Word of the Frenchman’s [François l'Olonnais] extreme cruelty immediately began to spread throughout the West Indies. “It was the custom of L’Ollonais that, having tormented any persons and they not confessing, he’d instantly cut them in pieces with his hangar [cutlass], and pull out their tongues,” Esquemeling tells us, “desiring to do the same, if possible, to every Spaniard in the world.” He delighted in putting men to the rack in “woolding,” or tying a stick around a victim’s forehead and tightening with turns of a stick until the interviewee’s eyeballs popped out of the sockets. But that was standard procedure, on both sides of the war between Spain and its enemies in the New World.
After outfitting his ship, L’Ollonais ran into bad luck when he was caught in a storm off Campeche; his ship was destroyed, and he and his men were forced to swim for their lives. When they made it to dry land, they were hunted through the forests by the Spanish, who killed many and wounded their captain. To survive, L’Ollonais “took several handfuls of sand and mingled them with the blood of his own wounds,” then smeared the mixture all over his face and hands. Lying down among the slaughtered men, he played dead. When the Spaniards left, he disguised himself as a local and insolently marched into town; mingling with the Spanish, he overheard them calling to his ex-crewmen, now held prisoner, “What is become of your captain?” “He is dead,” the men replied, “With which news the Spaniards were hugely gladdened, and made great demonstrations of joy, kindling bonfires and… giving thanks to God Almighty for their deliverance from such a cruel Pirate.”
Returning to Tortuga, L’Ollonais scared up another ship and crew and set out to exact his revenge. The governor in Havana was informed by residents of a seaside town that L’Ollonais had risen from the dead and was again terrorizing them; he sent a small warship with ten cannon and fifty soldiers, ordering them not to return until they’d “totally destroyed those Pirates.” (He even sent along a Negro executioner, who was told to hang every pirate except L’Ollonais, who was to be brought to Havana for special attentions.) L’Ollonias and his men stormed the ship on its arrival, boarding even in the face of barrages from its cannon. One by one the captured crew members were brought up from hold and were beheaded.
Finally it was the executioner’s turn; the terrified man begged L’Ollonais for his life. “This fellow implored mercy at his hands very dolefully… and [swore] that, in case he should spare him, he would tell him faithfully all that he should desire to know.”
L’Ollonais must have laughed at that; as if he were not going to find out everything he wanted anyway. He got the information he needed and promptly lopped off the man’s head. Only one man was spared, and he was sent back to the governor’s office in Havana with this message:
I shall never henceforward give quarter to any Spaniard whatsoever; and I have great hopes I shall execute on your own person the very same punishment I have done upon those you sent against me. Thus I have retaliated the kindness you designed to me and my companions.
Source:
Talty, Stephan. “The Art of Cruelty.” 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. 92-93. Print.
Further Reading:
Jean-David Nau / François l'Olonnais
Estado Libre y Soberano de Campeche (Free and Sovereign State of Campeche) / Campeche
[Île de la Tortue / Latòti / Isla Tortuga (Turtle Island) / Tortuga, Haiti](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tortuga_(Haiti)
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