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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"We are not able", he complained, "to possess any place we attack, and so are in no hope thereby to effect our intention of dispensing anything of the true knowledge of God to the inhabitants. To the Indians and blacks we shall make ourselves appear a cruel, bloody, and ruinating people, which will cause them, I fear, to think us worse than the Spaniard."[17]

Intercepted letters and the admissions of prisoners soon convinced him that the negro guerillas would be reinforced by Spanish soldiers, who could land on the north shore of the island unnoticed and unopposed.

"If neither soldiers nor planters do come hither," D'Oyley gloomily declared in April, 1656, "we cannot long keep the place, the advantages of the enemy being able to poise the difference in numbers."

The mortality among officers and soldiers was appalling. Sedgewick's sudden death in June replaced D'Oyley in command for a few months, until he was again superseded by the arrival of Major General William Brayne with a thousand raw recruits.[18] This did not greatly improve the situation, as Brayne reported in the following April.