The Buccaneer Chief: A Romance of the Spanish Main

Suddenly several adventurers sprang up, no one knew whence, who, alone, castaways of civilization, men of all classes, from the highest to the most humble, belonging to all nations, but chiefly to the French, perched themselves like vultures on an imperceptible islet in the Atlantic, and undertook to contend against the Spanish power, after declaring a merciless war on their private authority. Attacking the Spanish fleet with unheard-of audacity, and, like a gadfly fastened to a lion's flank, holding in check the Spanish Colossus, they compelled it to treat with them on equal terms, with no other help but their courage and their energetic will.

In a few years their incredible exploits and audacious coups de main inspired the Spaniards with such terror, and acquired for themselves such a great and merited reputation, that the disinherited of fortune, the seekers of adventures, flocked from all parts of the world to the island that served them as a refuge, and their number was so enormously augmented, that they almost succeeded in forming themselves into a nationality by the sole force of their will, and their boldness. Let us say in a few words, who these men were, and what was the origin of their strange fortune.

For this purpose we must return to the Spaniards.

The latter, after their immense discoveries in the New World, had obtained from Pope Alexander VI. a bull which conceded to them the exclusive possession of the two Americas.

Supported by this bull, and considering themselves the sole owners of the New World, the Spaniards tried to keep all other nations away from it, and began to treat as corsairs all the vessels they came across between the two tropics.

Their maritime power, and the important part they played at that time on the American continent did not leave the governments the power of protesting, as they would have desired, against this odious tyranny.

Then it happened that English and French outfitters, excited by the thirst of gain, and paying no heed to the Spanish pretensions, equipped vessels which they dispatched to the so-coveted rich regions, to cut off the Spanish transports, plunder the American coast, and fire the town.

Treated as pirates, these bold sailors frankly accepted the position offered them, committed awful excesses wherever they landed, carried off rich spoil, and despising the law of nations, and not caring whether the Spaniards were at war or not with the countries to which they belonged, they attacked them wherever they met them.

The Spaniards, entirely engaged with rich possessions in Mexico, Peru, and generally on the Continent, which were mines of inexhaustible wealth for them, had committed the fault of neglecting the Antilles, which stretch from the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of Maracaibo, and only established colonies in the four large islands of that archipelago.

Hidden in bays behind the windings of the coast, the adventurers dashed suddenly at the Spanish vessels, carried them by boarding, and then returned ashore to share the plunder.

The Spaniards, in spite of the great number of their vessels, and the active watch they kept up, could no longer traverse the Caribbean Sea, which the adventurers had selected as the scene of their exploits, without running the risk of obstinate engagements with men, whom the smallness and lightness of their vessels rendered almost intangible.

This wandering life possessed such charms for the adventurers, who had assumed the characteristic name of filibusters or freebooters, that for a long time the idea did not occur to them of forming a permanent settlement among the islands, which they employed as a temporary retreat.

Things were in this state when, in 1625, a cadet of Normandy, of the name of d'Esnambuc, to whom the law of entail left no hope of fortune, except what he could acquire by his industry or courage, fitted out at Dieppe a brigantine of about seventy tons, on board which he placed four guns and forty resolute men, and set out to chase the Spaniards and try to enrich himself by some good prize.

On arriving at the Caymans, small islands situated between Cuba and Jamaica, he suddenly came across the track of a Spanish vessel bearing thirty-five guns and a crew of three hundred and fifty men; it was a critical situation for the corsair.

D'Esnambuc, without giving the Spaniards time to look about them, steered down and attacked them. The action lasted for three hours with extraordinary obstinacy; the Dieppois defended themselves so well, that the Spaniards despairing of conquest and having lost one-half their crew, were the first to decline fighting, and shamefully fled from the small vessel.

Still, the latter had suffered severely, and could be hardly kept above water, ten men had been killed, and the rest of the crew, being covered with wounds, were not worth much more.

As the isle of Saint Kitts was no great distance off, d'Esnambuc reached it with much difficulty, and took refuge there to careen his vessel, and cure his wounded. Then calculating, that, for the success of his future expeditions, he required a sure retreat, he resolved to establish himself on this island.

St. Kitts, which the Caribs called Liamuiga, is situated in 17 to 18 degrees N. latitude and 65 W. longitude. It is 23 leagues W.N.W. of Antigua, and about 3 leagues to the N.W. of Guadeloupe, and is one of the Caribbean Islands.

The general aspect of this island is remarkably beautiful, it is commanded by Mount Misery, an extinct volcano, three thousand five hundred feet high, which occupies the whole northwest part, and gradually descends in lower ranges, till it dies away on the South in the plains of the Basse terre.

The barrenness of the mountains forms a striking contrast with the fertility of the plains.

The valleys display a really extraordinary wealth of vegetation, while the mountains only offer to the eye a confused chaos of broken rocks, whose interstices are filled up with a clayey matter that checks all vegetation.

Water is rare, and of a bad quality, for the few streams that descend from Mount Misery are strongly impregnated with saline particles, to which strangers find a difficulty in growing accustomed.

But a precious thing for the filibusters, Saint Kitts possesses two magnificent ports, well sheltered and easy of defence, and its coasts are serrated with deep bays, where, in case of danger, their light vessels would easily find a shelter.

D'Esnambuc, on landing, found several refugee Frenchmen who lived on good terms with the Caribs, and who not only received him with open arms, but joined him and selected him as their leader.

By a singular chance, on the same day that the Dieppois landed at St. Kitts, English freebooters commanded by Captain Warner, who had also suffered in an engagement with the Spaniards, took refuge at another point in it.

The corsairs of the two nations who could not be separated by any idea of conquest, agriculture, or commerce, and who pursued the same object, fighting the Spaniards, and establishing a refuge against the common enemy, easily came to an understanding; then, after dividing the island, they settled down side by side, and lived for a long time on excellent terms, which nothing disturbed.

On one occasion they even combined their arms against the Caribs, who, alarmed by the progress of their new settlement, attempted to expel them.

The filibusters made a horrible carnage among the Indians, and forced them to implore for mercy.

A few months after, Warner and d'Esnambuc put out to sea again; the latter proceeded to Paris, the former to London, each for the purpose of soliciting the protection of his government for the rising colony.

As usual, these men, who at the beginning had only sought a temporary refuge, now felt a desire to see the development of a settlement founded by themselves, and which in a short time had assumed a real importance.

Cardinal de Richelieu, ever disposed to favour projects tending to augment the foreign power of France, received the filibuster with the greatest distinction, entered into his views, and formed a company, called "The Company of the Islands," in order to promote the interests of the colony.

The capital was 45,000 livres, of which Richelieu subscribed for his part 10,000.

D'Esnambuc was invested with the supreme command.

Among the claims stipulated in his commission there is one which we must quote, owing to its strangeness, for it imposed on white men in America a temporary slavery harsher even than that of the Negro.

This is the clause, whose sinister consequences we shall see developed during the course of this story.

"No labourer intended for the colony will be allowed to embark, unless he engages to remain for three years in the service of the company, which will have the right to employ him on any task it thinks proper, without granting him the right to complain or break the contract entered into by him."

These labourers were called Engagés or "thirty-six monthers," a polite way of getting rid of the word slave.

Captain Warner, who had been more highly favoured, returned with a large body of colonists. Still the good understanding was kept up for some time between the two nations; but the English took advantage of the weakness of the French, who could not oppose their usurpations, to encroach on their rights, and formed a fresh settlement at Nevis, the next island to St. Kitts.

Still d'Esnambuc did not despair of the fate of the colony. He proceeded again to France, and solicited of the Cardinal help in men and money, to repulse the undertakings of his troublesome neighbours.

Richelieu granted his request.

By his orders, Rear Admiral de Cussac arrived at St. Kitts, with six heavily armed ships; he surprised ten English vessels in the roads, captured three, sank three others, and put the rest to flight.

The English made no further attempts to leave their boundaries, and peace was re-established.

M. de Cussac, after supplying the colony with rum and provisions, set sail, and went to found a settlement on St. Eustache, an island four leagues N. W. of St. Kitts.

The Spaniards, however, who, since the appearance of the filibusters in American waters, had suffered so greatly from their depredations, saw them with great alarm settling permanently on the West India islands.

They understood of what importance it was to them not to allow fixed settlements in these regions, unless they wished to see their colonies destroyed and their commerce ruined.

They consequently resolved to act vigorously against those fellows whom they regarded as pirates, and to utterly destroy their lurking places, which had already acquired formidable proportions.

In consequence Admiral don Fernando de Toledo, whom the court of Madrid had placed at the head of a powerful fleet, sent in 1630 to Brazil to fight the Dutch, received orders to destroy in passing, the viper's nest formed by the filibusters at St. Kitts.

The sudden apparition of this immense force off the island filled the inhabitants with stupor. The united resources of the English and French adventurers and their desperate courage were not sufficient to avert the danger that menaced them, and repulse so formidable an attack.

After a desperate fight, in which a great number of filibusters, especially Frenchmen, were killed, the others got into their light canoes and fled to the adjacent isles of St. Bartholomew, Antigua, St. Martin, and Montserrat, or to any place in short where they hoped to find a temporary refuge.

The English, we are unfortunately compelled to state, shamefully fled at the beginning of the action, and eventually asked leave to capitulate.

One half of them were sent to England on board Spanish ships, while the rest engaged to evacuate the island as soon as possible, – a promise which was forgotten immediately after the departure of the Spanish fleet.

This expedition was the only one that Spain seriously attempted against the filibusters.

The French soon left the islands where they had sought refuge, and returned to St. Kitts, where they re-established themselves, though not without a quarrel with the English, who had taken advantage of the opportunity to seize their land, but whom they forced again beyond their old borders.

It is a singular fact, which proves that the filibusters were not bandits and nameless men, as attempts have been made to brand them, that the inhabitants of St. Kitts were remarkable beyond all the other colonists for the gentleness and urbanity of their manners; the traditions of politeness left by the first Frenchmen who settled there, have been maintained even to the present day; in the eighteenth century it was called the Gentle Island, and there is a proverb in the Antilles to the effect, that "the nobility were at St. Kitts, the citizens at Guadeloupe, the soldiers at Martinique, and the peasants at Grenada."

Things remained for a long time in the state we have just described; the filibusters, growing bolder and bolder through the Spanish cowardice, enlarged the scene of their exploits, and retaining a bitter memory of the sack of their island, felt a double hatred for the Spaniards, who had branded them with the name of Ladrones (robbers). They no longer displayed any moderation, and seated in the light canoes that composed their entire fleet, they watched for the rich transports from Mexico, dashed boldly aboard them, carried them, and returned to St. Kitts loaded with plunder.

The colony prospered, the land was well cultivated, and the plantations were carefully made.

For these men, the majority of whom had no hope left of ever returning to their native land, had performed their work with the feverish ardor of people who are creating for themselves a new nationality and preparing a last asylum, so that only a few years after the destruction of the colony by the Spaniards, St. Kitts had again become a flourishing colony, thanks in the first instance to its fertility and the energy and intelligence of its inhabitants, but above all to the incessant toil of the engagés of the company.

We have now to explain what these poor fellows were and the fate they met with at the hands of the colonists.

We have already stated that the company sent to the islands, men whom they had engaged for three years.

They accepted anybody, workmen belonging to all trades, even surgeons who, persuading themselves that they were destined to carry on their own profession in the colonies, allowed themselves to be seduced by the fair promises which the company did not hesitate to lavish.

But once their consent was given, that is to say, signed, the company regarded them as men belonging to it body and soul; and when they reached the colonies, agents sold then for three years to the planters, at the rate of thirty or forty crowns a head, and did so in the broad daylight and in the governor's presence.

They thus became real slaves, subject to the adventurers of the colony, and condemned to the rudest tasks.

Hence, the poor wretches, so unworthily abused, beaten terribly and worn out by a fatigue under a deadly climate, generally succumbed ere they had attained the third year, which was to set them at liberty.

This was carried so far that the masters at last attempted to prolong the stipulated slavery beyond three years. Toward the end of 1632, the colony of St. Kitts incurred great dangers, for the engagés whose time was up and whom their masters refused liberty, took up arms, organized a resistance, and prepared to attack the colonists with that energy of desperation which no force can resist. M. d'Esnambuc only succeeded in making them lay down their arms and arrest bloodshed by conceding their just demands.

At a later date, when the sad condition in which the company's agents placed the engagés, became known in France, it became almost impossible for the latter to find volunteers; hence they were obliged to go about the roads and highways to enlist vagabonds whom they intoxicated and induced to sign, while in that condition, an engagement which it was impossible to break.

We will dwell the more earnestly on this point, because during the course of our narrative, we shall have frequently to revert to the engagés. We will only add one word about the wretches whom England sent to the colonies under the same conditions.

If the fate of the French engagés was frightful, that of the English, history proves to us, was horrible.

They were treated with the most atrocious barbarity. They formed an engagement for seven years, and then, at the end of that time, when the moment to regain their liberty had at length arrived, they were intoxicated, and advantage was taken of their condition to make them sign a second engagement for the same period.

Cromwell, after the sack of Drogheda, sold more than 30,000 Irish for Jamaica and Barbados.

Nearly two thousand of these wretched succeeded in escaping on board a vessel, which, in their ignorance of navigation, they allowed to drift and the current cast it ashore at Saint Domingo. The poor fellows, not knowing where they were, and being without food or resources, all died of hunger. Their piled-up bones, bleached by time, remained for several years on Cape Tiburón, at a spot which was called Irish Bay on account of the terrible catastrophe, and still bears the name.

The reader will pardon us for having entered into such lengthened details about the establishment of the filibusters of St. Kitts; but as it was on this little island that the terrible association of adventurers, whose history we have undertaken to tell, had its birth, it is necessary to make the reader fully acquainted with these facts, so that we might not be obliged to return to them hereafter. Now, we will resume our narrative to which the preceding chapters serve, so to speak, as a prologue, and leaping at one bound across the space that separates Sainte Marguerite from the Caribbean islands, we will proceed to St. Kitts a few months after the escape, for we dare not say the liberation, of Count Ludovic de Barmont Senectaire.

CHAPTER XIII

THE COUNCIL OF THE FILIBUSTERS

Several years elapsed without producing any notable changes in the colony.

The adventurers still continued, with the same obstinacy, their expeditions against the Spaniards; but as their expeditions were isolated, and had no sort of organization, the losses experienced by the Spaniards, though very great, were much less considerable than might be anticipated.

About this time, a lugger manned by forty resolute men, and armed with four iron guns, anchored off St. Kitts, proudly displaying the French flag at its stern.

This vessel brought to the colony a fresh contingent of brave adventurers.

Immediately after their arrival, they landed, formed the acquaintance of the inhabitants, and testified a desire to settle on the island.

The chief, to whom his comrades gave the name of Montbarts, and for whom they appeared to have an unbounded devotion, informed the colonists, that like them, he professed a profound hatred for the Spaniards, and that he was followed by two ships of that nation, which he had captured, and had given the prize masters orders to steer for St. Kitts.

These good men were received with shouts of joy by the inhabitants, and Montbarts had a narrow escape from being carried in triumph.

As he had announced, three or four days later two Spanish vessels anchored at St. Kitts. They bore at their stern the Castilian flag reversed, in sign of humiliation, while above it proudly fluttered the French ensign.

There was one horrible circumstance, however, which chilled even the bravest with horror. These vessels bore at their bowsprit, and at their cross-jack, as well as at the main and foreyard, groups of corpses. By Montbarts order, the crews of the two vessels had been hung, without showing mercy even to a boy.

The chief of the adventurers generously gave the cargo of the two ships to the colonists, only asking for sufficient land in return, on which to build a house.

This request was at once granted; the newcomers then disarmed their lugger, came ashore, and began their installation.

Montbarts was a young man of about seven or eight-and-twenty, with manly and marked features, and a fixed and piercing eye. The expression of his face was essentially sad, mocking, and cruel: a dead pallor; spread over his face, added, were it possible, a strangeness to his whole person. Tall and powerfully built, though supple and graceful, his gestures were elegant and noble, while his speech was soft, and the terms he employed were carefully chosen. He exercised a singular fascination over those who approached him, or whom accident brought into relation with him. They felt at once repulsed and attracted by this singular man, who seemed the only one of his species on the earth, and who, without appearing to be anxious for it, imposed his will upon all, gained obedience by a sign or a frown, and who only seemed to live when he was in the thick of a fight, when fires crossed above his head, forming him an aureole of flame, when corpses were piled up around him, when blood flowed beneath his feet, and when bullets whistled in his ears, and when he rushed drunk with powder and carnage upon the deck of a Spanish ship.

Such was what was said of him by his comrades, and by those who had been struck by his singular countenance, and wished to know him: but beyond this moral and physical portrait of the man, it was impossible to obtain the slightest information as to his past life. Not one of the sailors who came with him knew the slightest episode of it, or, as was probable, refused to discover anything.

Hence, when the colonists perceived that all their questions would remain unanswered, they gave up the useless task of asking them. They accepted Montbarts for what it pleased him to be, the more so, as his, former life not only did not concern them, but also interested them very slightly.

The adventurer only remained ashore for the period strictly necessary to establish his household comfortably; then, one day, without warning anybody, he went on board his lugger with the crew he had brought with him, only leaving five or six men at St. Kitts to manage his plantation, and set sail. A month after, he returned, having in tow a richly laden Spanish vessel, with the crew hanging to the yards as before.

Montbarts went on thus for a whole year, never remaining more than two or three days ashore, then going off, and returning with a prize with its entire crew suspended from the yards.

Matters attained such a pitch, the audacity of the daring corsair was crowned with such success, that the rumour of it reached France. Then, the Dieppe adventurers, comprehending all the profit they might derive from this interloping war, fitted out vessels, and went to join the colonists of St. Kitts, for the purpose of organising a hunt of the Spaniards, and carrying it out on a grand scale.

Filibusterism was about to enter on its second phase, and become a regular association.

Montbarts had built his hatto, or principal residence, at the spot where the English afterwards formed Sandy-point battery.

It was an excellently chosen position, militarily speaking, where, in case of attack, it was easy not only to act on the defensive, but also to repulse the enemy with serious loss.

This hatto, built of trunks of trees, and covered with palm leaves, stood nearly at the extremity of a cape, whence the greater part of the island and the sea for a considerable distance on the right and left could be commanded. This cape, which was nearly precipitous, and one hundred and fifty feet high seawards, could only be reached by a narrow, rough path, intersected at regular distances by strong palisades, and wide, deep ditches, which had to be crossed on planks, that were easy to remove. Two four-pounder guns, placed in position at the head of the path guarded the approaches.

This hatto was divided into four rather large rooms, furnished with a luxury and comfort rather singular in an out-of-the-way island like St. Kitts, but which was fully justified by the usual occupation of the owner, who merely required to take any furniture that suited him out of his prizes.

A long pole, serving as a flagstaff, planted in front of the door of the hatto, displayed in the breeze a white ensign with a red jack in the right hand top corner. This flag was that of the corsairs, which Montbarts sometimes changed for one all black, having in its centre a death's head and crossbones, all white. This was an ill-omened flag, which, when hoisted at the peak, signified that the conquered had no hope of mercy to expect.