The spark of the war was when two Maroons, one named Peter Campbell, were found guilty of stealing two pigs by a court in Montego Bay.

They were acting under orders from the new governor, Alexander Lindsay, 6th Earl of Balcarres, who wrongly believed that the French had infected the Maroons with their revolutionary spirit.

Balcarres completely mishandled the dispute, which could have been resolved without conflict, but he ignored the advice of local planters, and ordered his forces to put down the Maroons of Trelawny Town.

The British fielded 5,000 troops and militia, which outnumbered the Maroons ten to one, but the mountainous and forested topography of Jamaica proved ideal for guerrilla warfare.

[14][15] When General George Walpole employed a scorched-earth strategy against Trelawny Town, the Maroons found they had difficulty getting access to food, water, and ammunition as the dry season began at the end of the year.

When Governor Balcarres imported some one hundred bloodhounds and their handlers from Cuba, Montague James and his lieutenants saw this as the last straw, and accepted Walpole's overtures for peace.

Suspicious of British intentions, most of the Maroons did not surrender until mid-March, by which time the conflict had proved to be very costly to the island, and resulted in the ruin of many plantations and estates.

Walpole resigned his commission, and went back to England, where he became an MP and protested in vain in the House of Commons how Balcarres had behaved in a duplicitous and dishonest way with the Maroons.

[18] In 1796, about 581 Trelawny Maroons were transported to Nova Scotia, but another 58 stayed behind in Jamaica, and either forged careers as free persons of colour, or joined Accompong Town.

[20] After slavery was abolished in 1838, the Jamaican colonial authorities imported labourers from Sierra Leone, and among that number were scores of Trelawny Town Maroons.

In 1798, a slave named Cuffee ran away from a western estate, and established a runaway community which was able to resist attempts by the colonial forces and the official Maroons remaining in Jamaica to subdue them.