Louis Delgrès

Who is Louis Delgrès?

Louis Delgrès was a French Creole military officer born in Saint-Pierre, Martinique, in 1766, who became the central hero of Guadeloupe's history of resistance to slavery. He served in French Republican forces during the revolutionary and Napoleonic era and rose to the rank of colonel. In May 1802, when Napoleon Bonaparte sent an expeditionary force under General Antoine Richepance to Guadeloupe to reimpose slavery after its earlier abolition, Delgrès refused to submit. He issued a defiant proclamation, "A l'univers entier, le dernier cri de l'innocence et du désespoir" ("To the whole universe, the last cry of innocence and despair"), rallying free and enslaved Guadeloupeans against the French troops. Cornered at the Habitation Anglemont on the slopes of Matouba on 28 May 1802, Delgrès and several hundred followers chose to detonate their gunpowder stores rather than surrender, killing themselves along with attacking French soldiers. He was posthumously honored by France, entering the Panthéon in Paris in 1998, and remains one of Guadeloupe's most revered symbols of the fight against the restoration of slavery.

Sources: Wikipedia, "Louis Delgrès" · Toni Morrison Society, "A Bench by the Road In Memory of Louis Delgrès 1766-1802" · Kentake Page, "Louis Delgrès: Resistance leader against the Maafa in Guadeloupe"