the northwest coast of La Réunion in the 1880s, in today's commune of Le Port, from Saint-Denis. A royal decree in 1766 divided Bourbon Island in 5 quartiers, one of which was Saint-Denis. The checkerboard plan of the city, established by land surveyor Jean-Baptiste Bancks (sometimes spelled Banck, of Irish Jacobite descent), was officially adopted in 1777. In 1790, Saint-Denis became a commune. Its first mayor was Jean-Baptiste Delestrac. During the Napoleonic Wars, Saint-Denis was captured by British troops on July 8, 1810. The British occupied Saint-Denis and the entire island during nearly 5 years. On April 6, 1815, after the Treaty of Paris, the British officially restored Bourbon Island to France during a ceremony held on the main square of Saint-Denis. Later in October 1815, as news of Napoleon's return to France had arrived in the Indian Ocean, a British fleet from Mauritius presented itself in front of St Denis, asking the French governor of Bourbon Island to surrender the colony to His Britannic Majesty. The French governor refused and the British started a blockade of the island. Eventually on October 28 the news arrived of Napoleon's 2nd abdication and Louis XVIII's return to power, and the British fleet ended its blockade. Prosperity and urban development (1815-1860s) In the 18th century, cultivation of coffee had ensured the development of Saint-Denis. Warehouses in Saint-Denis stored the coffee beans before their export to Europe from the port of Saint-Denis. In the 19th century, following France's loss of its largest sugar colonies of Saint-Domingue (Haiti) and the Isle of France (Mauritius) as a result of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars, sugarcane replaced coffee as the main crop in Bourbon, and sugar became the main export, again ensuring the development of Saint-Denis, from where sugar was exported to Europe. The prosperous period experienced by Saint-Denis after the Napoleonic Wars was marked by urban development and public investments. In 1818, due to the British annexation of the Isle of France (Mauritius) which was home to the only lycée in the Mascarene Islands, where Bourbon Island's elites used to send their children for secondary education, Bourbon Island's governor launched the construction of a royal college in Saint-Denis (), which opened in 1819, the first royal college on Bourbon Island (later renamed Lycée de La Réunion in 1848, then transformed into a collège, i.e. middle school, in 1968). In 1825 a law school (École de