Then it happened that English and French outfitters, excited by the thirst of gain, and paying no heed to the Spanish pretensions, equipped vessels which they dispatched to the so-coveted rich regions, to cut off the Spanish transports, plunder the American coast, and fire the town.
Treated as pirates, these bold sailors frankly accepted the position offered them, committed awful excesses wherever they landed, carried off rich spoil, and despising the law of nations, and not caring whether the Spaniards were at war or not with the countries to which they belonged, they attacked them wherever they met them.
The Spaniards, entirely engaged with rich possessions in Mexico, Peru, and generally on the Continent, which were mines of inexhaustible wealth for them, had committed the fault of neglecting the Antilles, which stretch from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of Maracaibo, and only established colonies in the four large islands of that archipelago.
Hidden in bays behind the windings of the coast, the adventurers dashed suddenly at the Spanish vessels, carried them by boarding, and then returned ashore to share the plunder.
The Spaniards, in spite of the great number of their vessels, and the active watch they kept up, could no longer traverse the Caribbean Sea, which the adventurers had selected as the scene of their exploits, without running the risk of obstinate engagements with men, whom the smallness and lightness of their vessels rendered almost intangible.
This wandering life possessed such charms for the adventurers, who had assumed the characteristic name of filibusters or freebooters, that for a long time the idea did not occur to them of forming a permanent settlement among the islands, which they employed as a temporary retreat.
Things were in this state when, in 1625, a cadet of Normandy, of the name of d'Esnambuc, to whom the law of entail left no hope of fortune, except what he could acquire by his industry or courage, fitted out at Dieppe a brigantine of about seventy tons, on board which he placed four guns and forty resolute men, and set out to chase the Spaniards and try to enrich himself by some good prize.
On arriving at the Caymans, small islands situated between Cuba and Jamaica, he suddenly came across the track of a Spanish vessel bearing thirty-five guns and a crew of three hundred and fifty men; it was a critical situation for the corsair.
D'Esnambuc, without giving the Spaniards time to look about them, steered down and attacked them. The action lasted for three hours with extraordinary obstinacy; the Dieppois defended themselves so well, that the Spaniards despairing of conquest and having lost one-half their crew, were the first to decline fighting, and shamefully fled from the small vessel.
Still, the latter had suffered severely, and could be hardly kept above water, ten men had been killed, and the rest of the crew, being covered with wounds, were not worth much more.