The Dutch admiral De Ruyter appeared off Barbadoes, apparently with the intention of landing; but after reconnoitring, and receiving a few shot, he abandoned the attempt: his own ship got on shore under the batteries, and received considerable damage. His fleet consisted of twelve line-of-battle ships, two fire-ships, and several small craft, and 2500 men. They had destroyed the English settlements upon the coasts of Africa on their passage out. 1665. In order to make themselves masters of all the French islands, the West India Company purchased of the Order of Malta the islands of St. Christopher, Santa Cruz, and St. Bartholomew, for the sum of 500,000 livres tournois, which was not half their value. The contract was executed in Paris the 10th of August, 1665, and in December they were all under the direction of the Company's governors. Martinico, which belonged to the children of M. du Parquet, was ceded to the Company by their tutor, for 40,000 crowns. To the Count du Cerillac they gave 100,000 for Grenada and the Grenadines; and to Madame Champigny, and her children by her first husband, for their half of Guadaloupe and the adjacent islands, 120,000 livres: so that M. Houel, the lord of the other half of the same islands, was the only proprietor they had to settle with. They obtained an order from the King in council, that he should have 280,000 livres, besides the lands and establishments which he had reserved to himself in the islands, which were very considerable: thus obliging him to take, not what he valued his own property at, but what they chose to give him for it. The order for this was not settled till April the 18th, 1680. The Company of Cayenne, which was called the Company of Equinoctial France, was united to the West India Company, and the two companies made into one. The French West India Company confirmed M. le Chevalier de Sales as governor of St. Christopher's, and M. Dubois as governor of Santa Cruz, and appointed M. Beauplan to St. Bartholemew's, and Du Clinet to St. Martin's. Two of the vessels first sent out by the Royal West India Company arrived at Martinico in February, and one at Guadaloupe, one of these, called the St. Sebastian, brought out M. de Clodore as governor of Martinico. M. Tracy arrived Univ. Hist. vol. xxxvi. p. 196. Du Tertre, tom. iii. pp. 199. 247. 266. soon afterwards from Guadaloupe, on the 19th of February, and proceeded in state, with the governor, attended by all the officers, civil and military, to the Hall of Justice, where the royal orders for placing the island in the possession of the Royal West India Company, and for appointing M. Clodore governor, were read and registered, and the oath of allegiance administered to all the functionaries. In March M. Tracy returned to Guadaloupe, when M. du Lion was received as governor for the Company. murmurs and symptoms of revolt manifested themselves in both these islands in Martinico one man was hung and four condemned to the galleys, which, for a time, quieted the discontented in that island; in the other the presence of the lieutenant-general prevented their breaking out. : M. Themericour arrived as the Company's governor of Mariegalante: he found the island in a bad state, with a garrison of only ten men and about 150 inhabitants capable of bearing arms. After the execution of Rodomon, the mutineer, at Martinico, M. Tracy ordered the young Du Parquet to be sent to France in the first vessel, that the discontented might not have him to set up in opposition to the newly established authorities. Soon afterwards, M. Tracy returned to Guadaloupe, and from thence proceeded to St. Domingo. Other disturbances soon after took place at Martinico. The few vessels which the Company sent out neglected to bring many articles of considerable importance to the comfort of the inhabitants, among these were shoes for want of which, the ladies were obliged to go to mass bare-footed. This, in a country where the feet are attacked by a minute and troublesome insect, which insinuates itself under the skin, and there burrows and breeds, occasioned constant vexation. The produce of the island also, for want of ships to carry it off, was rotting in the storehouses. The murmurs were general, but the discontented were without experienced leaders. Rosselan, and two others who had made themselves most conspicuous, were seized and hung. In May, M. de Tracy anchored in port François, St. Domingo, and held several conferences with M. d'Ogeron, who had in the beginning of this year established himself at Port Margot. M. de Tracy, after remaining ten days, proceeded to Canada and upon the 6th of June M. d'Ogeron landed at Tortuga, and superseded the Sieur de la Place as governor of that island, by order of the West India Company, who had purchased it from Du Rausset for 16,000 livres; he himself being kept in the Bastille, to prevent his making any opposition to their taking possession. La Place submitted to M. d'Ogeron without any Du Tertre, tom. iii. pp. 146. 163. 191. 218. 230. 233. Charlevoix, tom. iii. pp. 42. 48. opposition, who immediately issued several ordonnances for the regulation of the colonists. By one, no inhabitant was allowed to have more slaves upon his land than he had Frenchmen; by another, no trader was allowed to buy or sell in Tortuga, except those who, within six months after the publication of the order, should be housekeepers upon the island. By another, each housekeeper was obliged to rear live stock in proportion to the number of inmates in his house. Upon the 13th of December, M. de Chambre, agent-general for the affairs of the Company, took possession of the island of St. Christopher for the Company, with the following ceremonies, which he himself has described :-" Having received the key, I opened and shut the doors. I entered and came out again. I went down to the officers, where I had a fire made, and smoked. I drank and I eat. I went into the chapel and had mass performed after the clock struck. I went into the guard-house, and I made the garrison go out, and I made them re-enter, under the authority of the West India Company. I raked the ground, and took up the stones. I cut down the trees by the root, and pulled up the herbs and replanted others; and at last I went upon the terrace, where I had the guns fired, and cried out God save the King and the Company !" In consequence of the depredations of Pierre François, Evinet, Bartholomew Portugues, Roche Brasiliano, Michael de Basco, Vauclin, Granmont, and other pirates from Jamaica and Tortuga, who, in open boats carrying between twenty and thirty men and three or four swivels, committed terrible havoc among their merchant vessels, the Spaniards lessened the number of their traders; and the pirates not finding their usual success, and having increased in numbers, adopted more extensive plans for annoying them. Lewis Scot is said to have been the first that invaded the main land: he sacked and almost destroyed, about this time, the city of Campechy. After him, Mansfield invaded Grenada, and penetrated to the South Sea. John Davis also, with eighty men in three canoes, surprised the city of Nicaragua in the night, plundered the houses and churches, and escaped with the booty: they were three nights in getting up the river to attack the place. In the day-time they concealed themselves under the trees, and in the night passed as fishermen their booty amounted to 50,000 pieces of eight. After this, Davis plundered the city of St. Augustine in Florida. L'Olonnois, another pirate, about this time, committed his depredations. La Place, the governor of Tortuga, gave him a vessel. La Place was governor of Tortuga only from 1659 till the 6th of June, 1665. This ship L'Olonnois lost in a gale of wind on the coast of Campechy, and escaped himself the fate of the greatest part of his companions, by smearing himself with blood, and lying among the dead till the Spaniards quitted the field; he then disguised himself in a Spanish habit, enticed some slaves to accompany him in a canoe, and returned to Tortuga. He afterwards, with two canoes, and twenty-one followers, went off Cuba, and attacked a vessel with ten guns and ninety men, which was sent to capture him, boarded her by surprise, and put the whole of her crew to death: among these was a Negro, who had been sent on board to act as hangman, when they should catch L'Olonois and his companions; this man confessed what his office was to have been. In this prize L'Olonnois proceeded off Maracaibo, and captured a ship laden with plate and merchandize. With her he returned to Tortuga, where he soon raised above 400 men, to accompany him in an expedition against Maracaibo. Three hundred he put on board the ship he took off that place, and the rest went in five small vessels: they proceeded first to Bayaha, in Española, to lay in a stock of provisions, and then went to Matamana, on the south side of Cuba, to seize as many fishing canoes as they could. Having got provisions and boats, they stood across to Cape Gracias a Dios, but were drifted by the currents in a calm to the river of Xagua, where they plundered the Indian huts to re-victual their ships. After considerable delays they got to Puerto Cavallo, and carried, by boarding, a Spanish vessel of forty guns: they then landed, and burnt the store-houses and town. L'Olonnois is said to have had a mortal hatred to all Spaniards, and upon this occasion to have gratified it by putting all his prisoners to cruel deaths, except two whom he kept as guides to shew him the road to San Pedro, for which place he set off with 300 men, leaving his lieutenant, Moses Van Vin, to command his vessels with the rest. After marching about three leagues, he fell into an ambuscade, from which he succeeded in driving the Spaniards, though with considerable loss of his own men. From the wounded prisoners he forced a confession, that more of their countrymen were in ambush further on; and being unable to find any other way to San Pedro than by passing them, L'Olonnois in his rage is said to have torn the living heart from one of the Spaniard's breasts, and gnawed it with his teeth, declaring he would serve them all in the same manner unless they showed him another road: this they promised to do, but it proved impassable, and he was obliged to return, and vowed vengeance against the Spaniards. Next day he forced the Spaniards from two ambuscades, by throwing fire-balls amongst them. There was but one path to Esquemeling's History of the Buccaneers, chaps. ix and x. San Pedro's and that was barricaded with thorny shrubs, and defended with great guns, the pirates stooping down when they observed them about to fire, and then picking the men off while they were re-loading. This continued till night, when the Spaniards sent a flag of truce, desiring two hours' time to quit the place this was granted, and the pirates entered, and staid till the two hours were expired without committing any act of hostility. Directly that the term was passed, L'Olonnois dispatched parties in pursuit of the fugitives: the pirates remained some days at San Pedro's, then burnt the town, and returned to their vessels, and stood over to some islands, on the other side of the Gulf, for turtle. They soon afterwards separated, some returning to Tortuga, disliking a proposal of L'Olonnois to attack Guatemala. L'Olonnois was left in a ship which he was unable to work to windward against the currents: he suffered great distress in her from hunger, and at last lost her upon a sand-bank near Las Pertas, to windward of Cape Gracias à Dios. Out of the wreck they built a boat, which cost them six months' labour. They supplied themselves with food, planting French beans, which ripened in six weeks, and other grain. This boat would only hold half the men, and they drew lots which half were to stay their companions should return for them. L'Olonnois' lot was to go, and he made sail for Nicaragua. Landing upon the coast, they were attacked by a large party of Spaniards and Indians, and most of them killed. till Those who were left upon Las Pertas, after remaining upon the island ten months, were taken off by a vessel from Jamaica. Mansvelt the buccaneer, with Henry Morgan as second in command, with fifteen sail and 500 men, Walloons and French, sailed from Jamaica, and captured the island of St. Catharine's, upon May the 2d. Mansvelt left a garrison of 100 men, under the command of Le Sieur Simon, a Frenchman, upon the islands, and returned to Jamaica for recruits; but not succeeding, he went to Tortuga, and there died. Upon the 13th of August, the islands were re-taken by Don Joseph Sanchez Ximenez, commanding a force of 521 men. The garrison, then amounting to seventy men, surrendered themselves prisoners. Four young men were whipped though the streets of Edinburgh by the common hangman, and then transported to Barbadoes, for interrupting and abusing Mr. James Scot, minister of Ancram, when preaching! John Yeamans, a respectable planter of Barbadoes, sailed from that island with a party of emigrants, to establish a colony on the south side of Cape Fear, in America. Malcolm's Miscellaneous Anecdotes, p. 2. Chalmers, vol. i. p. 520. A a. |