ek after week,
month after month, not merely against French soldiers, but against
worse enemies; 'Brigands,' as the poor fellows were called; Negroes
liberated by the Revolution of 1792. With their heads full (and who
can blame them?) of the Rights of Man, and the democratic teachings
of that valiant and able friend of Robespierre, Victor Hugues, they
had destroyed their masters, man, woman, and child, horribly enough,
and then helped to drive out of the island the invading English, who
were already half destroyed, not with fighting, but with fever. And
now 'St. Lucia the faithful,' as the Convention had named her, was
swarming with fresh English; and the remaining French and the
drilled Negroes made a desperate stand in the earthworks of yonder
Morne Fortunee, above the harbour, and had to surrender, with 100
guns and all their stores; and then the poor black fellows, who only
knew that they were free, and intended to remain free, took to the
bush, and fed on the wild cush-cush roots and the plunder of the
plantations, man-hunting, murdering French and English alike, and
being put to death in return whenever caught. Gentle Abercrombie
could not coax them into peace: stern Moore could not shoot and
hang them into it; and the 'Brigand war' dragged hideously on, till
Moore--who was nearly caught by them in a six-oared boat off the
Pitons, and had to row for his life to St. Vincent, so saving
himself for the glory of Corunna--was all but dead of fever; and
Colonel James Drummond had to carry on the miserable work, till the
whole 'Armee Francaise dans les bois' laid down their rusty muskets,
on the one condition, that free they had been, and free they should
remain. So they were formed into an English regiment, and sent to
fight on the coast of Africa; and in more senses than one 'went to
their own place.' Then St. Lucia was ours till the peace of 1802;
then French again, under the good and wise Nogues; to be retaken by
us in 1803 once and for all.

I tell this little story at some length, as an instance of what
these islands have cost us in blood and treasure. I have heard it
regretted that we restored Martinique to the French, and kept St.
Lucia instead. But in so doing, the British Government acted at
least on the advice which Rodney had given as early as the year
1778. St. Lucia, he held, would render Martinique and the other
islands of little use in war, owing to its windwa