ABSTRACT
WHEN the intelligence of Napoleon's return from Elba reached the French colonies, the troops in lVlartinique showed every disposition to raise the tricoloured cockade. Sir James Leith, having been requested by the authorities who were in favour of Louis the Eighteenth to afford assistance, proceeded with troops to l\fartinique, where he arrived on the 5th of June, and by his timely arrival saved the colony from anarchy. The tricoloured flag bad been raised in Guadaloupe, and by a strange coincidence Napoleon was proclaimed Emperor on the 18th of June: on that day the battle of Waterloo closed Napoleon's political career. His Majesty's ship' J unon' brought the intelligence of Buonaparte's defeat and his surrender to a British man-of-war. Sir James Leith, who had returned from Martinique on the 18th of June, now embarked with the staff of his Majesty's forces and a sufficient number of troops on the 31st of July on board the' Venerable' seventy-four, under a salute from that ship and the whole of the ships of war and transports then in Carlisle Bay, weighed and proceeded to Guadaloupe, where, as already observed, the tricoloured flag had been hoisted on the first intelligence of Napoleon's return to France. The period during which the revolutionary flag was unfurled was even shorter than the Emperor's authority in France during the hundred days. The debarkation took place on the 8th of August, and on the 10th the capture was accomplished; and the Comte de Linois, the Governor of the colony, and General Baron Boyer de Peyrelau and the French troops became prisoners of war.
