Insurgent barges cross to Tortuga and destroy the best hospital

Both Leclerc and Rochambeau had invested heavily in Tortuga because its climate was healthy and the war had not touched it, and convalescents lived in private lodgings there. The defences were a three-gun battery and an observation post manned by one officer and eight soldiers. Insurgents rowed the channel at night, guided and helped by local black inhabitants, and fell on the hospital compound. About two hundred patients were killed, among them the Polish captains Pagowski and Kaminski. A delaying action by Adjutant Commander Boscus let roughly eight hundred people escape into the woods. Three hundred French troops sent from Le Cap aboard Le Duquesne retook the ground and sank two retreating barges on 21 February. The strategic effect outlasted the raid: Prefect Daure moved every sick and wounded man to Mole St. Nicolas, and the Director of Hospitals reported the collapse in morale to Paris.