The articles which fixed the conditions under which the buccaneers sailed were commonly called the "chasse-partie."[105] In the earlier days of buccaneering, before the period of great leaders like Mansfield, Morgan and Grammont, the captain was usually chosen from among their own number. Although faithfully obeyed he was removable at will, and had scarcely more prerogative than the ordinary sailor. After 1655 the buccaneers generally sailed under commissions from the governors of Jamaica or Tortuga, and then they always set aside one tenth of the profits for the governor. But when their prizes were unauthorised they often withdrew to some secluded coast to make a partition of the booty, and on their return to port eased the governor's conscience with politic gifts; and as the governor generally had little control over these difficult people he found himself all the more obliged to dissimulate. Although the buccaneers were called by the Spaniards "ladrones" and "demonios," names which they richly deserved, they often gave part of their spoil to churches in the ports which they frequented, especially if among the booty they found any ecclesiastical ornaments or the stuffs for making them—articles which not infrequently formed an important part of the cargo of Spanish treasure ships. In March 1694 the Jesuit writer, Labat, took part in a Mass at Martinique which was performed for some French buccaneers in pursuance of a vow made when they were taking two English vessels near Barbadoes. The French vessel and its two prizes were anchored near the church, and fired salutes of all their cannon at the beginning of the Mass, at the Elevation of the Host, at the Benediction, and again at the end of the Te Deum sung after the Mass.[106] Labat, who, although a priest, is particularly lenient towards the crimes of the buccaneers, and who we suspect must have been the recipient of numerous "favours" from them out of their store of booty, relates a curious tale of the buccaneer, Captain Daniel, a tale which has often been used by other writers, but which may bear repetition. Daniel, in need of provisions, anchored one night off one of the "Saintes," small islands near Dominica, and landing without opposition, took possession of the house of the curé and of some other inhabitants of the neighbourhood. He carried the curé and his people on board his ship without offering them the least violence, and told them that he merely wished to buy some wine, brandy and fowls. While these were being gathered, Daniel requested the curé to celebrate Mass, which the poor priest dared not refuse. So the necessary sacred vessels were sent for and an altar improvised on the deck for the service, which they chanted to the best of their ability. As at Martinique, the Mass was begun by a discharge of artillery, and after the Exaudiat and prayer for the King was closed by a loud "Vive le Roi!" from the throats of the buccaneers. A single incident, however, somewhat disturbed the devotions. One of the buccaneers, remaining in an indecent attitude during the Elevation, was rebuked by the captain, and instead of heeding the correction, replied with an impertinence and a fearful oath. Quick as a flash Daniel whipped out his pistol and shot the buccaneer through the head, adjuring God that he would do as much to the first who failed in his respect to the Holy Sacrifice. The shot was fired close by the priest, who, as we can readily imagine, was considerably agitated. "Do not be troubled, my father," said Daniel; "he is a rascal lacking in his duty and I have punished him to teach him better." A very efficacious means, remarks Labat, of preventing his falling into another like mistake. After the Mass the body of the dead man was thrown into the sea, and the curé was recompensed for his pains by some goods out of their stock and the present of a negro slave.[107]
The buccaneers preferred to sail in barques, vessels of one mast and rigged with triangular sails. This type of boat, they found, could be more easily manœuvred, was faster and sailed closer to the wind. The boats were built of cedar, and the best were reputed to come from Bermuda. They carried very few guns, generally from six to twelve or fourteen, the corsairs believing that four muskets did more execution than one cannon.[108] The buccaneers sometimes used brigantines, vessels with two masts, the fore or mizzenmast being square-rigged with two sails and the mainmast rigged like that of a barque. The corsair at Martinique of whom Labat speaks was captain of a corvette, a boat like a brigantine, except that all the sails were square-rigged. At the beginning of a voyage the freebooters were generally so crowded in their small vessels that they suffered much from lack of room. Moreover, they had little protection from sun and rain, and with but a small stock of provisions often faced starvation. It was this as much as anything which frequently inspired them to attack without reflection any possible prize, great or small, and to make themselves masters of it or perish in the attempt. Their first object was to come to close quarters; and although a single broadside would have sunk their small craft, they manœuvred so skilfully as to keep their bow always presented to the enemy, while their musketeers cleared the enemy's decks until the time when the captain judged it proper to board. The buccaneers rarely attacked Spanish ships on the outward voyage from Europe to America, for such ships were loaded with wines, cloths, grains and other commodities for which they had little use, and which they could less readily turn into available wealth. Outgoing vessels also carried large crews and a considerable number of passengers. It was the homeward-bound ships, rather, which attracted their avarice, for in such vessels the crews were smaller and the cargo consisted of precious metals, dye-woods and jewels, articles which the freebooters could easily dispose of to the merchants and tavern-keepers of the ports they frequented.
The Gulf of Honduras and the Mosquito Coast, dotted with numerous small islands and protecting reefs, was a favourite retreat for the buccaneers. As the clumsy Spanish war-vessels of the period found it ticklish work threading these tortuous channels, where a sudden adverse wind usually meant disaster, the buccaneers there felt secure from interference; and in the creeks, lagoons and river-mouths densely shrouded by tropical foliage, they were able to careen and refit their vessels, divide their booty, and enjoy a respite from their sea-forays. Thence, too, they preyed upon the Spanish ships which sailed from the coast of Cartagena to Porto Bello, Nicaragua, Mexico, and the larger Antilles, and were a constant menace to the great treasure galleons of the Terra-Firma fleet. The English settlement on the island of Providence, lying as it did off the Nicaragua coast and in the very track of Spanish commerce in those regions, was, until captured in 1641, a source of great fear to Spanish mariners; and when in 1642 some English occupied the island of Roatan, near Truxillo, the governor of Cuba and the Presidents of the Audiencias at Gautemala and San Domingo jointly equipped an expedition of four vessels under D. Francisco de Villalba y Toledo, which drove out the intruders.[109] Closer to the buccaneering headquarters in Tortuga (and later in Jamaica) were the straits separating the great West Indian islands:—the Yucatan Channel at the western end of Cuba, the passage between Cuba and Hispaniola in the east, and the Mona Passage between Hispaniola and Porto Rico. In these regions the corsairs waited to pick up stray Spanish merchantmen, and watched for the coming of the galleons or the Flota.[110] When the buccaneers returned from their cruises they generally squandered in a few days, in the taverns of the towns which they frequented, the wealth which had cost them such peril and labour. Some of these outlaws, says Exquemelin, would spend 2000 or 3000 pieces of eight[111] in one night, not leaving themselves a good shirt to wear on their backs in the morning. "My own master," he continues, "would buy, on like occasions, a whole pipe of wine, and placing it in the street would force every one that passed by to drink with him; threatening also to pistol them in case they would not do it. At other times he would do the same with barrels of ale or beer. And, very often, with both in his hands, he would throw these liquors about the streets, and wet the clothes of such as walked by, without regarding whether he spoiled their apparel or not, were they men or women." The taverns and ale-houses always welcomed the arrival of these dissolute corsairs; and although they extended long credits, they also at times sold as indentured servants those who had run too deeply into debt, as happened in Jamaica to this same patron or master of whom Exquemelin wrote.
Until 1640 buccaneering in the West Indies was more or less accidental, occasional, in character. In the second half of the century, however, the numbers of the freebooters greatly increased, and men entirely deserted their former occupations for the excitement and big profits of the "course." There were several reasons for this increase in the popularity of buccaneering. The English adventurers in Hispaniola had lost their profession of hunting very early, for with the coming of Levasseur the French had gradually elbowed them out of the island, and compelled them either to retire to the Lesser Antilles or to prey upon their Spanish neighbours. But the French themselves were within the next twenty years driven to the same expedient. The Spanish colonists on Hispaniola, unable to keep the French from the island, at last foolishly resolved, according to Charlevoix's account, to remove the principal attraction by destroying all the wild cattle. If the trade with French vessels and the barter of hides for brandy could be arrested, the hunters would be driven from the woods by starvation. This policy, together with the wasteful methods pursued by the hunters, caused a rapid decrease in the number of cattle. The Spaniards, however, did not dream of the consequences of their action. Many of the French, forced to seek another occupation, naturally fell into the way of buccaneering. The hunters of cattle became hunters of Spaniards, and the sea became the savanna on which they sought their game. Exquemelin tells us that when he arrived at the island there were scarcely three hundred engaged in hunting, and even these found their livelihood precarious. It was from this time forward to the end of the century that the buccaneers played so important a rôle on the stage of West Indian history.
Another source of recruits for the freebooters were the indentured servants or engagés. We hear a great deal of the barbarity with which West Indian planters and hunters in the seventeenth century treated their servants, and we may well believe that many of the latter, finding their situation unendurable, ran away from their plantations or ajoupas to join the crew of a chance corsair hovering in the neighbourhood. The hunters' life, as we have seen, was not one of revelry and ease. On the one side were all the insidious dangers lurking in a wild, tropical forest; on the other, the relentless hostility of the Spaniards. The environment of the hunters made them rough and cruel, and for many an engagé his three years of servitude must have been a veritable purgatory. The servants of the planters were in no better position. Decoyed from Norman and Breton towns and villages by the loud-sounding promises of sea-captains and West Indian agents, they came to seek an El Dorado, and often found only despair and death. The want of sufficient negroes led men to resort to any artifice in order to obtain assistance in cultivating the sugar-cane and tobacco. The apprentices sent from Europe were generally bound out in the French Antilles for eighteen months or three years, among the English for seven years. They were often resold in the interim, and sometimes served ten or twelve years before they regained their freedom. They were veritable convicts, often more ill-treated than the slaves with whom they worked side by side, for their lives, after the expiration of their term of service, were of no consequence to their masters. Many of these apprentices, of good birth and tender education, were unable to endure the debilitating climate and hard labour, let alone the cruelty of their employers. Exquemelin, himself originally an engagé, gives a most piteous description of their sufferings. He was sold to the Lieutenant-Governor of Tortuga, who treated him with great severity and refused to take less than 300 pieces of eight for his freedom. Falling ill through vexation and despair, he passed into the hands of a surgeon, who proved kind to him and finally gave him his liberty for 100 pieces of eight, to be paid after his first buccaneering voyage.[112]
We left Levasseur governor in Tortuga after the abortive Spanish attack of 1643. Finding his personal ascendancy so complete over the rude natures about him, Levasseur, like many a greater man in similar circumstances, lost his sense of the rights of others. His character changed, he became suspicious and intolerant, and the settlers complained bitterly of his cruelty and overbearing temper. Having come as the leader of a band of Huguenots, he forbade the Roman Catholics to hold services on the island, burnt their chapel and turned out their priest. He placed heavy imposts on trade, and soon amassed a considerable fortune.[113] In his eyrie upon the rock fortress, he is said to have kept for his enemies a cage of iron, in which the prisoner could neither stand nor lie down, and which Levasseur, with grim humour, called his "little hell." A dungeon in his castle he termed in like fashion his "purgatory." All these stories, however, are reported by the Jesuits, his natural foes, and must be taken with a grain of salt. De Poincy, who himself ruled with despotic authority and was guilty of similar cruelties, would have turned a deaf ear to the denunciations against his lieutenant, had not his jealousy been aroused by the suspicion that Levasseur intended to declare himself an independent prince.[114] So the governor-general, already in bad odour at court for having given Levasseur means of establishing a little Geneva in Tortuga, began to disavow him to the authorities at home. He also sent his nephew, M. de Lonvilliers, to Tortuga, on the pretext of complimenting Levasseur on his victory over the Spaniards, but really to endeavour to entice him back to St. Kitts. Levasseur, subtle and penetrating, skilfully avoided the trap, and Lonvilliers returned to St. Kitts alone.
Charlevoix relates an amusing instance of the governor's stubborn resistance to de Poincy's authority. A silver statue of the Virgin, captured by some buccaneer from a Spanish ship, had been appropriated by Levasseur, and de Poincy, desiring to decorate his chapel with it, wrote to him demanding the statue, and observing that a Protestant had no use for such an object. Levasseur, however, replied that the Protestants had a great adoration for silver virgins, and that Catholics being "trop spirituels pour tenir à la matière," he was sending him, instead, a madonna of painted wood.
After a tenure of power for twelve years, Levasseur came to the end of his tether. While de Poincy was resolving upon an expedition to oust him from authority, two adventurers named Martin and Thibault, whom Levasseur had adopted as his heirs, and with whom, it is said, he had quarrelled over a mistress, shot him as he was descending from the fort to the shore, and completed the murder by a poniard's thrust. They then seized the government without any opposition from the inhabitants.[115] Meanwhile there had arrived at St. Kitts the Chevalier de Fontenay, a soldier of fortune who had distinguished himself against the Turks and was attracted by the gleam of Spanish gold. He it was whom de Poincy chose as the man to succeed Levasseur. The opportunity for action was eagerly accepted by de Fontenay, but the project was kept secret, for if Levasseur had got wind of it all the forces in St. Kitts could not have dislodged him. Volunteers were raised on the pretext of a privateering expedition to the coasts of Cartagena, and to complete the deception de Fontenay actually sailed for the Main and captured several prizes. The rendezvous was on the coast of Hispaniola, where de Fontenay was eventually joined by de Poincy's nephew, M. de Treval, with another frigate and materials for a siege. Learning of the murder of Levasseur, the invaders at once sailed for Tortuga and landed several hundred men at the spot where the Spaniards had formerly been repulsed. The two assassins, finding the inhabitants indisposed to support them, capitulated to de Fontenay on receiving pardon for their crime and the peaceful possession of their property. Catholicism was restored, commerce was patronized and buccaneers encouraged to use the port. Two stone bastions were raised on the platform and more guns were mounted.[116] De Fontenay himself was the first to bear the official title of "Governor for the King of Tortuga and the Coast of S. Domingo."
The new governor was not fated to enjoy his success for any length of time. The President of S. Domingo, Don Juan Francisco de Montemayor, with orders from the King of Spain, was preparing for another effort to get rid of his troublesome neighbour, and in November 1653 sent an expedition of five vessels and 400 infantry against the French, under command of Don Gabriel Roxas de Valle-Figueroa. The ships were separated by a storm, two ran aground and a third was lost, so that only the "Capitana" and "Almirante" reached Tortuga on 10th January. Being greeted with a rough fire from the platform and fort as they approached the harbour, they dropped anchor a league to leeward and landed with little opposition. After nine days of fighting and siege of the fort, de Fontenay capitulated with the honours of war.[117] According to the French account, the Spaniards, lashing their cannon to rough frames of wood, dragged a battery of eight or ten guns to the top of some hills commanding the fort, and began a furious bombardment. Several sorties of the besieged to capture the battery were unsuccessful. The inhabitants began to tire of fighting, and de Fontenay, discovering some secret negotiations with the enemy, was compelled to sue for terms. With incredible exertions, two half-scuttled ships in the harbour were fitted up and provisioned within three days, and upon them the French sailed for Port Margot.[118] The Spaniards claimed that the booty would have been considerable but for some Dutch trading-ships in the harbour which conveyed all the valuables from the island. They burned the settlements, however, carried away with them some guns, munitions of war and slaves, and this time taking the precaution to leave behind a garrison of 150 men, sailed for Hispaniola. Fearing that the French might join forces with the buccaneers and attack their small squadron on the way back, they retained de Fontenay's brother as a hostage until they reached the city of San Domingo. De Fontenay, indeed, after his brother's release, did determine to try and recover the island. Only 130 of his men stood by him, the rest deserting to join the buccaneers in western Hispaniola. While he was careening his ship at Port Margot, however, a Dutch trader arrived with commodities for Tortuga, and learning of the disaster, offered him aid with men and supplies. A descent was made upon the smaller island, and the Spaniards were besieged for twenty days, but after several encounters they compelled the French to withdraw. De Fontenay, with only thirty companions, sailed for Europe, was wrecked among the Azores, and eventually reached France, only to die a short time afterwards.
Footnote 83: [(return)]
Bibl. Nat., Nouv. Acq., 9334, f. 48.