CHAPTER I
Etymology of the word Filibuster — Norse Adventurers — The Buccaneers — Miranda — Services under the Directory — First Expedition from the United States — Dr. Jenner and the King of Spain — Miranda's second expedition and death.
The difference between a filibuster and a freebooter is one of ends rather than of means. Some authorities say that the words have a common etymology; but others, including Charlevoix, maintain that the filibuster derived his name from his original occupation, that of a cruiser in a "flibote," or "Vly-boat," first used on the river Vly, in Holland. Yet another writer says that the name was first given to the gallant followers of Dominique de Gourgues, who sailed from Finisterre, or Finibuster, in France, on the famous expedition against Fort Caroline in 1567.
The name, whatever its origin, was long current in the Spanish as "filibustero" before it became adopted into the English. So adopted, it has been used to describe a type of adventurer who occupied a curious place in American history during the decade from 1850 to 1860.
The citizen or subject of any country, who makes war upon a state with which his own is at peace, with intent to overrun and occupy it, not merely for the piratical ends of rapine and plunder, is a filibuster in the true sense of the term. Such act of war is, by the law of nations, a crime against both countries. Its morality, before the meaner court of popular judgment, will rest upon the measure of its success alone. So judged, as all invaders are judged at last, the bold adventurer draws but few prizes in the lottery of fame. Cortez and Houston are among the few successful filibusters of modern times.
In the shadowy chronicles of the Norsemen we find the first trace of that adventurous spirit which, during twelve centuries, gave the dominion of the ocean to the seafaring people of Northern Europe. The bold Vikings who, without chart or compass, sailed over unknown and dangerous seas, crossed the Atlantic and swept the Mediterranean, were the worthy fathers of the Drakes and Ansons of later years. History bespeaks them cruel, rapacious, daring; pirates when, as Wheaton says, the occupation of a pirate was considered not only lawful, but honourable. But they were not wholly destructive. Borrowing a lesson in natural history from their own lemming, they solved the troublesome problem, how to get rid of a surplus population, by sending the superfluous members forth to seek a new field. The lemming eats his way to the sea, in which he finds his grave; but his human imitator more wisely found there a pathway to fortune. They went forth mainly to conquer, incidentally to colonize and settle. Among themselves they were primitive republicans, though harsh tyrants to their vanquished foes. "Who is your king or leader?" asked the herald of King Charles the Simple, before the decisive battle on the banks of the Eure in A.D. 898. "We have no king, no chief, no master; but 'Rolf, the Walker,' leads us in war and on the day of battle," was the proud answer of Rolf's comrades and peers. That this was no idle boast, Rolf's own descendant, King John of England, learned to his sorrow when the sons of the sturdy Norse filibusters met him face to face at Runnymede. The Magna Charta is the written code of that fierce democracy, dreaded alike by its serfs and its kings. The Vikings stand alone as a race of warriors whose hardihood overcame even their native superstition, in leading them to defy the gods themselves. They were sceptics, because they knew not fear. Love was as yet an unknown power in their religion.
The Norsemen were suppressed only by absorption. Owing no fealty to their native land, they took possession of the conquered countries, in which they proved to be the strongest barrier against further aggressions from the dreaded North. But before this degree of safety was gained, all Europe had felt the scourge of the terrible Vikings, who had burned or put in vassalage London, Cologne, Treves, Paris, Tours, and Marseilles; carried their victorious arms to Portugal, Spain, Sicily, and Constantinople; and given dynasties of Norse blood to England, Russia, and France. Rolf married a natural daughter of King Charles, whence came the Norman dukes and the royal line of England. In brief, the Vikings held the western world at their mercy, overturning thrones, founding kingdoms, stabling their horses in the palaces of princes, and upholding on their hireling spears the crown of the fallen Cæsars.
With the rise of the powerful maritime nations of Europe filibusterism slumbered for several centuries. The immortal expedition of Cortez being, in so far as it lacked the sanction of his king, wholly that of a filibuster, needs but passing mention here. Its success has lifted it into the realms of history and made it a household story. Filibusterism was to awake on a new field and lead the van in the long warfare which, in two hemispheres and during three centuries, has followed the meeting of Northman and Southron. England, and also France, looked with jealous eyes upon the grasping policy of Spain in the New World. The fortune of discovery had given to the two former the apparently barren lots of Canada and the British colonies. Spain had drawn the rich prize of El Dorado. Not content with the spoils of Mexico and Peru, she grudged to the hardy hunters of the West Indies their petty trade with her colonies. She claimed the Mississippi. The epitaph of Columbus was read as a veritable bequest by Spanish greed. But avarice over-reached itself. The persecutions heaped upon the "boucaniers" of the West Indies aroused a spirit of opposition, which success fanned into aggressive fires, and which the governments of England and France did nothing to extinguish. The cumbrous galleon with its golden freight was no match for the swift Vly-boat, manned by reckless adventurers in whom the appetite for gold was whetted by the memory of countless wrongs.
From unexpected successes by sea the Buccaneers made bold to attack the rich towns on the Spanish Main, which they held for heavy ransoms, or sacked with all the attendant cruelty of their ancestral Berserkers. Panama, Granada, Gibraltar, every town or fort of note, fell before the resistless buccaneers, until the names of Morgan, Portugues, Dampier, and Lolonois became words of terror to the Spanish colonists. Yet it must be borne in mind that the buccaneers were not pirates. They warred against one enemy, the same which had for years oppressed them and their brethren, while the countries to which they owed allegiance were too weak or too indifferent to protect their distant sons. When the buccaneer degenerated into the mere pirate, none were more prompt than his late comrades to follow up and punish the Ishmaelite. Buccaneer Morgan, knighted and made governor of Jamaica, was the terror of the West India pirates, though the virtue of his motives may fairly be questioned.