Charles François d'Angennes

Charles François d'Angennes (December 1648 , † April 1691 ) was Marquis of Maintenon and one of the most controversial and neglected personalities in the history of the Antilles . First he was a pirate driver and then quickly rose to become the richest planter in Martinique in 1685, after disarming numerous pirates for Louis XIV .

The fight against the Dutch and the English

Angennes became a first lieutenant in the royal navy in 1669 , in 1670 he went to sea with the ship La Sybille and took command in 1772 after the captain's death. It was a campaign against Dutch pirates off Curacao . English ships anchored at Saint-Domingue were also attacked. In 1673 Angennes returned to France and decided to return directly to the Antilles due to the widespread allegations of the poison affair . Before leaving, he sold his castle.

Maintenon Castle from the south: the Donjon on the left, the Corps de Logis in the middle and one of the round corner towers with the east wing on the right

The sale of the castle to the mistress of Louis XIV.

As the son of Louis d'Angennes de Rochefort de Salvert, the Marquis of Maintenon and Meslay and Marie Le Clerc du Tremblay, he had inherited the title of Marquis of Maintenon and the Castle of Maintenon near Chartres .

After selling his castle to Françoise d'Aubigné in 1674 , who became Louis XIV's mistress that same year, he joined the pirates on the Caribbean Sea at the age of 25 . Four years later he became a planter in Martinique, the same city where Françoise d'Aubigné grew up.

1676–1678: Leader of a fleet of privateers

In October 1675 he left Nantes as commandant of the Fontaine d'Or accompanied by the privateer Bernard Lemoigne . In 1676 he attacked Isla Margarita , Trinidad and Cumaná with a fleet of 10 ships and 800 privateers .

The privateer John Coxon separated from the fleet and sacked the port of Santa Marta in July 1677 , returned with his allies to Jamaica , where he submitted to Governor Vaughan and handed over to him the Bishop of Santa Marta, whom he had captured to get a ransom. In return, John Coxon was given amnesty.

In June 1682, Coxon submitted to the Governor of Jamaica, Thomas Lynch , who hired him to hunt down both English and French pirates.

Thomas Lynch had been Governor of Jamaica since 1671 and his first act was to arrest both his predecessor Thomas Modyford and Henry Morgan for organizing an attack on Panama. Both were jailed in London, but Morgan was pardoned by the king.

Angennes made a name for himself among the buccaneers primarily for his reports on how he was once a victim of the indigenous people of the Caribbean. It was at this time that Henry Morgan and his brother-in-law Byndloss were interviewed by Byndloss about their connections with the pirates.

Similar to Henry Morgan, Angennes later became a rich planter and governor with the task of ousting the small tobacco farmers who worked with the privateers.

In the service of the king

After the amnesty of Angennes in 1678 he was again in the service of the king and chased pirates with the ship La Sorcière and disarmed them. He was also governor of Marie-Galante from 1679 to 1676 .

When Jean-Baptiste Colbert , who had fallen from grace, tried to save his son's inheritance and wanted to disarm privateers to please the king, Angennes sent him a list of privateers whom he had already disarmed.

The disarming of the pirates was intensified until March 19, 1687. On that date, an ultimatum from the governor of Saint-Domingue , Pierre-Paul Tarin de Cussy, expired , which offered the privateers remaining on the island two options: amnesty or departure. A year later, James II announced the abolition of English privateers and the arrest of the captains of the ships.

One of the first customers of the Senegal company

Charles François d'Angennes was governor of the Antilles island of Marie-Galante from 1679 to 1686 . On March 16, 1679, he signed a contract with the Senegal Company for the delivery of 1,600 black slaves over a period of four years. However, the royal officials complained within the first six months that only 600 to 700 slaves had been delivered.

In 1682 Louis XIV gave him a four-year monopoly on trade between the Spanish Venezuela and the French colonies. From then on he had the right to sell 245 tons of sugar per year (equivalent to about 10% of Martinique's total production). The remaining planters had to sell their sugar content to the refinery owners.

As early as 1669, the productivity of Martinique's refineries was almost twice that of Guadeloupe . In 1674, St. Kitts produced around 40% of the French sugar content, which increased to 50% over the next eight years.

See also

• piracy
• Senegal Company
• slavery

literature

• James S. Pritchard: In search of empire: the French in the Americas, 1670-1730. Cambridge University Press, 2004.
• Michel Rodigneaux: La guerre de course en Guadeloupe, XVIIIe – XIXe siècles, ou Alger sous les tropiques. Editions L'Harmattan, 2006.
• Abdoulaye Ly: La Compagnie du Sénégal. KARTHALA Editions, 1993.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Société de statistique, d'histoire et d'archéologie de Marseille et de Provence: Provincia: bulletin trimestriel de la Société de Statistique, d'Histoire et d'Archéologie de Marseilles et de Provence. Volume 16-17, 1853, p. 342.
2. ↑ Cindy Vallar
3. ↑ Cindy Vallar
4. ↑ Michel Rodigneaux: La guerre de course en Guadeloupe, XVIIIe – XIXe siècles, ou Alger sous les tropiques. 2006.
5. ↑ Michel Rodigneaux: La guerre de course en Guadeloupe, XVIIIe – XIXe siècles, ou Alger sous les tropiques. 2006.
6. ↑ James S. Pritchard: In search of empire: the French in the Americas, 1670-1730. Cambridge University Press, 2004.
7. ^ Abdoulaye Ly: La Compagnie du Sénégal. Karthala Edition, 1993.
8. ↑ James S. Pritchard: In search of empire: the French in the Americas, 1670-1730. Cambridge University Press, 2004.
9. ↑ James S. Pritchard: In search of empire: the French in the Americas, 1670-1730. Cambridge University Press, 2004.