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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His peremptory demand that English merchants should be allowed the free exercise of their religion in the Spanish dominions and that English colonists and traders should no longer be treated as pirates in the West Indies had in fact been curtly rejected. "To ask for liberty from the Inquisition and free sailing in the West Indies", said the Spanish ambassador, "was to ask for his master's two eyes", and no concession would be made on either point. Venables was consequently given full liberty of action. "The design in general", he was told, "is to gain an interest in that part of the West Indies in the possession of the Spaniard; for the effecting whereof we shall not tie you up to a method by any particular instructions."[10]

From Hispaniola the baffled English commanders made their way to Jamaica, thinly peopled and weakly garrisoned, where they had better fortune. Inefficient as the land forces were, the conquest of the inhabited part of the island was easily accomplished, with the exception of a considerable portion of the hilly pasture lands on its north side to which the governor with most of the Spanish planters and their slaves retired, and with the aid of reinforcements from Cuba and Porto Rico, waged an intermittent but tantalizing and costly guerilla warfare with the invaders for five years before they were finally expelled. From the first the Spanish court had recognized the distressing prospect that undisputed possession of the island would enable the English "to obstruct the commerce of all the islands to the windward with the coasts of the mainland and of New Spain. The fleets and galleons will run great risk in passing Jamaica."[11] Its immediate recovery was seen to be an object of vital importance. In fair weather with a favouring breeze the passage from Cuba to the northern coast of Jamaica could be made with ease and safety even by small undecked boats. Soldiers and workmen were sent over in small parties, and several small forts were built by them. Bands of maroons and negroes were encouraged to harass the invaders, with some success, under the command of a mulatto, Juan Lubolo or Juan de Bolas, whose memory is still perpetuated in the name of a river and savanna. But although they thus succeeded in maintaining a substantial foothold behind the central range of hills, they failed to recover any lost ground.