The French colonies of Isle de France and Isle Bonaparte -- modern Mauritius and Reunion -- served as fortified bases from which French frigates raided British trade routes across the Indian Ocean during the Napoleonic Wars. In late 1808, a squadron of four frigates under Commodore Jacques Hamelin departed France with orders to prey on the convoys of East Indiamen that carried goods between Britain and its Asian possessions. Through the spring of 1809, these frigates dispersed into the Bay of Bengal, attacking British shipping and coastal harbors across the eastern Indian Ocean. The Royal Navy, meanwhile, was assembling a campaign to blockade, isolate, and ultimately capture both French island colonies -- the last French territories east of Africa. When Commodore Josias Rowley learned that the frigate Caroline and her prize ships were sheltering at Saint-Paul, he saw both a tactical opportunity and a rehearsal for the larger invasion to come.

Rowley's plan was shaped by failure. Three years earlier, in November 1806, British warships had attacked Saint-Paul's harbor without infantry support, targeting the frigate Semillante. Neither ship could pass the heavy shore batteries, and the attack was abandoned. This time, Rowley brought soldiers. On September 16, 1809, 368 British Army troops embarked on the Nereide under Captain Robert Corbet, along with the sloop Otter and the Bombay Marine schooner Wasp. The troop convoy rendezvoused off Saint-Paul on September 18 with the rest of Rowley's squadron: his flagship Raisonnable and two additional frigates under Captains Samuel Pym and John Hatley. The plan called for a coordinated amphibious assault, with infantry taking the shore batteries while the naval squadron waited offshore to enter the harbor once the guns were silenced.

The landing at Pointe des Galets went undetected. By dawn, the British had stormed the harbor batteries, and Rowley's warships swept into the bay, pouring fire into Caroline and every vessel in range. The French ships were outnumbered and outgunned. Rowley's crews refloated grounded vessels from the beach and captured not only Caroline but a 14-gun privateer brig, several East Indiamen, and five or six smaller merchantmen. The most dramatic act came at the docks, where warehouses held silk taken from British merchant ships by Caroline during her raiding cruise. Rather than attempt to transport the cargo, the British burned the lot -- over 500,000 pounds' worth of textiles reduced to ash. Other warehouses were left standing because their ownership could not be quickly determined. The island's governor, General Nicolas Ernault des Bruslys, marched a relief force toward Saint-Paul but chose not to attack. Local landowners, many of them royalists hostile to the Napoleonic regime, refused to support a counterattack. Des Bruslys ordered a retreat to Saint-Denis during the night and later took his own life -- an act that devastated French morale on the island.

The British withdrew on September 23 with their prizes and their experience. The raid had accomplished everything Rowley intended: the recapture of valuable East Indiamen reduced the impact of French raiding in the Indian Ocean, and the loss of Caroline weakened Hamelin's squadron based on Isle de France. More importantly, the operation served as a full-scale rehearsal. The coordination of land and naval forces, the staging of troops from the recently captured island of Rodriguez, and the assessment of French shore defenses all fed directly into planning for the next campaign. When the British returned for the full invasion of Isle Bonaparte in July 1810, the force was similar in size and once again led by Rowley and Colonel Keating. This time, the French mounted almost no resistance. The demoralization that began with des Bruslys's death and the failure to defend Saint-Paul had never been repaired. The island changed hands with barely a fight, ending French control of the last significant base in the western Indian Ocean.