The History of Cuba, vol. 1

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

A grim guardian, seated on the headland at one side of the entrance to Havana's peerless harbor; founded to protect the city from the sixteenth-century corsairs; captured in the seventeenth century by the British and the American Colonists after the most stubborn resistance; and in later years the prison in which many Cuban patriots were immured.

Curiously enough, while Santiago was hostile to him because he would not live there, Havana was hostile because he would live there. It was specifically complained that he persisted in living at Havana against the will of the people of that place. They did not want him there, they said, because they were convinced that he was there for his own profit. So they besought the court to compel him to return to Santiago. Other complaints were that he had imposed various new-fangled devices upon the city, that he was a gambler, that he engaged in trade for his own profit, that he permitted his wife to decide suits at law, and that he had instructed one of his officers to strike with a club anyone who did not rise to his feet when the governor entered the church.

Angulo denied all the charges, and declared that they had been trumped up against him because he had obeyed the King in emancipating the Indians. He went to Hispaniola in person to argue his cause before the Supreme Court, the chief counsel against him being Alfonso de Rojas. The court decided in his favor so far as to suspend all action and let him return to Havana, until the King could pass upon the case. No judge would be appointed to investigate him, the court added, unless one were sent from Spain. So the governor returned to Cuba in triumph. Landing at Santiago, he proclaimed the freedom of all Indians there. Thence he proceeded to Baracoa, to Bayamo, to Trinidad, and to Puerto Principe, repeating the emancipation proclamation at each place. At the midsummer of 1553 he reached Havana, to find that the town council had "deposed" him, on the ground that he had been absent from his jurisdiction without leave for more than ninety days; a decree which he ignored. Meanwhile the crown had appointed a judge to investigate him, but the judge did not come and the inquest was not held. Soon after his arrival at Havana, finding that he would not give up the governorship at its word, the town council begged the Hispaniola court to have him investigated, and the court commissioned a judge for that purpose, who declined or at least failed to act. This was in August, 1554.

Now trouble was renewed with France, the sixth war between Henry II, who had succeeded Francis, and Charles beginning in 1552 and continuing until 1559, Charles meanwhile abdicating in favor of Philip II in 1556. The French navy was more potent than ever, and French privateers swarmed the Spanish Main. Every Cuban port was warned to be on its guard against attack, Havana most of all, since it was now the richest and was in the most exposed situation. It was not until the fall of 1553 that the official news of the renewal of hostilities reached Cuba, and great was the consternation which it caused.

Juan de Lobera was at that time the commander of the fortifications of Havana, to wit, La Fuerza. He appears to have been a man of strangely mingled temperament, at times fearful and timorous, at others resolute and valiant. At the beginning the former characteristics prevailed. He realized, only too truly, that the fortifications and petty garrison would be entirely insufficient for the protection of the place against any considerable force, such as even a single French ship might bring against it, and he fell into something like a panic. Happily, however, he did not desert his post, but made passionate demands upon the governor and the town council for additional guards. Happily, too, in the presence of menace the animosities of faction were stilled, and the council cooperated heartily with the governor whom it had just been trying to depose and whom only a little later it denounced to the court as worthy of investigation and indictment.

New guards were supplied. Day and night the beach was patrolled. Watchmen were stationed on the Morro headland to espy approaching vessels and to signal the tidings to the fort and city. At the mouth of the Almendares River, where it was supposed that invaders were likely to land, horsemen were stationed, to hasten back to the city with news of any such landing or of the appearance of a hostile vessel. Twelve men, expert in arms, were held in readiness day and night to man the fort the moment a strange vessel was reported; La Fuerza being otherwise without a garrison—which amply justified the commander's lack of faith in its defensive efficiency. In case of an attack, all able-bodied citizens were to present themselves in a massed levy under command of the governor. Every man was to be armed, at least with a sword, day and night, and none was to absent himself from the city without the permission of the governor. Every vessel of any kind that approached the harbor was signalled to stop outside until it could be visited and its identity be established; though if any refused thus to halt there was no adequate power to compel it to do so. However, refusal to stop would of course be regarded as proof of hostile character.

With all these preparations the defensive ability of Havana was pitifully if not ludicrously slight. Three small cannon manned by twelve volunteers constituted the armament of a fort which might be attacked by a ship of twenty guns and two hundred men. The "army" of the place comprised sixteen horsemen and less than seventy footmen, scarcely any two of them armed alike. The chief commander under the governor was Juan de Rojas, who was the governor's bitterest political enemy, though he had once been his close friend and deputy. He was a brother of the former governor, Manuel de Rojas. In these circumstances the commander of the fort awaited with unspeakable trepidation the anticipated approach of the enemy.

His fears were presently realized in the coming of perhaps the most formidable of all the Frenchmen then scouring the seas; the famous Jacques Sores. This daring captain was not only a Frenchman and therefore hostile to Spaniards on racial and political grounds, but he was also a Huguenot, like many other French seamen of that day, and therefore hostile to them on religious grounds. He was supposed to be under the patronage of the great Condé, and also at one time to have received material aid from Queen Elizabeth of England. Indeed, he was at this time regarded as the foremost champion of the Protestant cause at sea. Although a privateer, he commanded not a single vessel but a squadron of three, which he handled with the skill of a master mariner.