THORNBITRY'S MONARCHS OF THE MAIL ° • This history of the
Buccaneers is a better book than its bombastic title and a turgidly pompous style at the .opening would incluie the reader to suppose. Mr. Thornbury does not take a very philosophical view of his subject; or rightly appreciate its na- ture ; but he has examined, if not critically,' such authcir-
ities as exist respecting the origin of the Buccaneers, the induced which indud them to turn corsairs, the elaracter and
exploits of the most remarkable adventurers, and the history of their principal exploits. He has also described that peculiar con- dition of West Indian life which rendered possible for half a cen- tury the existence of so singular a body, and drawn some lively though florid pictures of West Indian scenery. The tone througl- out is rather too rhetorical ; particular adventnrers are sometimes made too much of, and the story of the pirates who sueoeeded'to the Buccaneers (necessary to a complete close) is pursued into boo great a length, consisting as it does'of mere felonry. The Mo- narchs of the Main, moreover, is vigorously written; is full bf striking incidents and characters, though in-the main of a low and criminal oast ; and affords many glimpses of the state of opinion.ln Europe and the West Indies during a large portion of the seven- teenth. century. It is the best book on a curious subject which has yet appeared. Everybody knows that the term Buccaneer- is derived from an Indian word &wean, signifying dried flesh. The Buccaneers were originally what would now be called " squatters,' and chiefly pain French settlers of Hispaniola (Hayti). They lived on the flesh of the wild cattle they hunted, disposing of the hides to trading,ves-' sels for arms, powder, and trifling luxuries, (to their ideas,) of which brandy perhaps was the chief. With the spirit of cruelty, monopoly, and exclusiveness, that distinguished the Spanish do- mination in the New World, the Spaniards determined to clear the island of the cattle-hunters. For this purpose a regular force was organized; the botioaneers, held as outlaws, were hunted like run- away Negroes, but offered a different kind of resistance, and fre- quently defeated very superior numbers. Whether the Spaniards were able to clear the island may be doubted; they drove away a good many Frenchmen, who took refuge in the smaller isle of Tor- tuga. That irregular warfare which several European peoples waged against the Spaniards in America, though the respective governments might be at peace in Europe, was just then rather hot on account of some highhanded Spanish proceedings against French commerce, which led to the French fitting-out privateers. The natural strength and convenient situation of Tortuga drew thither many'adventurers besides the original Buccaneers, who were ready for freetrading or freebooting. The settlement soon grew into importance. The Spaniards invaded. the island, killed sonic of the inhabitants, hanged others, burnt property, and then sailed away. The Chevalier de Pone y, Governor of the French settlement of St. Kitts, then occupied Tortuga, and fortified the port. This was in 1640; and though the Spaniards occasionally attacked the place with momentary success, it remained a permanent colony of France, and the head-quarters of the Buccaneers—that is, the place where they sold their booty, squandered the proceeds, and fitted-out now expeditions. 'Before judgment is passed on the Buccaneers it should be con- sidered that opinion was very different then io what it is now. Piracy on a large scale had founded states in Europe—Normandy, Sicily; prqbably England. The feudal right of private war ao- customed men to what would now be called brigandage, long after private hostilities had ceased as a practice. Piraoy, or more ac- curately, perhaps, private naval war, had been usual in the Chan- nel throughout the middle ages—that is, till the accession ‘of the Tudors. In the Mediterranean it was continued much later by Christians, and tolerated by Christian governments. It is only in our own day that the Algerine corsairs have finally been put down. A healthier opinion grew up in Europe, and among the upper classes in England that growth was as early as Elizabeth ; for on the return of Drake from his great voyage the nobility at first looked upon him as little better than a pirate,—he was only a hero to the Queen and the people. With this change of opinion private war or piracy became transferred to the Tropics • and be- fore we wonder at its existence, we should remember that in the last century the rival East India Companies were often engaged in hostilities between themselves in India, though their respective Governments were at peace in Europe. At this very time the less- settled States, and even private citizens of America, practically claim a right of waging war, and are scarcely stopped. Even before the Buccaneers were at their zenith, the grandsons and nephews of British Kings--Rupert and Maurice—exercised piracy upon a large scale, and required the determined energy of Blake to put them down. In reality, the Buccaneers were the last of a tribe which had existed in Christendom, in some form or other, for a thousand years. Had not the circumstances of the West Indies, and the unsettled state of Europe from circa 16.50 to 1700 favoured
• The Monarchs of the Main ; or Adventures of the Buccaneers. By George W. Thornbury, Esq. In three volumes. Published by Hurst and Blackett.
I • 1.1
was over, living on yams and other roots.
"Believing that the danger had now in some degree decreased, the lion- hearted sailor determined to push for the Golpho Triste, forty leagues dis- tant, where he hoped to find a buccaneer ship careening. He arrived there after fourteen days of incredible endurance. He started in the evening from the seashore, within sight of the lit-up town, where a black gibbet was still standing bodingly against the sky. His forced marches were full of terrible dangers and perils. He had no provisions with him, and nothing but a small calabash of water hung at his aide. Hunger and thirst strode beside him, the wild beast glared in his path, the Spanish voices seemed to pursue him. His subsistence was the raw shell-fish that he found washed among the rocks upon the shore, fresh or putrid he had no time to consider. He had streams to ford, dark with caymans, and he had to traverse woods where the jaguars howled. Whenever he came to a stream unusually dark, deep, and dangerous, and where no ford was visible, (for he could not swim,) he threw in large stones as be waded to scare away the crocodiles that lurked round the shallows. In one spot he travelled five or six leagues, swinging like a sloth from bough to bough of a pathless wood of mangroves, never once setting foot upon the ground. His day's progress was often scarcely perceptible. At one river more than usually deep he found an old plank, which had drifted ashore when the seaman was washed off, and from this he obtained some large rusty nails. Extracting these nails, he sharp- ened them on a atone with great labour, and used them to cut down some branches of trees, which he joined together with osiers and pliable twigs, and slowly constructed a raft. Hunger, thirst, heat, and fear beset him round; and the voice of the sea, always on his right hand, came to him like the hungry howl of death. In these fourteen nights he must have literally tasted death, and anticipated the horrors of hell. "'Fortune favours the brave. He found a buccaneer vessel in the gulf, and he was saved."
In reading the exploits of the Buccaneers, their cruelty con- tinually shocks the reader. It should not be forgotten that it was a cruel age, especially in the West Indies. The treatment of the Negroes in the last century was not worse than that which the French and probably the English exercised in the previous cen- tury towards their own countrymen who were in our phrase kid- napped, but whom the French called engages : that is, persons who were persuaded to go out as indentured servants, but who found on arrival that they were practically slaves.
"The planters' engages led a life more dreadful than that of their wilder brethren. They were decoyed from France under the same pretences that once filled our streets with the peasants' sons of Savoy, and the peasants' daughters from Frankfort, or that now lure children from the pleasant bor- ders of Como, to pine away in a London den. The want of sufficient Negroes led men to resort to all artifices to obtain assistance in cultivating the sugar- cane and the tobacco-plant. In the French Antilles they were sold for three years, but often resold in the interim. Amongst the English they were bound for seven years, and being occasionally sold again at their own request, before the expiration of this term, they sometimes served fifteen or twenty years before they could obtain their freedom. At Jamaica, if a man could not pay even a small debt at a tavern, he was sold for six or eight months. The planters had agents in France, England, and other countries, who sent out these apprentices. They were worked much harder than the slaves, because their lives, after the expiration of the three years, were of no consequence to the masters. They were often the victims of a disease called 'coma,' the effect of hard usage and climate, and which ended in idiotey. Pere Labat remarks the quantity of idiots in the West Indies, many of whom were dan- gerous, although allowed to go at liberty. Many of these worse than slaves were of good birth, tender education, and weak constitutions, unable to en- dure even the debilitating climate, and much less hard labour. Esquemel- ing, himself originally an engage, gives a most piteous description of their sufferings. Insufficient food and rest, he says, were the smallest of their sufferings. They were frequently beaten, and often fell dead at their mug- ters' feet. The men thus treated died fast : some became drop 'eql, and others scorbutic. A man named Bettesea, a merchant of St. Christopher's, was said to have killed more than a hundred apprentices with blows and stripes. ' This inhumanity,' says Esquemeling, 'I have often seen with great grief.' "
"Light come light go." The booty acquired through danger, and hardships more terrible than the dangers of battle, was squan- dered madly, to the great gain of the place to which the Buccaneers resorted.
"The debauchery of the Buccaneers was as unequalled as their courage. CExinelin relates a story of an Englishman who gave 600 crowns to his mis- tress at a single revel. This man, who had earned 1500 crowns by exposing himself to desperate dangers, was, within three months, sold for a term of three years to a planter, to discharge a tavern debt which he could not pay.
their Bevel would have the last century, pirates infesting every sea, a large portion of whom ended their career at the yard-arm or on the gallows.
Mr. Thornbury says that the Buccaneers " only needed a com- mon prinoiple of union to have founded an aggressive republic, as wealthy as Venice and as warlike as Carthage. One great mind, and the New World had been their own." Neither union nor a great mind was likely to be found among the sweepings of various nations which formed the Buccaneers ; for if the middle-class mind can rule states, it cannot found them ; and the Buccaneers were scarcely of the middle class, as regards character or education. A. few, as Morgan and De Lussan, were capable of planning and
education and experience, violent passions, and ungovernable will. to return, disconsolate and beggared, to Tortuga. • ent as a species of organized freebooters, they A conqueror of Panama might be seen tomorrow driven by the overseer's
me, what their successors did in the early part of whip among a gang of slaves, cutting sugar-canes, or picking tobacco. Another Buccaneer, a Frenchman, surnamed ent-en-Panne, was so ad- dieted to play that he lost everything but his shirt. Every pistole that he could earn he spent in this absorbing vice—so tempting to men who longed for excitement, were indifferent to money, and daily risked their lives for the prospect of gain. On one occasion he lost 500 crowns, his whole share of some recent prize-money, besides 300 crowns which he had borrowed of a comrade who would now lend him no more. Determined to try his fortune again, he hired himself as servant at the very gambling-house where he had been ruined, and, by lighting pipes for the players and bringing them in wine, earned fifty crowns in two days. He staked this, and soon won 12,000 crowns. He then paid his debts and resolved to lose no more, shipping him- self on board an English vessel that touched at Barbadoes. At Barbadoes, he met a rich Tew who offered to play him. Unable to abstain, he sat down, and won 1300 crowns and 100,000 pounds of sugar already shipped for Eng- land, and, in addition to this, a large mill and sixty slaves. The Jew, beg- ging him to stay and give him his revenge, ran and borrowed some money, and returned and took up the cards. The Buccaneer consented, more from love of play than generosity ; and the Jew, putting down 1500 jacobuses, won back 100 crowns, and finally all his antagonist's previous winnings— stripping him even to the very clothes he wore. The delighted winner al- night, not leaving themselves even a s in in the morning. 'My own mas- ter,' he adds, would buy a whole pipe of wine, and, placing it in the street,
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