But the next year, Admiral de Grasse suffered a defeat and was captured by the British in the Caribbean at the Battle of the Saintes. He was cleared of fault by a court martial in France. Military career The younger Auguste de Grasse had a career in the French army. After his father's death in 1788, he was assigned to the French colony of Saint-Domingue in 1789. His stepmother, Marie Delphine Lazare de Cibon (his father's third wife), and four sisters joined him in Saint-Domingue. They were fleeing the violence and disruption of the French Revolution. While stationed there, de Grasse married the daughter of Jean-Baptiste de La Hogue (also recorded as Delahogue). The young couple had a daughter who was born at Cap Français. De Grasse acquired a large plantation and 200 slaves. In 1793 the Haitian Revolution was underway, and Great Britain attempted to intervene, hoping to get a toehold in the rich French colony. The Royal Navy defeated the French fleet at Saint-Domingue, and its commanders allowed French military officers to leave the island after they resigned their commissions. French forces and thousands of colonists left Saint-Domingue because of the violence of the Haitian Revolution. De Grasse lost all his property there, including the slaves. He and his family, including his father-in-law and mother-in-law de La Hogue, went to Charleston, South Carolina, along with numerous other French colonial refugees. They arrived on August 14, 1793, aboard the ship Thomas. The refugees were received by John B. Holmes and lived with him for some time at his residence, now 15 Meeting Street. In July 1794, de Grasse's four sisters traveled to Washington, D.C., via the ship Thorn to Boston. They solicited the American government in a claim for the war pension due their father and his estate, as they had become impoverished due to their father's death, followed by the French Revolution and its overturning of aristocratic families. Later the next year, Congress awarded the daughters annual pensions of one thousand dollars each in gratitude for their father's "extraordinary services" to the American cause. Also in 1794, de Grasse wrote to President George Washington pleading for assistance to survive since he and his family had been forced to leave Saint-Domingue. He noted that he and other officers had to resign their commissions in the French army in order to be permitted to leave. No response is documented. After