[11] Major-General Bruce's despatch.
[12] See map.
CHAPTER V.
ROYAL RANGERS, COMMANDED BY CAPTAIN MALCOLM, 41ST REGIMENT.
A: Capt. Commandant.
B: Captains.
C: 1st Lieutenants.
D: 2nd Lieutenants.
E: Sergeants Present.
F: Drummers Present.
G: Present fit for Duty.
H: In Hospital.
I: In Quarters.
| Stations. | Commissioned Officers. | E | F | Effective Rank and File. | ||||||
| A | B | C | D | G | Sick and Wounded. | Total. | ||||
| H | I | |||||||||
| Martinico | 1 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 8 | 4 | 149 | 28 | 27 | 204 |
This officer is mentioned by Bryan Edwards, vol. iii. p. 452: "Lieutenant Malcolm, of the 41st Grenadiers, was appointed Town Major" (of St. Pierre, Martinique, in 1794) "in consideration of his distinguished conduct and active services at the head of a body of riflemen, which was composed of two men selected from each company of the 1st Battalion of Grenadiers. We shall have occasion to mention this officer afterwards."
This body of riflemen, raised during the operations in Martinique, in March, 1794, must, if the above statement of its formation be correct, have been European, for there were no black troops employed in the reduction of that island, except the Carolina Corps. The corps of riflemen is not shown in any return, and it is probable that at the termination of the active operations the men rejoined their respective battalions. The Royal Rangers, shown in the return of the 1st of May, 1795, were black; for Sir John Vaughan, in a letter dated Martinique, April 25th, 1795, which gives an account of the operations in St. Lucia in that month, says: "The flank companies of the 9th Regiment and the black corps under Captain Malcolm were the troops engaged." These Royal Rangers, then, were almost certainly entirely distinct from the "body of riflemen," and the success which had attended Captain Malcolm's efforts with the first body probably led to his being employed in raising the second, about February or March, 1795. In the month of April, 1795, one company of this corps, numbering 121 of all ranks, was in St. Lucia, and the other company, 112 strong, in Martinique.
Victor Hugues, having succeeded in ousting the British from Guadaloupe, commenced, early in 1795, active measures for the recovery of the other islands that had been wrested from France in the previous year, and the plan which was first ripened appears to have been that against St. Lucia.[13] "No official and scarcely any other accounts of the event are to be found, but the invasion of this colony appears to have been effected about the middle of February.... Nor can the strength of the invading force be now ascertained. That force was probably few in number, and stolen into the island in small bodies, and under cover of the night. Aided, however, by an insurrection of the slaves, people of colour, and democratical whites, it was sufficient to wrest from us the whole of the colony, with the exception of the two posts of the Carenage and the Morne Fortune."[14]