Jacques Cassard

Portrait of Jacques Cassard

Jacques Cassard (born September 30, 1679 in Nantes , † January 21, 1740 in Ham ) was a French captain and privateer .

As a 7-year-old cabin boy, Jacques Cassard had his first seafaring experience on board a privateer from Saint-Malo . At the age of 18 he was made a lieutenant on a frigate . As an officer and seaman, he was involved in numerous naval battles during the War of the Spanish Succession . In 1709 he had successfully accompanied a ship convoy with grain from Tunisia to Marseille . The grain was supposed to save Provence from an impending famine. During the voyage, he repulsed an attack by several English ships and safely brought the convoy of 25 ships with cargo to the port of Marseille.

From 1712 to 1714 he went on a pirate voyage to the Caribbean on behalf of Louis XIV and set up colonies in the Portuguese ( Cape Verde ), English ( Montserrat and Antigua ) and Dutch ( Sint Eustatius , Curaçao and Suriname - see also the former Meerzorg plantation ) caused severe damage by arson . It was the largest foray that had been undertaken under the French flag up to that point.

With the peace of Utrecht concluded in the spring and summer of 1713 between the majority of the states involved in the War of the Spanish Succession , the end of his privateerism came.

After the French crown had unsuccessfully demanded compensation from him through Cardinal Fleury , he was imprisoned in the fortress of Ham in the Picardy region in 1736 . Here he died in 1740 after four years of imprisonment.

In his native Nantes an avenue was named after him, the Allée Cassard. France also paid homage to him by giving his name to a frigate and several naval buildings .

literature

• Philippe Hrodej: Jacques Cassard. Armateur et corsaire du Roi-Soleil (= Histoire. ). Presses Universitaires de Rennes, Rennes 2002, ISBN 2-86847-657-0 .
• Roger Vercel: Visages de corsaires. René Duguay-Trouin, Robert Surcouf, Claude Forbin, Jean Bart. Albin Michel, Paris 1943.