With trade and communication made dangerous by the British blockade squadrons, the economies and morale of the French colonies began to collapse, and in the summer of 1808 desperate messages were sent to France requesting help.

Louis Ridge outside the capital Basse-Terre that the expeditionary force faced strong opposition, but in a battle lasting for most of 3 February, the French were defeated and driven back.

In desperation, the commanders of the main colonies, the Leeward Islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe, sent a series of messages to France during the summer of 1808, entreating the French government to send food and military supplies.

During the winter of 1808, ships and troops from across the Caribbean began gathering off Barbados under the command of Vice-Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane and Lieutenant General George Beckwith, with the intention of invading Martinique early in 1809.

[6] Cochrane then split his attention, sending a number of ships and men to aid the Spanish in the Siege of Santo Domingo while still maintaining a strong blockade force in the Leeward Islands.

[9] These troops were split into two divisions: the largest, 3,700 men under Beckwith with subordinate command given to Major General Thomas Hislop, was to be deployed at Le Gosier on the island's southern shore.

[10] The second division, 2,450 men under Brigadier General George Harcourt, was initially ordered to wait on the Îles des Saintes before being deployed after the main attack to the rear of the French garrison.

Military and food stores of all kinds were in short supply and the governor, General Jean Augustin Ernouf was unable to maintain garrisons around the island's extensive perimeter.

[12] After a brief period of consolidation on Dominica, Cochrane and Beckwith sailed for Guadeloupe on 27 January 1810, arriving off Le Gosier in the evening and landing the larger division at the village of Sainte-Marie under the command of Hislop.

[9] With his capital coming under bombardment from gun batteries set up by Royal Navy sailors organised into naval brigades, Ernouf marched to meet the British on the plain at Matabar on 3 February.

[9] One eyewitness, an Irish sailor from HMS Alfred, claimed that Ernouf had laid a large land mine along his line of retreat and planned to detonate it as the British advanced but was prevented from doing so when Beckwith spotted the trap and refused to be drawn into it, although this story does not appear in other accounts.

[16] All of the expedition's officers and men were voted the thanks of both Houses of Parliament and ten years later the regiments and ships that participated (or their descendants) were awarded the battle honour Guadaloupe 1810.

The following year, during the Hundred Days, Guadeloupe's governor Charles-Alexandre Durand Linois declared for the Emperor once more, requiring another British invasion, although of much smaller size and duration, to restore the monarchy.

[19] The fall of Guadeloupe marked the end of the final French territory in the Caribbean; the entire region was now in the hands of either the British or the Spanish, except the independent state of Haiti.

[15] Finally, the capture of the last French colony struck a decisive blow to the Atlantic slave trade, which had been made illegal by the British government in 1807 and was actively persecuted by the Royal Navy.