The fiscal policy of the Spanish government was in early years not unfavorable to Cuba. Apart from a royalty of from five to ten per cent on precious metals mined, and on copper, and the royalty already described on the importation of negro slaves, and a customs duty of seven and a half per cent ad valorem on all imports, the island was free from taxation. The royalties in question were certainly not oppressive, and the fact that the Seville government imposed the same customs duty on all goods imported into Spain from Cuba made the tariff seem entirely just. Indeed, Cuba was favored above all other islands In the West Indies for many years. Thus after the middle of the sixteenth century one-third of what had been the import duty on goods received in Spain from the West Indies was required to be paid in the Indies as an export tax; but Cuba alone of all the islands was exempted from this arrangement. It was not, indeed, until the decline of Spain herself set in, with increasing expenses for maintaining an inefficient and often corrupt bureaucracy, and with sorely diminishing resources and revenues, that Cuba began to be detrimentally exploited for the sake of the Mother Country.
CHAPTER XV
We have said that the administration of Angulo marked the nadir of early Cuban history. It also marked the turning point, and the entrance of the island into international affairs. Not yet had the great duel between Spain and England begun; which in the next century was to have so momentous results. France was the enemy. Francis I became King of that country in 1515, when Velasquez was beginning the settlement of Cuba, and Charles I (Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire) became King of Spain in the following year; and in 1521, while Velasquez was still governor of Cuba, those two monarchs began the first of their series of six wars. Adopting the policy which was afterward pursued by England against Spain and against France, and by France against England, France struck at Spain in her American colonies. During the first, second and third wars, French attention was chiefly given to conquests in North America, with occasional raids against Spanish commerce in the Caribbean and along the coast of Mexico. Cuba appears to have remained unscathed.
With the outbreak of the fourth war in 1536, however, trouble for Cuba began. French privateers, little better than pirates in their practices, sometimes, swarmed the Caribbean and the Gulf, preying upon Spanish commerce and raiding Spanish seacoast towns. The first such blow was struck at Cuba in 1537. A fleet of five Spanish ships, richly laden, was about to set forth from Havana for Spain, by way of the Bahama Channel. Just as they spread their sails and weighed their anchors, a venturesome French privateer entered the harbor's mouth. The intruder hesitated at sight of so many vessels, whereupon three of the Spaniards, being well armed as well as laden, as most ships had to be in those troublous days, gave chase. The Frenchman retired, fighting stubbornly, as far as the harbor of Mariel, where he turned at bay and for three days kept up the unequal conflict. Then, just as he seemed preparing to give up the fight and flee, an unfavorable wind struck the Spanish ships, placing them at such disadvantage that their captains ordered them to be abandoned and burned. This was done, but the French boarded one before the flames had made headway, extinguished the fire, and sailed away with the prize. The daring Frenchman then returned to Havana, entered the harbor with the two ships, and proclaimed to the alcaldes and citizens that he would do the place no harm if none was done to him, but that if any attack was made upon his ships, he would sack the town. After a while he went out and sailed away to the west.
At that same time all commerce out of and into Santiago was practically blocked by the presence of French privateers hovering off that port. In April, 1538, an attack was made upon Santiago, and the place was defended in a most extraordinary fashion. A Spanish vessel tried to leave port, met a French vessel returning from a raid on Hispaniola, and tried to scuttle back, but was overtaken and captured at the entrance to the harbor. Next day, having despoiled the prize, the Frenchman sailed into the deep harbor, which never before had been thus invaded, and menaced the town. The town had no defences whatever, and the citizens were unarmed. Guzman, then just at the end of his administration, was furious at his helplessness. He railed against the citizens because they would not rush down to the wharf and repel the invader with clubs and stones. But railing was in vain, and so there was nothing to do but to take to flight inland, which most of the officials and citizens did, carrying all portable treasure with them.
The Frenchman then threatened to burn the town, which Guzman wished he would do, in order to bring the King's government to its senses and arouse it to the necessity of defending Cuba. But there chanced to be in the port a certain merchant of Seville, by name Diego Perez, who was at least as daring as the Frenchman himself. He had a little merchant sloop, not more than half the size of the Frenchman, but well armed, with guns that would carry at least as far as the Frenchman's. He ran his little craft into water too shallow for the bigger Frenchman, where he would be secure against ramming or boarding, and there began peppering the enemy with his long range guns, Perez himself aiming the best of them. The fight lasted all day, and Perez was ready to resume it next morning. But in the darkness of the night the Frenchman stole away and was seen no more in Santiago harbor. Perez had three men killed, and his vessel was badly damaged; but the Frenchman probably suffered heavier losses, since two of his men who were killed fell overboard and were picked up and buried by the Spaniards, and there were almost certainly others killed. For his valor on thus saving the capital of Cuba from destruction, Perez received from the King a coat of arms with a device emblematic of his achievement.
That same Frenchman a little later, having repaired his vessel, wreaked his revenge upon Havana. When he entered the harbor there the people fled and left the town for him to loot at his leisure. It is recorded that he took even the church bells. Moreover, being a truculent Huguenot, he took an image of Saint Peter from the church and let his men use it as a target to pelt with oranges! This incident caused De Soto, who arrived at Havana a little later, to hasten work on the defences of the place. For some time there had been talk of building a fort, but no agreement had been reached as to where it should be; whether at the Cabana, or the Morro, or on the hill in what is now Central Park. But the Frenchman's raid brought the controversy to an end, and De Soto was authorized to build wherever he thought best. The result was the building of La Fuerza. It was hastily built, and therefore badly, so that ten years later part of it had to be torn down and the whole remodelled into its present form.
By this time it was considered certain that Havana would one day become the capital and chief city of Cuba, wherefore it was decided to fortify it rather than Santiago or any other port. Beside, it was the most convenient port of call for treasure ships and others plying between Mexico and Spain. A battery of cannon was therefore placed upon the Morro headland, long before the building of the castle, and La Fuerza was strongly armed. It became the custom for treasure ships to put into Havana harbor, and if pursued to unload their treasure there, for safe keeping on shore until the danger was past. But no further attack was made upon Havana or any other Cuban port, and in 1544 the war was ended.
The prospect of Havana's becoming the capital seemed temporarily to be realized in 1550, when Angulo established his permanent residence there—the first governor so to do, though some of his predecessors had spent some time there, and De Avila had actually established a residence there. Angulo began building a large stone church at Havana, in place of the wooden thatched hut which had served the purpose before him; he built an addition to the hospital, two store houses and a slaughter house, and rebuilt the jail. He also regulated the prices of food, so as to put a stop to the artificial raising of prices whenever ships came in for supplies. Yet when, in obedience to the orders of the crown, in November, 1552, he issued an emancipation proclamation in favor of the Indians, a storm of abuse broke upon him, in Havana as well as elsewhere. Santiago, piqued because he had spent so much time away from that place, took the initiative in demanding a judicial investigation of his conduct, charging him with venality and peculations. But the city council of Havana quickly followed suit, made more than fifty specific charges against him, and provided a ship to fetch a judge from Hispaniola to try him.