[The following is in regards to the burning of the Spanish settlement city of Panama, which, when overtaken by a force of buccaneers led by the captain Henry Morgan, was set aflame by its defenders, so as to leave the enemy as little as possible.]
As survivors from the battle streamed over the Matadero Bridge, the city still had some fight left in it. Some of the streets were barricaded, others booby-trapped with two hundred kegs of powder. Snipers took the occasional shot at the buccaneers as they smashed into the city, looting houses and drinking up the stores of wine. The flat crump of the detonating kegs could be heard in the distance; a fuse would reach a barrel, and a house in the next street would suddenly explode. Splinters came raining down on the privateers as they ruthlessly snuffed out any sign of resistance, taking time out to pillage as they made their way across the city; burning embers touched off fires. Soon flames crackled through the wood-frame houses of the merchants.
[…]
”Burn, burn!” cried out Spaniards in the street. “That is the order of Señor Don Juan!”
The final touch came when black soldiers appeared on the streets with torches and began setting fire to the homes. If the buccaneers wanted Panama, its citizens would leave them a wasteland.
Source:
Talty, Stephan. “City of Fire.” 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. 242. Print.
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