Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811 in the context of "Invasion of Java (1811)"

Isle de France (Modern French: Île de France, pronounced [il də fʁɑ̃s] ) was a French colony in the Indian Ocean from 1715 to 1810, comprising the island now known as Mauritius and its dependent territories. It was governed by the French East India Company and formed part of the French colonial empire. Under the French, the island witnessed major changes. The increasing importance of agriculture led to the "import" of slaves and the undertaking of vast infrastructural works that transformed the capital Port Louis into a major port, warehousing, and commercial centre.

During the Napoleonic Wars, Isle de France became a base from which the French navy, including squadrons under Rear Admiral Linois or Commodore Jacques Hamelin, and corsairs such as Robert Surcouf, organised raids on British merchant ships. The raids (see Battle of Pulo Aura and Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811) continued until 1810 when the British sent a strong expedition to capture the island. The first British attempt, in August 1810, to attack Grand Port resulted in a French victory, one celebrated on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. A subsequent and much larger attack launched in December of the same year from Rodrigues, which had been captured a year earlier, was successful. The British landed in large numbers in the north of the island and rapidly overpowered the French, who capitulated (see Invasion of Isle de France). In the Treaty of Paris (1814), the French ceded Isle de France together with its territories including Agaléga, the Cargados Carajos Shoals, the Chagos Archipelago, Rodrigues, Seychelles, and Tromelin Island to the United Kingdom. The island then reverted to its former name, 'Mauritius'.

Admiral of France Guy-Victor Duperré (20 February 1775 – 2 November 1846) was a French Navy officer. He is known for commanding French naval forces in the Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811 and was victorious in the Battle of Grand Port, where he was wounded. Later he had a command in the Mediterranean and continued to serve during and after the Bourbon Restoration. He commanded the naval elements of the expeditionary force that carried out the Invasion of Algiers in 1830 and went on to become Minister of the Navy three times.

Méduse was a 40-gun Pallas-class frigate of the French Navy, launched in 1810. She took part in the Napoleonic Wars during the late stages of the Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811 and in raids in the Caribbean.

In 1816, following the Bourbon Restoration, Méduse was armed en flûte to ferry French officials to the port of Saint-Louis, in Senegal, to formally re-establish French occupation of the colony under the terms of the First Peace of Paris. Through inept navigation by her captain, Hugues Duroy de Chaumareys, who had been given command after the Bourbon Restoration for political reasons even though he had hardly sailed in 20 years, Méduse struck the Bank of Arguin off the coast of present-day Mauritania and became a total loss.

The Battle of Grand Port was a naval battle fought on 20–27 August 1810 between squadrons of frigates from the French Navy and the British Royal Navy over possession of the harbour of Grand Port on Isle de France (now Mauritius), as part of the Mauritius campaign during the Napoleonic Wars. A British squadron of four frigates sought to blockade the port to prevent its use by the French through the capture of the fortified Île de la Passe at its entrance. This position was seized by a British landing party on 13 August and, when a French squadron under Captain Guy-Victor Duperré approached the bay nine days later, the British commander, Captain Samuel Pym, decided to lure them into coastal waters where his forces could ambush them.

Four of the five French ships managed to break past the British blockade, taking shelter in the protected anchorage, which was only accessible through a series of complicated routes between reefs and sandbanks that were impassable without an experienced harbour pilot. When Pym ordered his frigates to attack the anchored French on 22 and 23 August, his ships became trapped in the narrow channels of the bay: two were irretrievably grounded; a third, outnumbered by the combined French squadron, was defeated; and a fourth was unable to close to within effective gun range. Although the French ships were also badly damaged, the battle was a disaster for the British: one ship was captured after suffering irreparable damage, the grounded ships were set on fire to prevent their capture by French boarding parties, and the remaining vessel was seized as it left the harbour by the main French squadron from Port Napoleon under Commodore Jacques Hamelin.