
Endnotes
(1) Laurent Dubois. A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787–1804, 354.
(2) Dubois, 327.
(3) Ibid., 350.
(4) Ibid., 375.
(5) Ibid., 356.
(6) Ibid., 358.
(7) Ibid., 361.
(8) Ibid., 362.
(9) Ibid., 366.
(10) Ibid., 379-380.
(11) Cormack, 260.
(12) Dubois, 389-390.
(13) Ibid.
(14) Ibid., 391.
(15) Laurent Dubois and John D. Garrigus. Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789–1804: A Brief History with Documents, 172-173.
(16) Dubois, 393.
(17) Ibid., 394.
(18) Ibid.
(19) Ibid., 395.
(20) Ibid., 396.
(21) Ibid., 399.
(22) Dubois & Garrigus, 174.
(23) Ibid., 175.
(24) Ibid.
(25) Dubois, 400.
(26) Ibid., 417.
(27) Rainsford, 449.
(28) Dubois (Haunting Dubois), 174.
----
Paul Wilke
Dry Grove, Il
1 November 2025