Qualla: Capture of Grenada (1779)

Capture of Grenada (1779): Introduction

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mahan, A. T., et al., Public domain. Governor Lord Macartney had been warned, but warning without reinforcement is just anxiety with official stationery. The British governor of Grenada spent the early summer of 1779 writing urgent letters to Admiral Byron and the garrison at St. Kitts, pleading for troops and ships against a French attack he knew was coming. The replies were reassuring and useless: Saint Vincent was the French target, not Grenada. Byron would come if needed. On 2 July, when the sails of Admiral Estaing's fleet appeared off St. George's harbor - twenty-five warships and transports carrying over two thousand soldiers - Macartney had at his disposal 101 regulars from the 48th Regiment of Foot, 24 artillerymen, and roughly 400 militia he did not trust, because a third of them were of French descent.

Image: Mahan, A. T., et al. | Public domain

Capture of Grenada (1779): The Richest Prize in the Windwards

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pierre Ozanne, Public domain. Grenada in 1779 was no backwater outpost. It was one of Britain's wealthiest Caribbean colonies, its hillsides thick with sugar plantations worked by enslaved people whose labor produced fortunes shipped to London drawing rooms. Two hundred merchant ships sat in St. George's harb...

Image: Pierre Ozanne | Public domain

Capture of Grenada (1779): Bayonets on Hospital Hill

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Artiste inconnu, Public domain. Estaing landed 2,100 troops on 2 July: 1,400 men of Dillon's Regiment and 700 drawn from the Champagne, Foix, Auxerrois, and Hainaut regiments. He sent a parley flag demanding surrender. Macartney refused. With Byron's relieving fleet potentially days away, Estaing chose speed ov...

Image: Artiste inconnu | Public domain

Capture of Grenada (1779): The Governor's Coat

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jean-François Hue, Public domain. What followed was unusual even by the harsh standards of 18th-century warfare. Macartney offered terms of capitulation. Estaing rejected them and countered with his own, which Macartney found so extreme that he called them "not merely unprecedented and humiliating, but so ensnari...

Image: Jean-François Hue | Public domain

Capture of Grenada (1779): Wounds That Outlasted the War

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit I. Barbié sculp. / l'abbé d'Haisne pinx., Public domain. Estaing's victory made him a celebrity in France. The playwright Pierre-Germain Parisau staged a theatrical reenactment of the capture; John Paul Jones attended a performance in Paris. But on Grenada itself, the consequences ran deeper and lasted longer. The comte de Durat, insta...

Image: I. Barbié sculp. / l'abbé d'Haisne pinx. | Public domain