They had nothing to do but watch their people die.

[**The following is in regards to the aftermath of the razing of the Spanish settlement city of Panama, which was attacked by Captain Morgan and a large force of buccaneers. The Spanish, after losing the defense of the city, set about burning their city to the ground to prevent the English pirates from looting it.**] >In Panama the Spanish were returning to a city that looked as if it had been hit by an earthquake and a firestorm. The interim governor, Don Francisco de Marichalar, arrived back in the smoldering ruins on June 9, and “found nothing but disgraces, sorrows and misfortune.” The rich merchants and their wives were near-naked and living in crude huts on the outskirts of the city formerly inhabited by their slaves. >The English invasion had humbled the moguls of the New World with a biblical thoroughness; their homes were rubble, their bodies were racked with fevers, their trade was gone, and they had nothing to do but “watch their people die.” Every sliver of wood had been consumed in the fire, which had even reached into the stone buildings and burned out the wooden beams, leaving the shells vulnerable; the soaring walls of the convents were now blackened monoliths that jutted up here and there like rotten teeth. >Marichalar could hear them crash to the ground throughout the day, the impact of the falling stone startling the officials who were trying to get a head count and organize some sort of defenses, in case the English should return. >The entire city would have to be razed; the foundations of the remaining buildings were so damaged that “nothing could be built on them.” ______________________________ **Note:** Henry Morgan and his pirates sacked the city on January 28, 1671, and the city was rebuilt in a peninsula located about 8km from the original settlement, two years later (formally established on January 21, 1673). Today, the ruins of the old city are a tourist attraction known as “Old Panama.” [Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Panama#Royal_Audiencia_of_Panama) ______________________________ **Source:** Talty, Stephan. “Aftermath.” *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. 258-59. Print.