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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Owing to the misconduct of a considerable part of this hastily assembled mob the invasion of Hispaniola failed disgracefully and even a month after its successful landing in Jamaica an officer made the distasteful confession: "We now find by sad experience that but few of them were old Soldiers, but certainly most of them were Apprentices that ran from their Masters, and others that came out of Bridewell, or one Gaol or another, so that in our poor Army we have but few that either fear God or reverence man."[8]

Yet several of the officers had sat as judges at the trial of the King and had signed his death warrant, and among both officers and soldiers there was a fair sprinkling of "Ironsides".

Cromwell's commission to Admiral Penn took the form of an incisive and passionate manifesto, justifying his contemplated attack upon the Spanish possessions in the West Indies as a rightful measure for exacting reparation for past injuries and ensuring security for the future. It fiercely denounced "the cruelties and inhuman practices of the King of Spain exercised in America, not only upon the Indians and natives but also upon the people of those nations inhabiting in those parts, whom he hath, contrary to the common right and law of nations, by force of arms driven from those places whereof they were the rightful possessors; murdering many of their men, and leading others into captivity; and to this very day doth not only deny to trade, or to have any commerce with us or the people of those countries in any part of America, but, contrary to the treaties between the two States, doth exercise all acts of hostility against us, and this people there, as against open and professed enemies, giving thereby and [by] the claim he makes to all that part of the world by the colour of the pope's donation, just grounds to believe that he intends the ruin and destruction of all the English plantations, people and interest in those parts."[9]