A Spanish governor agrees to surrender to Captain Morgan, but asks that Morgan fight a pretend battle with him so that it would look like he didn’t go quietly. Morgan is delighted, and they fight the fiercest pretend battle ever not actually fought.

>With men getting ready to leave, the admiral [**Morgan**] made a snap decision and in front of his army called for a canoe to be arrayed with a white flag and sent to the castellan. His message was terse: Surrender or die. >The governor of the island requested two hours to deliberate, and [Morgan](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Henry_Morgan_in_colour.jpg) agreed. He badly needed the man to surrender: He’d eventually take the island, but it could be at the cost of Panama. When the messenger returned, Morgan waited for the answer with bated breath. As the man read out the governor’s words, Morgan must have smiled. The governor had written that he’d surrender, but he asked Morgan to perform “a certain stratagem of war.” It was a bit of playacting designed to save the man’s career and possibly his life: He directed Morgan to lead his men to Cortadura, while his ships pulled up to the gun emplacement called St. Matthew and dispatched a platoon of men. They would find the governor making his way from one fort to another and intercept him on the path. Under threat of death, they would force him to lead them into Cortadura, masquerading as Spanish troops. Once it surrendered, the rest of the island’s fortresses would fall like dominoes. And one other thing: “There should be continual firing at one another, but without bullets or at least into the air.” The farce would read like a pitched battle on paper, which is all the governor cared about. >Morgan could not have devised a better solution himself; it appealed to his sense of theatrical war. That night he followed the man’s instructions to the letter; the governor was surprised on his was to Cortadura, and the rest of the evening went off without a hitch. Anyone watching from seaward that night would have thought that the Spanish were defending their queen to the death, with the “incessant firing of the great guns” and the sharp reports of muskets. But the only killing took place afterward, when “the Pirates began to make a new war upon the poultry, cattle and all sorts of victuals they could find.” ___________________________ **Source:** Talty, Stephan. “The Isthmus.” *Empire of Blue Water: Captain Morgan’s Great Pirate Army, the Epic Battle for the Americas, and the Catastrophe That Ended the Outlaws’ Bloody Reign*. New York: Crown Publishing Group (NY), 2007. 210-11. Print. ___________________________ **Further Reading:** [Harri Morgan / Sir Henry Morgan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Morgan)