ST LUCIA – april 22, 1795
Flore Bois Gaillard was a St Lucian runaway slave who led a band of free slaves called ‘Armée Française Dans Les Bois (French Army in the Woods). Flore Bois Gaillard was an enslaved biracial woman owned by a man known as Master Bellac. For several years she worked on his plantation and later in his home as a maidservant. There are no records of her early childhood, but it is safe to assume that being biracial, she was born on the islands to an enslaved black mother who was impregnated by a white man.Tired of being raped and treated harshly by Master Bellac, Flore managed to escape the plantation in 1793. She took refuge in the woods where she met the Maroons. There she joined the French Army of the woods, made up of Maroons, escaped Black slaves and French revolutionaries and English deserters. The army planned a rebellion to rid the country of the British and declare St Lucia a free country.Flore quickly rose in the ranks of the army to become one of the military leaders. Following a tip that the British were on their way to attack her army, Flore planned a counter strike. Flore and her army went to Soufriere to attack slave owners and take revenge for the atrocities of 1791, in what we now know as the Battle of Rabot…(read more from source below).
