Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811
| Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811 | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of the Napoleonic Wars | |||||||||
The British invasion of Isle de France in 1810 | |||||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||||
| United Kingdom | France | ||||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||||
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Josias Rowley Henry Keating Albemarle Bertie |
Charles Decaen Jacques Hamelin | ||||||||
The Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811 was a minor military campaign of the Napoleonic Wars fought between British and French forces over France's Indian Ocean colonies of Isle de France and Isle Bonaparte. Lasting from the spring of 1809 to the spring of 1811, the campaign saw the British and French navies deploy substantial frigate squadrons to either protect or disrupt British-flagged shipping in the region. In a war in which the Royal Navy was almost universally dominant at sea, the campaign is especially notable for the local superiority enjoyed by the French Navy in autumn 1810 following their victory at the Battle of Grand Port, the British navy's most significant defeat in the entire conflict.
British commanders had been planning an operation against Isle de France since occupying the Dutch Cape Colony in 1806 and destroying the Dutch squadron in Java in 1807, but acted earlier than planned following the arrival from France of a powerful frigate squadron under Commodore Jacques Félix Emmanuel Hamelin in late 1808. Hamelin's squadron captured several British East Indiamen and disrupted Britain's trade routes across the Indian Ocean by raiding the convoys in which its merchantmen travelled. Forced to confront this threat, Admiral Albemarle Bertie at the Cape Colony ordered Commodore Josias Rowley to blockade the French colonies and prevent their use use as raiding bases.
For the next two years, the British raided the French colonies' ports and anchorages, while the French continued to target British merchantmen. The British occupied Rodrigues in 1809 and Isle Bonaparte in 1810, but their defeat at Grand Port forced them onto the defensive. Hamelin, unable to secure reinforcements from France, was captured on his flagship Vénus by Rowley in late 1810 shortly before reinforcements under Bertie arrived and occupied Isle de France, renaming it Mauritius. A French squadron which had arrived too late was defeated by the British off Madagascar in May 1811, leaving Britain in complete control of the Indian Ocean. The British kept Mauritius but returned Isle Bonaparte to France in 1814.