On 18 June 1695, a gang of maroons of Indonesian and Chinese origins, including Aaron d'Amboine, Antoni (Bamboes) and Paul de Batavia, as well as female escapees Anna du Bengale and Espérance, set fire to the Dutch settlers' Fort Frederick Hendryk (Vieux Grand Port) in an attempt to take over control of the island.
Soon after his arrival in 1735, Mahé de La Bourdonnais assembled and equipped French militia groups, made up of both civilians and soldiers, to fight against the maroons.
[3][4] In 2008, Le Morne Brabant, a peninsula at the extreme southwestern tip of Mauritius where Maroons established small communities in the 19th century, was listed as a UNESCO Heritage Site.
In 2009, a monument was unveiled on the island that included an inscription of this extract from the poem "Le Morne Territoire Marron" by Richard Sedley Assonne: "There were hundreds of them, but my people, the maroons, chose the kiss of death over the chains of slavery.
[6] The poem is referring to the legend that many maroons committed suicide when British soldiers arrived to Le Morne Brabant to announce the abolition of slavery.