At a preconcerted signal the Buccaneers began to retreat, upon which the defenders of the battery, exclaiming, "They fly, they fly; follow, follow," sallied forth in disorder to the pursuit, shouting and firing like an undisciplined rabble. Once out of gun-shot of the batteries, the pursued turned into pursuers, and falling on the foe, sword in hand, slew about 200. Fighting their way through those who survived, the Buccaneers soon became masters of all the fortifications. Not more than 100 out of the 600 defenders remained alive, and these, as Falstaff says, would have to limp to the town-end and beg for life. The brave old governor lay dead among his foremost men.
The survivors who could crawl or run hid themselves in the woods, impeded in their flight by the very obstructions they had themselves raised. The men in the battery surrendered, and obtained quarter. Neither Lolonnois nor Le Basque was scratched, but forty of their companions perished, and eighty were grievously wounded. The greater part of these died through the fevers and subsequent pestilence. 500 dead Spaniards were found, but many more had hidden themselves, to die alone in peace.
The Buccaneers, now masters of Gibraltar, pulled down the Spanish colours from tower and steeple, and hoisted their own red or black flag. Making prisoners of all they met, they shut them up under guard in the chief church, where they erected a battery of great guns, in case the Spaniards should attempt to rally in a fit of despair. They then collected the dead bodies of the Spaniards, and, piling them up, scarred and gashed, in two large canoes, towed them out a quarter of a league to sea, and scuttled them. They then gathered from every house, rich or poor, all the plate, merchandise, and household stuff, which was not too hot or too heavy to carry off, as rapacious as the borderer who stopped wistfully opposite the hay-stack, wishing it had but four legs, that he might make it "gang awa' wi' the rest." The Spaniards having buried their treasure, as usual, armed parties were sent into the surrounding woods to search for buried money, and to bring in hunters and planters as prisoners to torture. Hung up by the beard, or burnt with gun-matches, the wretched sufferers were forced to confess the hiding-places.
Lolonnois soon turned the fertile country into a smoking black desert, and, still insatiable for money and blood, planned an expedition over the snow mountains to Merida, but reluctantly relinquished it when he found his men unwilling to risk what they had got for the mere uncertainly of getting more, though Merida was only forty leagues distant. They had now 150 prisoners, besides 500 slaves, and many women and children, many of whom were dying daily of famine, so short were provisions already in a city in which the small army had been encamped only eighteen days.
When they had spent six weeks in the town, Lolonnois determined to return, nothing now being left to pillage. Disease and famine were worse enemies than the Spaniard or the Indian, and cared for neither steel nor lead. A pestilential disease appeared in consequence of the numerous dead bodies left in the woods exposed to the wild beasts and the birds. Those that lay nearest to the walls had been strewn over with earth, the rest were left to taint the air, and slay the living—a putrid fever broke out; the Spaniards killed more of the enemy after their death than they had done in their life. The Frenchmen's wounds, already closing, began now to re-open, the sick died daily, and the strongest pined and sickened; all longed to return, even plunder grew distasteful to them without health, and once more at sea they hoped soon to be well.
Men who had been revelling in the plenty of two captured cities, could not return without impatience to the restraints of a time of scarcity. Gibraltar always depending upon Maracaibo for its meat, and not well supplied with flour, was, in fact, like a miser dying for want of a loaf, while his storehouses were brimmed over with gold. The little meat and flour were quickly consumed by the Buccaneers, who left their prisoners to shift for themselves. The cattle they soon appropriated, giving the mules' and asses' flesh to those Spaniards whose hunger was strong enough to conquer their disgust. A few of the women were allowed better fare, and many who had become the mistresses of their captors were well treated by their lovers. Some of these were mere slaves, others were voluntary concubines, but the greater part had been compelled, by poverty and fear, to abandon their fathers and husbands.
Lolonnois, sending four of his prisoners into the woods, demanded a ransom of 80,000 pieces of eight within two days, threatening the fugitives to burn the town to ashes if his desire was not acceded to. The Spaniards, already half-beggared, disagreed about the ransom; the bolder and the more avaricious refused to pay a piastre, the old, the timid, and the more generous preferred poverty to such a loss. Some said it would serve as a mere bribe to allure a third adventurer, and others declared it was the only means of saving Merida. While they were thus disputing the two days passed, and the debate was put an end to by the sight of flame ascending above the roofs. The city was already fired in two or three places, when the inhabitants, promising to bring the ransom, persuaded the Buccaneers to assist in quenching the flames, not, however, till the chief houses were burned, and the chief monastery was ruined.
Œxmelin merely says that Lolonnois set fire to the four corners of the town, and in six hours reduced the whole to ashes. Palm-thatch and cedar walls burn quick, and the sea-breeze was there to fan the flames, while the Buccaneers were learned in the art of destruction. Lolonnois then collected his men by beat of drum, and embarked his booty. Before he sailed, he sent two of his prisoners again into the woods, to tell the inhabitants that all the prisoners in his hands would be at once put to death if the ransom were not paid. All prisoners who had not paid their ransom he took with him, even the slaves being valued at so much, and having put on board all riches that were movable, and a large sum of money as a ransom for what was immovable, the Buccaneer fleet returned to Maracaibo. The city, now partly repeopled, was thrown again into disorder, nor much lessened when three or four prisoners came to the governor, bearing a demand from Lolonnois to pay at once 30,000 pieces of eight down upon his deck, or to expect a second sack, and the fate of Gibraltar. While these terms were under concession, and the Spanish merchants were chaffering with the sailors, as a lowland farmer might have done with a highland cateran, a party of well-inclined Flibustiers, unwilling to waste their time, rowed on shore, and stripped the great church of its pictures, images, carvings, clocks, and bells, even to the very cross on its steeple, piously desiring to erect a chapel at Tortuga, where there was much need of spiritual instruction. The Spaniards at last agreed to pay for their ransom and liberty 20,000 piastres, 10,000 pieces of eight, and 500 cows, provided the fleet would do no further injury, and depart at once, and the blessing of Maracaibo with them.
We can imagine the trembling and suppressed joy with which the people of Maracaibo must have beheld the fleet sail slowly out of their harbour, all eyes on board bent onward to the horizon and the golden future—none looking back with a moment's regret upon the misery and the black ruin left behind. How many orphans must have cursed them as they sailed, and how many widows! Three days after the embarkation, to the horror of the city, a vessel with a red flag at its masthead was seen re-entering the harbour, but only, as it soon appeared, to demand a pilot to take the fleet over the bar.
On their way to Hispaniola, Lolonnois touched at the Isle de la Vacca, intending to stay there and divide the spoil. This island was inhabited by French Buccaneers, who sold the flesh of the animals they killed to vessels in want of victual. But a dispute arising here, the fleet again set out to disband the crew at Gouaves in Hispaniola.