Victor Hugues

Jean-Baptiste Victor Hugues sometimes spelled Hughes (born in Marseille July 20, 1762 and died in Cayenne August 12, 1826) was a French politician and colonial administrator during the French Revolution, who governed Guadeloupe from 1794 to 1798, emancipating the island's slaves under orders from the National Convention.

Jean-Baptiste Victor Hugues was born to a rich family of Marseille's bourgeoisie, son of Jean-François Hugues 1725-1789, a salesman, and Catherine Fodrin 1729-1822, issued from a family of silk traders of Saint-Étienne.

The family settled as colonists in Saint-Domingue at the beginning of the 1780s, but Victor was forced to return to France because of the Haitian Revolution. He then appointed Procureur of the Comité de salut public in La Rochelle with the support of the local Jacobin Club. He was subsequently appointed governor of Guadeloupe, where he was ordered to apply the emancipation decrees which declared the end of slavery in all French territories in February 1794.

Following the signing of the Whitehall Accord by (representing Guadeloupe), a British task force successfully invaded the island in April 1794. The planters and other Royalists had signed the Whitehall Accord with the British and colluded with France's rival as a way of rejecting revolutionary events, particularly the abolition of slavery. When Hugues disembarked on 21 May 1794, he had a small force of 1,150 soldiers. He immediately declared an end to slavery and so rallied the slaves and gens de couleur. Within five days he took the capital, Pointe-à-Pitre. Hugues was able to retake the island by 6 October 1794, when he obliged the English general to surrender in his camp of Barville with his whole force, in which were comprised 800 French emigres and 900 soldiers of African descent. He led a failed attempt to retake Anguilla in 1796.

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