The History of Cuba, vol. 1

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

This letter shows plainly how preoccupied was the British mind with the acquisition of Cuba, and foreshadows the coming events, for which Cuba in spite of all warning symptoms was little prepared. Clouds had gathered about the horizon of Spain and darkened its own outlook.

King Philip IV. had died on the seventeenth of September, 1665, and so inadequate was at that time the means of communication between Spain and her American dominions that it took seven months before news of the event reached the people of Cuba. The heir to the Spanish throne was the three-year-old Charles II. the queen, assisted by the junta, being named regent. If the reign of Philip IV. had been called the most disastrous in the history of the kingdom, that of Charles II. was hardly less so. It was the period when Louis XIV. of France had begun to cherish a dream of universal empire and although a brother-in-law of the Spanish infant-king, did not hesitate to do his share in weakening the power of Spain. In spite of the critical position of the mother-country, the proclamation of the new king was celebrated in Havana with great pomp on the ninth day of May in the following year. At the review held in San Francisco square of that city appeared two companies of mounted militia, four companies of veteran infantry and four others of free Pardos (a mixed race of blacks and whites) and Morenos, sent by the Major Jeronimo Luque Salazar.

The perfidy of the French king contributed seriously to the insecurity of Cuba at this period. There is little doubt that he aided and abetted the operations of French pirates in the West Indies. The island of Tortuga was once more in their hands. Barbadoes and Jamaica were the haunts of great numbers of these outlaws, who kept the Spanish ships sailing on these seas as well as Campeche, Tabasco, Honduras, Nicaragua, New Granada, Costa Rica, Santa Catalina, la Guayra and others of the rich Spanish colonies in the Western Hemisphere in a continual state of suspense. Governor Davila succeeded in several punitive expeditions against the pirates. The notorious Lolonois or El Olones, was executed in Nicaragua and in Cuba itself more than three hundred were hanged in the different places where they had been caught. During Davila's administration some wealthy citizens made bequests for the public good. The most important was that of Martin Calvo, who left an income of five thousand pesos to be annually distributed as gifts among five poor orphan girls. Governor Davila Orejon y Gaston was in the military literature of his time known as the author of a work called "Escelencias del arte militare y variones illustres." He demonstrated in that work the importance of the port of Havana for the conservation of Spanish dominion in Mexico and Peru. He retired from the governorship on the sixth of May, 1670, and died in Venezuela.

The immediate successor of Davila was Field Marshal D. Francisco Rodriguez de Ledesma, Chevalier of the Order of Santiago. Determined to curb the brazen bullying in which the buccaneers were still indulging, he issued privateering patents to a number of valiant mariners and merchants, who were willing to face the foreign pirates in open fight and prevent further encroachments upon the coasts of Spanish America. The two men who especially distinguished themselves in these expeditions were Felipe Geraldini and Major Marcos de Alcala. Ledesma also carried on the work of fortification. During his administration was built a portion of the cathedral under the supervision of D. Juan Bernardo Alonso de Los Rios; but the imposing edifice was not finished until many years later.

Governor Ledesma was not to be spared an experience with the freebooters. In the year 1678 the governor of Guarico sent a certain Franquinay to Santiago with the evident intention of conquering the place. Franquinay, who was a French corsair well-known among the Brotherhood of the Coast landed with eight hundred men at Jaragua Grande in the eastern part of the island. There he engaged a half-witted native by the name of Juan Perdomo to act as guide and started with his forces to march toward the city. It was a moonlit night and on arriving at a point where the road branched into two, the pirate divided his forces, each taking one of the roads. On meeting again at the place where the two branches continued as the highroad, the idiot Perdomo began to shout "Santiago, Spain!" The moon had set in the mean time and in the darkness enveloping them, the pirates did not recognize their own forces and thought this call a signal to the enemy lying in wait for them. They began to fire upon their own forces, in the belief that they were betrayed and surprised by the Spaniards, and killed a great number of their own people, before they became aware of their mistake. In this way was Franquinay's plan to take and ransack the city of Cuba frustrated by a mentally deficient native, one who in the language of the Latin people is called an "innocent." The corsair turned back to the shore with the intention of re-embarking and left Perdomo behind. The half-wit, although manacled, managed to reach Santiago and related his experience to the great delight of the governor and the residents. This was the last attempt of pirate forces upon the capital, the inhabitants of which had been kept in a state of constant alarm for a century and a half. But the smaller towns of the vicinity were for some time harassed by Franquinay who, unable to accomplish his ambitious purpose, vented his wrath upon their population by committing the most cruel outrages.

The expedition of buccaneers under the command of M. de Grammont in February, 1679, was another event that justified the fears of the Cubans and their steps to insure the safeguard of their ports. M. de Grammont landed with a force of six hundred men at Guanaja and succeeded in capturing Puerto del Principe. But the inhabitants valiantly organized and armed themselves to fight the invader. With a scanty reenforcement of soldiers from the garrison they managed to defeat the enemy's horde and pursued them as far as the port of Guanaja. There M. de Grammont, who was wounded in the course of the combat, retired into a trench which was sufficiently fortified to offer some resistance. On the twenty-fifth of the month an engagement took place, which forced the pirates to take to their ships and hurriedly to leave for the open sea. They had not only accomplished nothing, but suffered the loss of seventy dead and many wounded.

Notwithstanding the two countries being at peace, the feeling between Great Britain and Spain was gradually becoming more and more hostile. During the pirate raids and other expeditions of British vessels off the Spanish-American coasts, British soldiers and sailors had been taken prisoners and were held in what was equivalent to bondage. The British government had repeatedly remonstrated against this procedure, but the Cuban authorities had not forgotten Jamaica and other operations of the British in Spanish America and were not inclined to parley. Ships had been sent to Havana to demand the release of the men, but even then the emissaries of the British government failed to obtain any satisfaction. Their demands were flatly refused. Finally the Earl of Clarence, who was then governor of Jamaica, dispatched the British ship Hunter under command of Captain John Tosier to Havana. A full account of this expedition is given in "A Letter from Captain John Tosier, Commander of His Majesty's ship the Hunter at Jamaica. With a narrative of his embassy to the governor of Havana to demand His Majesty's of Great Britain's Subjects kept prisoners there." The letter is dated Port Royal, Jamaica, March 28th, 1679, and was published in London in the same year.

Captain Tosier tells of previous efforts made to obtain the deliverance of these British prisoners, saying that even messengers backed by frigates of fifty guns had so far failed in their purpose. He sailed from Port Royal on the twenty-fifth of January and on the eleventh of February arrived off the coast of Havana. There he waited for two days for more settled weather before he approached within two miles of Morro castle, "top-sails a-Trip, Jack, Ancient and Pendant flying." He sent a boat with Mr. Richard Bere, Governor Carlisle's "Gentleman of the Horse" as messenger and interpreter, and bearer of the list of British subjects kept prisoners in Havana. The guard of Morro castle ordered the boat ashore, put a sergeant and soldiers on board and escorted the messenger to Governor Ledesma. Another guard remained on the boat. Governor Ledesma read the letter and the sailing orders and replied that the British prisoners were pirates. According to Captain Tosier's narrative he refused the British emissaries the customary salute and more or less politely ordered them out of the house. They were escorted back to the boat and "were forced to sea at seven o'clock at night."

Early the next morning the answer was received by Captain Tosier. Within three hours he sent the boat ashore once more, telling the governor of Havana "His Majesty's Ship under my command is well Man'd, where he might be safe and welcome if he would vouchsafe to give her his company; and His Majesty of England never spared his powder to answer Civilities, nor received such indignities as waiters or guards on board of any of His Majesty's Ships of War, which will be a strange report, when His Majesty shall come to hear of it." Captain Tosier then demanded in the name of the King of England and "in obedience to the Catholic King" that forthwith all subjects of his "most Excellent Majesty" detained as prisoners in Havana be set at liberty and delivered to him to be transported to the Territories of the King of England. If pirates they were, they should have been sent to Old Spain to be tried. Great was the excitement at the government house in Havana, when this message reached there. But the Cuban authorities saw no other way out of the difficulty but to give up the captives. Captain Tosier reports that the governor ordered the prisoners to be called over in a back court near his house and examined some of them, one after another, and before he had done said: "Though I have no order to deliver them to you and though I may be blamed, yet take them all with you, and if there be any more, let them come forth immediately and they shall be discharged."

Captain Tosier had cause to be proud of his success, as the Spanish authorities had never before been known to deliver any British prisoners. The announcement that they were free was received with wild cheers by the forty-six Englishmen who had spent from one to six years in Cuban captivity. The following day the Hunter sailed and at some distance out of Havana, Captain Tosier came across a long boat, containing one hundred and forty-four men with their commander, Captain John Graves who had sailed a month before for London and eight days before meeting the Hunter had been cast away thirty leagues east of Havana and expected to be utterly lost or to be made prisoners by the Cubans.