Fédon’s Rebellion: Grenada’s Struggle of 1795–1796

An island with more than one struggle

Fédon’s Rebellion began on the night of 2 March 1795 and developed into a prolonged struggle over Grenada. Its leader, Julien Fédon, established his headquarters at Belvidere, his plantation in the island’s interior. The movement challenged British authority, captured prominent colonists and drew the island into the wider war between Britain and revolutionary France. British accounts called its participants insurgents and traitors: terms that reveal the position of the people writing the records. ⁴

Behind the fighting lay several different struggles. Free inhabitants could demand rights while continuing to own other human beings. Enslaved people could seek freedom without sharing every objective of the free planter leadership. Some joined the rebels; some served the British; others tried to survive outside either force. Keeping these differences in view makes the rebellion more comprehensible than treating everyone on either side as a single political community. ⁶

Rights under changing imperial rulers

Grenada passed from France to Britain in 1763. A French occupation between 1779 and 1783 interrupted British rule before the island returned to British control. Changes of sovereignty affected property, religion and political participation. Francophone Catholics faced restrictions within a colony whose rulers privileged British interests. The return of British government in 1783 sharpened conflicts over their position. ¹

Historian Tessa Murphy places these disputes within a longer history of attempts to secure rights. Francophone Catholic inhabitants had pursued political and diplomatic remedies before the rebellion. Their turn towards armed resistance followed frustrated efforts to obtain recognition within the imperial system. This interpretation helps explain why the rising cannot be understood simply as an idea imported from France: Grenadian grievances gave revolutionary alliances a local purpose. ²

The legal category of British subject was itself contested in an expanding empire. As Caitlin Anderson argues, officials applied ideas about allegiance in changing colonial circumstances. In Grenada, the question of who owed loyalty to Britain sat uneasily beside the question of who could enjoy the rights associated with that loyalty. These were practical issues of power, with potentially lethal consequences when resistance was labelled treason. ³

A free planter leading a revolutionary movement

Fédon was a free man of colour and an enslaver. The plantation he owned became a military base, while the contemporary narrative of Dr John Hay records enslaved attendants around him. Recognising this does not make the participation of enslaved rebels any less significant. It identifies a central tension: the political ambitions of a free property owner cannot automatically stand for the aims of everyone who fought under his leadership. ⁴

Hay, a doctor and militia officer captured during the opening attacks, became an important witness to events inside the rebel camp. His account describes another leader, Etienne Ventour, and shows a movement involving several commanders, messengers, guards and armed groups. Although the rebellion bears Fédon’s name, its daily operation depended on many people whose roles emerge only briefly in hostile testimony. ⁴

Hay’s narrative also requires care. Published in 1823, it portrays his captors through the language and assumptions of a British colonist. Its later introduction openly defends the plantation order. The book supplies evidence about the rebellion, but its descriptions of character, motive and collective guilt cannot be accepted as disinterested judgements. ⁴

French revolution and Caribbean connections

On 4 February 1794, France’s National Convention abolished slavery in the French colonies. That decision gave a new political meaning to French republican expansion in the Caribbean. Military intervention could now be presented as emancipation as well as a struggle against Britain. The decree created possibilities that enslaved people could pursue, although a declaration issued in Europe did not by itself determine conditions on every island. ⁵

Hay describes commissions and assistance linking Grenada’s rebels with Victor Hugues in Guadeloupe. The rebels used French republican symbols, and their movement belonged to a regional contest over ships, troops and supplies. Guadeloupe was more than a distant source of inspiration: it provided a connection through which military support and claims to revolutionary authority could travel. ⁴

Murphy’s emphasis on earlier Grenadian demands remains useful here. French backing offered an opportunity to pursue grievances that had developed under British government. Revolutionary language and local disputes reinforced one another, without making every participant’s priorities identical. ²

The opening attacks and the capture of hostages

The rising opened with attacks on La Baye, also known as Grenville, and Gouyave, then called Charlotte Town. Hay was taken at Gouyave and brought into the rebels’ custody. Governor Ninian Home was also captured. Holding such men gave the movement bargaining power and demonstrated how quickly established colonial authority could become vulnerable outside its defended centres. ⁴

At Belvidere, the prisoners found themselves inside an armed organisation whose commanders controlled their movements and communications. On 6 March, a letter signed by hostages warned the British authorities that an attack on the position could put their lives at risk. That document shows how the prisoners became part of military negotiation: their safety was used to influence decisions being made elsewhere. ⁴

Hay’s account records demands for medical treatment alongside the threat of violence. His skills made him useful to his captors, including Ventour. The resulting narrative moves between personal fear, practical exchanges and descriptions of armed command. It should be read as the experience of one unusually placed prisoner, rather than a complete account of life among the rebels. ⁴

Freedom and the choices of enslaved people

One episode in Hay’s narrative brings the promise of freedom into focus. Five enslaved sailors captured near Gouyave were offered a choice between remaining prisoners and joining the movement. According to Hay, they hesitated before agreeing, and Fédon then declared them free. The episode connects freedom with military recruitment. It also leaves unanswered questions about the sailors’ wishes and the pressure inherent in the choice presented to them. ⁴

Elsewhere, Hay encountered his servant John Charles wearing a republican cockade. John Charles said he had been compelled to serve as a drummer; Hay doubted him. The record preserves a disagreement without resolving it. We cannot confidently recover the servant’s motives from his employer’s suspicion, nor assume that a claim of compulsion tells the whole story. ⁴

Kit Candlin’s research separates enslaved people who supported the rebels, those who fought for the British and those outside either camp. That distinction restores political complexity to people often reduced to a mass following. Participation, avoidance and changing allegiance could all occur within a war whose dangers extended well beyond the battlefield. ⁶

The killing of prisoners

During a British attack on Belvidere in April 1795, Fédon ordered the killing of prisoners, including Home. Hay’s account states that forty-eight of fifty-one prisoners were killed, with himself, the clergyman McMahon and a man named Kerr surviving. The episode must remain part of the rebellion’s history. Opposition to colonial domination does not require overlooking violence committed by those who resisted it. ⁴

Hay describes appeals for mercy and identifies different people around the command. His perspective is limited, but it does not depict an entirely uniform group. Reading carefully means distinguishing his report of the killings from his attempts to assign identical cruelty to whole categories of people. The prisoners’ deaths are evidence of a specific act, not an explanation of the motives of every enslaved participant. ⁴

A war fought along the coast

The struggle depended on maritime supply as well as positions inland. An aquatint published in 1798 shows HMS Mermaid aground at Requin on 10 October 1795 while pursuing the French corvette Brutus. Its inscription explains the British aim of preventing troops and ammunition from reaching the rebels. The print celebrates the British naval effort and uses hostile language about the enemy. Read critically, it documents both a supply struggle and the public presentation of that struggle. ⁷

The British campaign also depended on Black troops. The official casualty return for the attack at Port Royal on 25 March 1796 lists the Black Rangers alongside British regiments. That administrative detail disrupts any assumption that racial identity alone determined military allegiance. The accompanying despatch describes exceptionally destructive fighting, reminding us that official reports of victory can also record the violence used to achieve it. ⁸

Defeat and unequal terms of surrender

By June 1796, British forces under Major General Oliver Nicolls were attacking the remaining rebel positions. His despatch to Sir Ralph Abercromby describes coordinated movements against mountain posts, including Morne Quaquo. Nicolls reported that by the morning of 19 June his troops held all the established enemy positions known to them. Fighting and pursuit continued as people fled into the woods; a military declaration of victory did not mean that every participant had been captured. ⁹

The surrender terms agreed with the French commander Jossey on 10 June reveal another side of the defeat. Men belonging to the French battalion, artillery and military administration were to be treated as prisoners of war pending exchange. But the agreement explicitly excluded people who had not previously been free. Protection therefore depended on a person’s status before the conflict, rather than simply on service in the defeated forces. ¹³

This distinction matters when assessing promises of liberation. The agreement did not extend equal protection to every combatant. An enslaved person who had joined the struggle could not rely on the same treatment offered to a previously free French soldier. The wording makes the restoration of racial and legal hierarchy visible inside a document that might otherwise appear to concern only the formal surrender of troops. ¹³

Punishment through the colonial courts

The aftermath brought judicial punishment as well as military pursuit. A September 1795 Bill of Attainder had named 469 free rebels as traitors. When a special court opened on 27 June 1796, proceedings largely concerned identifying the accused and hearing mitigation: the legislation had already determined their guilt. The first forty-eight men brought before it were sentenced to death. ¹⁰

Governor Alexander Houstoun selected fourteen for execution and temporarily reprieved the others. The planter judges objected, while criticism from London defended the Crown’s power to grant mercy. Chris Day’s examination of the records shows punishment continuing amid disputes about law, authority and revenge. Those disagreements should not be mistaken for a rejection of colonial rule or plantation slavery. They concerned how imperial power would punish rebellion, and who could control that punishment. ¹⁰

Fédon’s own fate remains uncertain. The introduction to Hay’s book reported a belief that he had drowned while escaping by canoe, but admitted that his end was not known. An unconfirmed explanation should remain unconfirmed. ⁴

Restoring plantations and policing freedom

British victory preserved the plantation system. Stephen Mullen’s research traces the financial support available for rebuilding estates and shows Scottish commercial involvement in Grenada’s economy. Loans and metropolitan business connections helped property owners recover from the destruction. Following those financial relationships shifts attention from the battlefield to the people and institutions able to restore their claims after it. ¹

The Black Rangers also remained part of the island’s machinery of control. Heather Freund’s research shows that the corps included enslaved men under white officers, with arrangements to compensate owners when men were killed or disabled. In the following decades, Rangers pursued people escaping enslavement. Newspaper capture notices document movement across the island and the continuing effort to suppress it. ¹¹

The rebellion’s defeat therefore did not end the pursuit of freedom. The later records concern different circumstances and individuals, but they demonstrate that escape and the policing of mobility continued within the restored colony. Military service by enslaved men and the hunting of fugitives belonged to the same coercive society. ¹¹

Reading Grenada through objects held in Britain

At Paxton House in the Scottish Borders, paintings of Caribbean estates connect this history to collections in Britain. Adam Callander’s 1789 view of Paraclete, associated with the Home family, depicts a working plantation landscape, including buildings connected with enslaved labour and sugar production. The estate was damaged during the rebellion. Such an object links colonial wealth, family property and the people whose work sustained it. ¹²

A plantation view and a British prisoner’s narrative preserve different perspectives, neither of them neutral. The landscape can make an estate look orderly; the narrative can make resistance appear only as catastrophe. Reading them alongside surrender terms, casualty returns and research into enslaved people’s actions produces a fuller history. Grenada’s struggle concerned who could govern, who could claim rights, and who remained liable to be treated as property when the fighting ended. ⁴¹³¹²

Sources

[1] University of London Press. Stephen Mullen, The Glasgow Sugar Aristocracy: Scotland and Caribbean Slavery, 1775–1838, chapter 6; 2022.

[2] La Révolution française / RePEc. Tessa Murphy, A Reassertion of Rights: Fédon’s Rebellion, Grenada, 1795–96, repository abstract; 2018.

[3] Palgrave Macmillan. Caitlin Anderson, Old Subjects, New Subjects and Non Subjects: Silences and Subjecthood in Fédon’s Rebellion, Grenada, 1795–96, publisher abstract; 2010.

[4] J Ridgeway / Internet Archive. John Hay, A Narrative of the Insurrection in the Island of Grenada Which Took Place in 1795, including the contemporary documents reproduced and the later introduction; 1823.

[5] Assemblée nationale. 1794: La première abolition; 2016.

[6] Slavery and Abolition / ResearchGate. Kit Candlin, The role of the enslaved in the Fédon Rebellion of 1795, author publication abstract; 2018.

[7] Royal Collection / Wikimedia Commons. Robert Pollard after Nicholas Pocock, HMS Mermaid at Requin, Grenada, 10 October 1795, aquatint published by William Faden, RCIN 735038; 12 February 1798.

[8] The London Gazette. Military despatch and casualty return concerning the attack at Port Royal, Grenada, 25 March 1796, issue 13892, p 463; 14 May 1796.

[9] The London Gazette. Nicolls’s June 1796 despatch to Abercromby, issue 13915, p 717; 26 July 1796.

[10] The National Archives / History Guild. Chris Day, Excessive severity: Treason and the Grenadian Rebellion of 1795; 8 May 2023 republication.

[11] University of Copenhagen, In the Same Sea. Heather Freund, Working Paper 5: Enslaved Mobility in Grenada, A Snapshot; 26 September 2022.

[12] Paxton House. Fiona Salvesen Murrell, Black History Month; 20 October 2021.

[13] The London Gazette. Terms of capitulation with Captain Commandant Jossey, 10 June 1796, issue 13915, p 718; 26 July 1796.

Sources checked on 22 October 2026.