George Walpole (British Army officer)

Maroon insurrection in Jamaica, 1795

In 1795 Walpole went with the 13th Light Dragoons to the West Indies, and took a leading part in the suppression of an insurrection by Maroons in Jamaica. The Maroons of Cudjoe's Town (Trelawny Town), who had risen in what became known as the Second Maroon War, numbered fewer than seven hundred, but they had been joined by about four hundred runaway slaves, and the insurrection threatened to spread. The country was extremely difficult for regular troops, and two of the detachments sent against the Jamaican Maroons fell into ambushes, and their commanders (Colonels Sandford and William Fitch) were killed. At the beginning of October Walpole was charged with the general conduct of the operations, and the governor – Lord Balcarres – gave him the local and temporary rank of major-general. By skilful dispositions he captured several of the maroon "cockpits" or stockades. On 24 October the governor wrote to the secretary of state: "General Walpole is going on vastly well. His figure and talents are well adapted for the service he is upon, and he has got the confidence of the militia and the country."^[1] Walpole secured the support of the Maroons of Accompong Town against their Leeward Maroon brethren of Trelawny Town) in September 1795, and the Accompong Maroons trained them in the art of tracking in the forested regions of the Cockpit Country.^[2]

However, the Maroons of Trelawny Town were unable to maintain their guerrilla campaign during the drought months, and when Walpole employed a scorched-earth policy, backed up by the importation of hunting dogs, on 22 December Walpole was able to persuade the Trelawny Maroon leader, Montague James, to come to terms.^[3][4] They were to ask pardon, to leave their fastnesses and settle in any district assigned to them, and to give up the runaway slaves. On these conditions he promised that they should not be sent out of the island; and the terms were ratified by the governor. Only a few of the insurgents came in, and in the middle of January Walpole moved against them with a strong column, accompanied by dogs which had been brought from Cuba. They then surrendered, and were sent down to Montego Bay; and in March the assembly and the governor decided to ship them to Nova Scotia. Walpole strongly remonstrated against what he regarded as a breach of faith. He argued that the treaty might have been cancelled when the maroons failed to fulfil its terms, but that the governor had deliberately abstained from cancelling it. He declined a gift of five hundred guineas which the assembly voted for the purchase of a sword, and obtained leave to return to England. His letter declining the sword was expunged from the minutes of the house (cf. Dallas, Hist. of the Maroons, 1803; Gardner, Hist. of Jamaica, 1873, pp. 232–6). He was made colonel in the British Army on 3 May 1796, but retired from the service before 1799.^[1]