Читать книгу The Life of Sir Henry Morgan. With an account of the English settlement of the island of Jamaica онлайн

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The misfortune to which he referred must have been the loss of Providence and perhaps the ill fate of the veteran privateer who had captured that island. Soon after his return to Port Royal the enterprising Edward Mansfield had sailed on another cruise, in which his ship was taken by a Spanish man-of-war of greatly superior force and carried into Havana. There he and many of his crew were put to death by order of Davila, the resolute governor of Cuba, who, as a modern historian of that island relates with satisfaction, executed more than three hundred pirates within two years.[126]

After hostilities had been conducted covertly for nearly a year France had openly declared war against England in January, 1667. Bertrand d'Ogeron, a gentleman of Anjou, for many years an officer in the "troupes de la marine", but latterly an adventurer on private account in the West Indies, where by his tact and agreeable manners, he had gained the good-will and confidence of many buccaneers and privateers of several nationalities, not excepting the English, had been appointed governor of Tortuga and the French colony in Hispaniola. By his energy and foresight he easily forestalled any design of Modyford to occupy Tortuga, and soon made that place the resort of a formidable fleet of privateers. When he was appointed he had learned that they were planning to remove to some more secure and favourable base of operations, probably Port Royal, and succeeded in retaining them there by a promise to relinquish his claim to a share in their booty, to which his office entitled him, and to obtain for them Portuguese letters-of-marque against Spain, as France was nominally at peace with that country. He also advanced money without interest to the buccaneers or hunters of wild cattle, who wished to build houses, or assisted them to borrow from others.[127] Consequently English commerce with the West Indies and Jamaica in particular was severely harassed by these privateers as long as hostilities with France continued.