Third Brigade—Colonel Sir C. Gordon: 6th (Warwick), 9th (Norfolk), and 43rd (Oxford Light Infantry) Regiments.
On April 1 the squadron arrived off the island, and the Second Brigade was at once disembarked under the guns of the Winchelsea, the operation being executed, to use Sir John Jervis's words, "with neatness and despatch, under the direction of Lord Viscount Garlies." Colonels Blundell and Coote, at the head of their battalions, advanced rapidly on the fortified position on the Morne Fortunée, which was evacuated by the enemy, when the French commander hoisted the white flag, and the island for the second time in its history passed into the possession of the English. Leaving Sir C. Gordon in command with the 6th and 9th Regiments as garrison, Sir G. Grey returned to Martinique.
Owing to the exigencies of the service, and the inability of the Ministry at home to realize the necessity of maintaining the troops in the West Indies at a proper strength, Grey from time to time was compelled to reduce the garrison, so that when, in the spring of the following year, the negroes of St. Lucia, in common with their fellows in the neighbouring islands, rose in revolt, the then Governor, Colonel Stuart, had only some 400 men to make headway against the revolt. In June the island was evacuated.
St. Lucia, 1796.
The only regiments authorized to bear the battle honour are the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers and the Shropshires.
Early in the year 1796 it became necessary to re-conquer practically the whole of the French West India Islands—not, indeed, from the armies of the French Republic, but from the hordes of negroes, whose passions had been inflamed by revolutionary agents, and whose ambitions had been fired by the pernicious doctrines of "the rights of man." The command of the expeditionary force was entrusted to Sir Ralph Abercromby, with whom was associated the ever-to-be-remembered Sir John Moore. The total force numbered some 18,000 men, distributed as under, and was mobilized in Carlisle Bay, Barbados, in March, 1796:
Cavalry: 27th Light Dragoons and Royal Irish Artillery.
First Brigade: 14th, 27th, 28th, and 57th Regiments.
Second Brigade: 3rd, 19th, 31st, and 35th Regiments.