François l'Olonnais

François l'Olonnais in The History of the Bucaniers of America by Alexandre Exquemelin , 1684

Jean-David Nau (1635 * in Les Sables d'Olonne , † 1667 in Darién ), after his birthplace in Bas-Poitou François l'Olonnais called, was a French buccaneer who in the 1660s in the Caribbean was active . He is considered one of the cruelest pirate captains during the so-called Golden Age of piracy .

Life

Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin , whose book De Americaensche Zee-Rovers , published in 1678, is one of the most important source works on the history of piracy in the Caribbean, writes that l'Olonnais was born in Les Sables-d'Olonne. After coming to the Caribbean as a worker at a young age, he found his way to the Buccaneers by unknown routes and quickly became one of their leaders.

L'Olonnai's apparently psychopathic character manifested itself on numerous occasions in the years that followed. He personally committed acts of bestial cruelty when it came to obtaining information of all kinds. One of his “preferences” was to slit open the skin of his victims or to burn them alive. According to Exquemelin, he also repeatedly used " woolding ", a method in which a knotted rope was wound around the victim's head and then twisted until his eyes popped out (see also: Garrotte ).

After a year or two as a pirate, l'Olonnais was shipwrecked near Campeche , Mexico . A group of Spanish soldiers attacked him and his crew, killing almost the entire crew. L'Olonnais himself survived by smearing himself in the blood of others and hiding among the dead. After the departure of the Spaniards, he escaped with the help of some slaves and set off for Tortuga . Shortly afterwards, he and his crew took the residents of a Spanish city hostage and demanded a ransom from the Spanish crown. The governor of Havana sent a ship to kill l'Olonnais' force. However, this fell into the hands of the pirates. L'Olonnais had all the crew members beheaded except for one man. The spared was supposed to bring a message to Havana in which l'Olonnais declared:

"From now on I will no longer show any mercy to any Spaniard."

In 1667, l'Olonnais set sail from Tortuga with a fleet of eight ships and a crew of 600 pirates to plunder Maracaibo . On the way there he came across a Spanish treasure ship, which he successfully captured. He brought in rich booty of cocoa , precious stones and more than 40,000 pesos in silver .

At that time, access to Lake Maracaibo (and thus to the city itself) was secured by a fortress with 16 cannons, which was considered impregnable. However, L'Olonnais attacked from the unpaved land side and took the city. The pirates then proceeded to sack the city, but found that most of the residents had fled and had hidden their gold. The pirates tracked down the residents and tortured them until they revealed the hiding places of their possessions. For weeks, the pirates raped, tortured and harassed the townspeople. They removed the fortress' cannons and destroyed almost all of the city fortifications to allow a quick retreat. When the pirates moved south towards the city of Gibraltar (Venezuela) , on the south bank of Lake Maracaibo , in order to plunder this too, the city was almost completely destroyed as a result of looting and arson.

Although the pirates were outnumbered, they slaughtered the Gibraltar garrison, which is said to have consisted of around 500 soldiers, and demanded a ransom of 20,000 silver pesos and 500 gold pieces. Despite the fact that this was paid, they continued to haunt the city. In doing so, they acquired 260,000 silver pesos, precious stones, silver goods, silk fabrics and a number of slaves. The damage that had been done in this way was so great that the city, which was previously a major center of cocoa exports, almost ceased to exist.

The news of his attack on Maracaibo and Gibraltar reached Tortuga, and from then on he was nicknamed "Plague of the Spaniards" (French: Fléau des Espagnols ). This made it easier for him to attract participants for his next foray, and so later that year 700 pirates took part in his next attack on the Central American mainland. After they sacked Puerto Cabello, l'Olonnais was ambushed by large numbers of Spanish soldiers on the way to San Pedro, from which he only barely escaped. However, he was able to capture two Spaniards. Exquemelin writes:

“He drew his saber, and with it he cut open the chest of one of these poor Spaniards, and drew out his heart with his blasphemous hands, bit and tore at it with his teeth like a wild wolf, and said to the others: Me will treat you the same if you show me no other way. "

Petrified with shock, the surviving Spaniard showed him another way to San Pedro. L'Olonnais and his surviving men were repulsed, however, and had to retreat to the ships. In the Gulf of Honduras they ran onto a sandbar. Since they were unable to get their ship free, they turned on foot inland, where they fell into the hands of the local population in Darién. Exquemelin writes that

"They tore him alive to pieces, threw his body limb for limb into the fire and his ashes in the air."

In art

• In Peter Benchley's novel Buccaneers of Death ( The Island ) by Peter Benchley , degenerate descendants of l'Olonnais live undetected on a Caribbean island and wreak havoc.
• In 1980 Michael Ritchie filmed the novel under the title Buccaneers of Death .

literature

• Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin : The pirate book of 1678 ("The history of the bucaniers of America"). Thienemanns, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-522-61120-9