On the 25th the French and English departed in piraguas and canoes, 345 men, and landed on a flat shore, following a good guide, who led them for two days through a wood. They were, however, seen by some fishermen, who alarmed the town, which had already received intelligence of their march from Lesparso. Great fatigue obliged them to rest on the evening of the 9th at a sugar plantation belonging to a knight of St. James, whom they were too tired to pursue.
On the 10th they saw two ships on the distant lake of Nicaragua, carrying off all the wealth of the town to a neighbouring island. From a prisoner they learnt that the inhabitants were strongly entrenched in the market-place, guarded by fourteen pieces of cannon and six patereroes, and that six troops of horse were waiting to attack them in the rear.
This information, which would have damped the courage of any but Buccaneers, drove them only the faster to the charge. At two in the afternoon they entered the town, over the dead bodies of a party that had awaited them in ambuscade, and sent a party to reconnoitre the fort. The skirmishers, after a few shots, returned, and reported that there were three streets leading to the fort, so they all resolved to concentrate in one of these.
Lussan describes the scene, of which he was an eye-witness, too graphically to need curtailing. "After we had exhorted one another," he says, "to fall on bravely, we advanced at a good round pace towards the said fortification. As soon as the defendants saw us within a good cannon-shot of them, they fired furiously upon us; but observing that at every discharge of their great guns, we saluted them down to the ground, in order to let their shot fly over us, they bethought themselves of false priming them, to the end we might raise our bodies, after the sham was over, and so to be really surprised with their true firing. As soon as we discovered this stratagem, we ranged ourselves along the houses, and having got upon a little ascent, which was a garden plot, we fired upon them from thence so openly for an hour and a-half that they were obliged to quit their ground, which our hardy boys, who were got to the foot of their walls, contributed yet more than the other by pouring in hand-grenades incessantly upon them, so that at last they betook themselves to the great church or tower, but they wounded us some men. As soon as our people, who had got upon the said eminence, perceived that the enemy fled, they called to us to jump over the walls, which we had no sooner done than they followed us, and thus it was that we made ourselves masters of the town, from whence they fled, after having lost a great many men. We had on our side but four men killed and eight wounded, which in truth was very cheap. When we got into the fort we found it to be a place capable of containing 6,000 fighting men; it was encompassed with a wall the same as our prisoners gave us an account of. It was pierced with many holes, to do execution upon the assailants, and was well stored with arms. That part of it which looked towards the street, through which we attacked it, was defended by two pieces of cannon and four patereroes, to say nothing of several other places made to open in the wall through which they thrust instruments made on purpose to break the legs of those who should be adventurous enough to come near it; but these, by the help of our grenadiers, we rendered useless to them. After we had sung Te Deum in the great church, and set four sentinels in the tower, we fixed our court of guard in the strong-built houses that are also enclosed within the place of arms, and there gathered all the ammunition we could get, and then we went to visit the houses, wherein we found nothing but a few goods and some provision, which we carried into our court of guard."
The next evening 150 men were despatched to a distant sugar plantation, to capture some ladies of rank and treasure; but on the next day a monk came to treat about the ransom they would require to spare the town. Unluckily the Spaniards had captured a Buccaneer straggler, who told them that his companions never meant to burn the place, but intended to stop there some months, and return into the North Sea, by the lake of Nicaragua. The freebooters, being refused the ransom, set fire to the houses in revenge. Had the French indeed had but canoes to capture the two ships in the island and secure the treasure, they would undoubtedly have carried out this plan. To a handful of hungry men, without food and without ships, even the gardens of Granada appeared hateful.
On leaving the town the Buccaneers took with them one piece of cannon and four patereroes, drawn by oxen, having to fight their way for twenty leagues to the shore over the savannah, surrounded by 2,500 Spaniards thirsting for their blood. In every place the enemy fled at the first discharge of their pieces. From a prisoner they learnt that a million and a-half pieces of eight, kept for ransom, was buried in the wall of the fort, but the men felt no disposition to return. They were soon obliged to leave their cannon behind, the oxen choked with the dust, worn out with the heat, and dying of thirst; but the patereroes were still dragged on by the mules. At the little village of Massaya, near the lake, they were received with open arms by the Indians, who only entreated them not to burn their huts.
All the water in the village had been tainted by the Spaniards, but the natives brought them as much as they needed. While they lay here a Spanish monk came to them to obtain the release of a priest who had been taken armed and with pockets filled with poisoned bullets. They refused to surrender him but in exchange for one of their own men. The next day, passing from the forest into a plain, they were attacked by 500 men, drawn up upon an ascent, and commanded by their Spanish deserter. Each party displayed bloody flags, but the vanguard beat them with wonderful bravery, and took fifty horses. The enemy fled, leaving their arms and the wounded, and turned out to be auxiliaries from Leon. In three days more they reached the beach, and, resting several days to salt provisions, sailed to Realegua, where they collected provisions and 100 horses. They then burnt down the borough of Ginandego, in spite of 200 soldiers and an entrenchment, because the inhabitants had defied them to come. Even here they were, however, much straitened for provision, the corregidor of Leon having desired all men to burn the provisions wherever the Buccaneers landed.
The same day at noon the sentinels rang the alarm bell in the steeple, and gave notice that 800 men from Leon were advancing across the savannah to fight them. The men, bustling out of their houses, marched at once, 150 in number, under their red colours, and drove off the enemy after a few shots.
There now arose a dissension in the Flibustier councils. 148 Frenchmen and all the English, headed by Captain Townley, determined to go up before Panama to see if the navigation had yet been resumed. 148 Frenchmen, under Captain Grogniet, resolved to go lower westward and winter upon an island, waiting for some abatement of the rains and southerly winds. The barks, canoes, and provisions were then divided, and the chirurgeons brought in the accounts of the wounded and crippled. There were found to be four men crippled and six hurt: to the latter were given 600 pieces of eight a man, and to the former 1000, being exactly all the money then in store.