Louis Delgrès

Louis Delgrès was born on 2 August 1766 and grew up as a free man of colour, serving as a soldier in the French army. When the French Revolution's government abolished slavery in 1794, he became an officer in the republic's forces in the Caribbean and an officer committed to the ideals of liberty that the Revolution had proclaimed.

In 1802 Napoleon Bonaparte moved to reinstate slavery throughout the French Empire, sending troops to reoccupy Guadeloupe, where freedom had been granted to all. Delgrès became a leader of the movement resisting the reoccupation and the reinstitution of slavery, taking command of the resistance as French forces advanced across the island.

He and his followers made a stand at fortified positions in the hills, calling on others to fight for freedom and issuing a proclamation that set out why they would resist. The motto associated with the resistance was to live free or die. Women fought beside the men, including a pregnant woman known as Solitude, who was captured and executed after the birth of her child.

On 28 May 1802, at the Battle of Matouba, outnumbered and surrounded, Delgrès and some of his followers set off their stores of gunpowder, killing themselves in an attempt to take as many of the French troops with them as possible. Slavery was soon reinstated on the island and remained until its final abolition in 1848.

Delgrès has since become a central figure in the memory of resistance to slavery in the French Caribbean. Streets, schools and monuments in Guadeloupe carry his name, and his stand at Matouba is remembered as a moment when free people of colour chose to die rather than see slavery restored.