The Monarchs of the Main. George W. Thornbury

isles, to the Boca del Toro, or the coast of Castilla del Oro.

      Some Buccaneers, Esquemeling says, would spend 3,000 piastres in a night, not leaving themselves even a shirt in the morning. "My own master," he adds, "would buy a whole pipe of wine, and, placing it in the street, would force every one that passed by to drink with him, threatening also to pistol them in case they would not do it. At other times he would do the same with barrels of ale or beer; and very often with both his hands he would throw these liquors about the street, and wet the clothes of such as walked by, without regard whether he spoiled their apparel or not, or whether they were men or women." Port Royal was a favourite scene for such carousals.

      Even as late as 1694, Montauban gives us some idea of the wild debaucheries committed by the Buccaneers even at Bourdeaux. "My freebooters," he says, "who had not seen France for a long time, finding themselves now in a great city where pleasure and plenty reigned, were not backward to refresh themselves after the fatigues they had endured while so long absent from their native country. They spent a world of money here, and proved horribly extravagant. The merchants and their hosts made no scruple to advance them money, or lend them as much as they pleased, upon the reputation of their wealth and the noise there was throughout the city of the valuable prizes whereof they had a share. All the nights they spent in such divertisements as pleased them best; and the days, in running up and down the town in masquerade, causing themselves to be carried in chairs with lighted flambeaux at noon—of which debauches some died, while four of my crew fairly deserted me."

      This, it must be remembered, was at a time when buccaneering had sunk into privateering—the half-way house to mere piracy. The distinguishing mark of the true Buccaneer was, that he attacked none but Spaniards.

      Of the Buccaneers' estimation of religion, Charlevoix gives us some curious accounts. He says, "there remained no traces of it in their heart, but still, sometimes, from time to time, they appeared to meditate deeply. They never commenced a combat without first embracing each other, in sign of reconciliation. They would at such times strike themselves rudely on the breast, as if they wished to rouse some compunction in their hearts, and were not able. Once escaped from danger, they returned headlong to their debauchery, blasphemy, and brigandage. The Buccaneers, looking upon themselves as worthy fellows, regarded the Flibustiers as wretches, but in reality there was not much difference. The Buccaneers were, perhaps, the less vicious, but the Flibustiers preserved a little more of the externals of religion; with the exception of a certain honour among them, and their abstinence from human flesh, few savages were more wicked, and a great number of them much less so."

      This passage shows a very curious jealousy between the hunters and the corsairs, and a singular distinction as to religious feeling. Père Labat, however, speaks of the Flibustiers as attending confession immediately after a sea-fight with most exemplary devotion. A more important distinction than that made by Charlevoix was that between the Protestant and Roman Catholic adventurers, the latter being as superstitious as the former were irreverent. Ravenau de Lussan always speaks with horror of the blasphemy and irreligion of his English comerades, one of whom was an old trooper of Cromwell's; and Grognet's fleet eventually separated from the English ships, on account of the latter crews lopping crucifixes with their sabres, and firing at images with their pistols. A Flibustier captain, named Daniel, shot one of his men in a Spanish church for behaving irreverently at mass; and Ringrose gives an instance of an English commander who threw the dice overboard, if he found his men gambling on a Sunday.

      We find Ravenau de Lussan's troop singing a Te Deum after victories, and Œxmelin tells us that prayers were said daily on board Flibustier ships.

      It is difficult to say from what class of life either the Buccaneers or the Flibustiers sprang. The planters often became hunters, and the hunters sailors, and the reverse. Morgan was a Welsh farmer's son, who ran away to sea; Montauban, the son of a Gascon gentleman; D'Ogeron had been a captain in the French marines; Von Horn, a common sailor in an Ostende smack; Dampierre was a Somersetshire yeoman, and Esquemeling a Dutch planter's apprentice. Charlevoix says, "few could bear for many years a life so hard and laborious, and the greater part only continued in it till they could gain enough to become planters. Many, continually wasting their money, never earned sufficient to buy a plantation; others grew so accustomed to the life, and so fond even of its hardships and painful risks, that, though often heirs to good fortunes, they would not leave it to return to France."

      The life of M. D'Ogeron, the governor of Tortuga, is an example of another class of Buccaneers, and of the causes which led to the choice of such a profession. At fifteen, he was captain of a regiment of marines, and in 1656, joining a company intending to colonize the Matingo river, he embarked in a ship, fitted out at the expense of 17,000 livres. Disappointed in this bubble, he tried to settle at Martinique, but deceived by the governor, who withdrew a grant of land, he determined to settle with the Buccaneers of St. Domingo. Embarking in a ricketty vessel, he ran ashore on Hispaniola, and lost all his merchandise and provisions. Giving his engagés their liberty, he joined the hunters, and became distinguished as well for courage as virtue. His goods sent from France were sold at a loss, and he returned to his native country a poor man. Collecting his remaining money, he hired engagés, and loaded a vessel with wine and brandy. Finding the market glutted, he sold his cargo at a loss, and was cheated by his Jamaica agent. Returning again to France, he fitted out a third vessel, and finally settled as a planter in Hispaniola. At this juncture the French West India Company fixed their eyes upon him, and in 1665 made him governor of their colony.

      Ravenau de Lussan illustrates the motives that sometimes led the youth of the higher classes to turn Buccaneers. He commences his book with true French vanity, by saying, that few children of Paris, which contains so many of the wonders of the world (ten out of the eight, we suppose), seek their fortune abroad. From a child he was seized with a passionate disposition for travel, and would steal out of his father's house and play truant when he was yet scarce seven. He soon reached La Vilette and the suburbs, and by degrees learnt to lose sight of Paris. With this passion arose a desire for a military life. The noise of a drum in the street transported him with joy. He made a friend of an officer, and, offering him his sword, joined his company, and witnessed the siege of Condé, ending his campaign, still unwearied of his new form of life. He then became a cadet in a marine regiment. The captain drained him of all his money, and his father, at a great expense, bought him his discharge. Under the Count D'Avegeau he entered the French Guards, and fought at the siege of St. Guislain. Growing, on his return, weary of Paris, he embarked again on sea, having nothing but voyages in his head; the longest and most dangerous appearing to his imagination, he says, the most delightful. Travelling by land seemed to him long and difficult, and he once more chose the sea, deeming it only fit for a woman to remain at home ignorant of the world. His affectionate parents tried in vain to reason him out of this gadding humour, and finding him only grow firmer and more inflexible, they desisted.

      Not caring whither he went, so he could get to sea, he embarked in 1697 from Dieppe for St. Domingo. Here he remained for five months engagé to a French planter, "more a Turk than a Frenchman." "But what misery," he says, "soever I have undergone with him, I freely forgive him, being resolved to forget his name, which I shall not mention in this place, because the laws of Christianity require that at my hand, though as to matters of charity he is not to expect much of that in me, since he, on his part, has been every way defective in the exercise thereof upon my account." But his patience at last worn out, and weary of cruelties that seemed endless, De Lussan applied to M. de Franquesnay, the king's lieutenant, who himself gave him shelter in his house for six months. He was now in debt, and thinking it "honest to pay his creditors," he joined the freebooters in order to satisfy them, not willing to apply again for money to his parents. "These borrowings from the Spaniards," he says, "have this advantage attending them, that there is no obligation to repay them," and there was war between the two crowns, so that he was a legal privateersman. Selecting a leader, De Lussan pitched on De Graff, as a brave corsair, who happened to be then at St. Domingo, eager to sail. Furnishing himself with arms, at the expense of Franquesnay, he joined De Graff. "We were," he says, "in a few hours satisfied with each other, and became such friends as those are wont to be who are about to run the same risk of fortune, and apparently to die together." The 22nd of November, the day he sailed from Petit Guave, seemed the happiest of his life.