Victor Hugues

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Victor Hugues (born July 20, 1762 in Marseille , † August 12, 1826 in Cayenne ) was a French colonial administrator. As an envoy from the Welfare Committee , he recaptured Guadeloupe from the British in 1794 and enforced the liberation of slaves . Later he was under Napoleon Bonaparte and Louis XVIII. Governor of French Guiana .

Life

He was the son of wealthy Marseille parents. His father was a baker. At the age of seventeen he came to Saint-Domingue as a colonist and eventually became a merchant. At the beginning of the French Revolution he professed the principles of the revolution. After unrest broke out on the royalist island, he had to go to France. The Security Committee appointed him prosecutor for Brest and later for Rochefort .

In early 1794, Robespierre had all residents of the French colonies, regardless of their skin color, declared citizens and slavery officially abolished. In February 1794 Hugues was sent to the West Indies as a commissioner to publicize the decrees and to prepare the island of Guadeloupe for a British invasion. He embarked with a small troop on a frigate. On May 24th, he arrived outside the town of Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe. He found out that the island was now occupied by the British. Since the city was protected by a strong British garrison, he decided to attack Basse-Terre . He managed to capture a dominant fortress and drive the British out of the city. He then successfully besieged Pointe-à-Pitre .

The French were inferior to the troops brought in by a British fleet under Admiral Jervis . Hugues left the city and went to the rural parts of the island. There he mobilized the black residents and armed 2,000 of them. With their help, Hugues went on the offensive again. He forced the British general to surrender on October 6th. There were 800 French anti-revolutionary emigrants among the British troops. On orders from Hugues, 300 of them were shot as traitors.

Then he began to pacify and reorganize the island. Taking a guillotine with him , he visited the places on the island. The remaining royalists were executed. Because of his cruelty, he was referred to as the Robespierre of the West Indies. However, the economy began to recover during his reign and wages were paid to the former slaves. Hugues set up an elected island assembly ruled by mulattos . However, he also had rebellions suppressed by the former slaves.

In the meantime he had received some reinforcements from France and in 1795 was able to conquer several islands such as St. Vincent , Grenada and St. Lucia . The British were preparing an expedition against him. Hugues had meanwhile introduced conscription and thus raised a troop of 15,000 men. The coast was protected with gun batteries.

Buccaneers were sent out who captured 150 ships within two years. But US ships were also seized, leading to tensions between the United States and France in 1798, known as the quasi-war .

In the spring of 1798 there was a British offensive under General Abercrombie with an army of 20,000 men. They succeeded in conquering St. Lucia. But the British losses were so great that they could not achieve any further success.

The French Directory called Hugues back to France in 1798. A year later, Napoleon Bonaparte made him governor of French Guiana. Napoleon made Hugues an obligation to treat the inhabitants less rigorously than in Guadeloupe. His attempt to reintroduce slavery on instructions from Paris met with bitter violent resistance from the local population. Hugues administered the colony until 1809 when he had to surrender to a British-Portuguese fleet. When he returned to France, he was charged with a court martial. But he was acquitted in 1814.

After the restoration , Louis XVIII sent him. again as governor to Cayenne. After he retired, he stayed in French Guiana until his death.

reception

Victor Hugues is the central figure in Alejo Carpentier's historical novel Explosion in the Cathedral (El siglo de las luces) .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alejo Carpentier: Acerca de la historicidad de Víctor Hugues (in: El siglo de las luces [Roman]) . Ed .: Marta Rivera de la Cruz. Ediciones Seix Barral, Barcelona 2007, ISBN 978-84-322-9821-9 , pp. 353 (first edition: 1958).
  2. ↑ Gernot Kamecke: On the coding of colonial battlefields. The heroic defeat of Louis Delgres in Matouba 1802. In: Battlefields: Coding of violence in media change. Berlin, 2003 p. 170

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Hugues, Victor
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French colonial administrator
DATE OF BIRTH July 20, 1762
PLACE OF BIRTH Marseille
DATE OF DEATH August 12, 1826
Place of death Cayenne