The history of piracy. Part 4

In the previous part, I examined the formation of piracy of free and cape.
And in this part, the “Golden Age of Piracy” will be considered in detail. Which began at the beginning of the 17th century and ended in the middle of the 18th century. This era was the culmination of the development of piracy in the Caribbean, and the nearby space (although the gentlemen of good luck were spent on both sides of the mainland and both north and south). It is this time period that is most often displayed in cinema and literature, and of course Assassins Creed 4: Black Flag, which inspired me to create this material.

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The development of piracy formed several societies on the islands of the Caribbean due to its borders. They had their own distinguishing features, although they were engaged in the same … robbery. As well as the trade in the loot, although cattle breeding and other little things also developed, but it was armed robbery that was the nutritional power of these communities. Even before the sea robbery in the Caribbean accepted significant sizes, on some islands there were groups of bullshit hunters, into which sailors-mattresses, disappointed immigrants and other losers of different varieties were united. Cattle was brought to the New World from Europe.

Bukaners traditionally called forest hunters from French settlers (mainly Normans), who settled at the beginning of the XVII in. On the Islands of the Spanish crown in the Caribbean. In a broader sense, Bucaniers began to call hunters for wild buffaloes and wild pigs engaged in this fishing to “get the skin” and “sell meat”. Bucaniers were armed with flint muskets with long trunks or squeaks with lead bullets. The shots were carried out by a handful of round bullets poured into the trunk, and due to the strong return of the musket, it was necessary to shoot from it not from the shoulder, but from the hip. I must say that bucaniers preferred not to use a gun during the hunt and tried to take the booty with knives, machete and Corsair sabers with a short blade –
Manschetam. It was impossible to survive alone in the forest, so the hunters united in small fraternal artels, five to six people, and led a relatively sedentary lifestyle.

Creating a kind of male artel, and where women were closed, bucaniers spent most of the time in the forest, visiting settlements, only to sell meat and skins prepared during the season, to have fun and replenish tobacco reserves, canvases,
bullets and gunpowder. Gloomy rumor went about these most skillful arrows and skillful breeders-bakovo breeders as those who did not know and desperately cruel thugs. “They say that it is better to stay on galleys for three years than to serve with Bucanier”.

Bucaniers, settling in the territories belonging to the Spanish crown, behaved in a businesslike way. They did not recognize the local authorities, did not pay any taxes and conducted smuggled trade with the local population, violating the Spanish colonial monopoly.
Islands of Bukanyarov (Tortuga, Espanyola or Santodoming (modern. Haiti), Nevis, Saint Christopher), these small “habitat” of wild hunters, were under the constant threat of the invasion of punitive expeditions. The struggle of the Spaniards took on a particularly fierce nature
Against Bucanie on Espanyol, where the real partisan war unfolded. Unable to break the resistance of forest hunters, the Spaniards began to methodically exterminate cattle in order to deprive bugans of sources of existence. Thus, the Spaniards only strengthened their hatred and provoked bugans to do piracy.

Of course, in connection with a large influx of immigrants from Europe to the Antilles, the national composition of the population changed there, and the classes of local residents diversified. Gabriel Deben, for example, specially engaged in the social history of the French Antilles, emphasized the mixture and cosmopolitancy of their population, among which was full of Genoese, Flemings, Dutch, British, Maltese, Piedmontians, Liezha residents, Spaniards and Irish. People of various professions, they recruited to the islands and sometimes did what they would have to. Among the representatives allocated by the historian
We discover various professions and agricultural workers, and builders of residential buildings and fortifications, and carpenters, and metal handlers, and workers on sugar plantations, and cooks, and shoemakers, and cakes, and healers, and heaps. As the social spectrum of life on the islands expands, colonists engaged in bucany in the forest were increasingly separate and formed some marginal communities. Going to the “big land”, somewhere in the wilderness, they temporarily lost their social ties.

At the same time, among English -speaking immigrants and vagrant sailors there were still
One concept close to the French version “Bucanierism”. They began to call the island hunters “Kau-killers” (“Cows slaughterers”) and considered them the most exhausted among a variety of population of West Indies. The most terrible punishment, for example, was to leave a victim on some shore, where these young people lived nearby. The British “Kau-Killers”, the “relatives” of the French bugans, in fact, differ from them only by the name, because they led the lifestyle and were also in one person with smuggles, pirates, meat boards and armed heads. As well, however, like the “lumberjacks” of the bay of Kampache, among which in 1675–1678. The young William Dampire was clogged. In general, it is natural that since the 1680-1690s. The word “Bucanier” almost everywhere ceased to be associated with the profession of a hunter and now designated a person who went into the sea for the purpose of robbery. Hence the widespread use of the concept of “bucanier” on a par with such as “marine robber”, “pirate”, that is, with those who pursued and robbed merchant ships for the purpose of profit.

So, “Bucaniers”, “Hunters”, “KAU-Killers” were not the only hostile Spaniards by the social group operating in the Spanish Islands. No less threat was melted with the so -called “Flibusters“. The abbot Charlesaa describes this free audience, tormented by the mixed sense of bitterness and pride: “Apparently, among adventurers … those who called the flibs, not the most honest people were, and there was nothing more terrible and at the same time more insignificant than the dangerous army at the time of its emergence. The first people who have chosen such a way of life had neither a ship, no equipment, no lotion, no provisions: courage and ingenuity in a short time filled up all the missing. They started by united and formed small communities “.

The unique robber world of West India gave them another amazing name. Adventurers, adventurers, thugs, hunters and killers called “coastal people” (“Gens de la Cote”) called themselves only “Coastal Brothers”, Masted in the unspoken association of robbers with unusual and harsh laws and the Pirate Code of Honor.

Beautiful arrows capable of taking off with one shot of sailors ruling sails
They deprived the attacked ship of the opportunity to maneuver and, picking up from the windward side,
We went on boarding. Relying on the unspoken, and during the war and open support of the governments of France, England and the Republic of United Provinces, interested
In the capture of the Spanish islands of the West Indies, Bucaniers and Flisters turned into a powerful
weapon in the struggle for the colony. On the example of “groupings” of bugans and filibusters, it is clearly seen to which the “division” of the social space of the Antilles in Europe was formally carried out in formalized. Awakening the detachments and bucks and filibusters of the armed armies, which acted separately and from time to time united for the “war” against the Spaniards, the authors of that time thereby created a certain social structure, which was built in the framework of the mechanistic logic inherent in the era.

Goethe “Faust”
A few ships went;
Now in your harbor
There are twenty of them. We were a lot
Hard: You see their fruit yourself.
In the free sea, the spirit always
Free;Slow down, disassemble –
You will not become: you have to safely take!
Either catch fish, then ships;
Soon I had them three,
Then four;There, taking it
Another ship, owned five;
You have the strength, so right!
Only our pocket would be packed.
Who will ask how our cargo is obtained?
Robbery, trade and war –
Not all the same? Their goal is one!

(Translation n. A. Kholodkovsky)

In the XVII and XVIII centuries, the sea robbers were not often resolved in the open Atlantic-the Ocean poor wasland could not offer them truly comfortable strongholds. The basing on the European coast was unsafe for corsers. Therefore, they began to nest in the Caribbean, replete with secluded islands, as if by nature itself intended for the shelter of pirates.

In this matter, the pirates borrowed tactics from the military or their eminent colleagues such as Francis Drake, who have mastered the skillful creation of pirate bases on secluded islands that were not inferior to military forts.
They made plans at such bases, prepared raids in Spanish settlements, shared the loot and an experienced sailor could always give a good advice, and the group sent for reconnaissance brought the necessary information about the location
the port, the secrets of the location or found on the shore of the Allies: Indians, Negroes or the same thugs ready to take part in the attack. Any pirate operation certainly suggested a kind of preparatory stage, which means a temporary reserve and good
island or coastal base.

Islands play the role of a kind of relay wand. “Clinging” in one island, the sailors passed to nearby land, and so on, until they arrived at the port of destination.
Actually, this largely reduced cabinage swimming, such as trade in the Mediterranean Sea. The Spaniards reproduced a similar system in the Pacific Ocean. For a long time, their trading ships during crossings along the South American coast, from Chile to Panama, experienced considerable navigation difficulties.

A significant value of the island in the eyes of the bugans gave the features of the landscape surrounding their anchor parking. Only two harbors located in the eastern part of the island were suitable for the “refuge” of the vessels. Rivulets flocked into convenient rocky bays, supplying the pirates sheltered here with fresh water. The neck of the bays was covered by rocky protrusions that allowed small forts to keep the entrances inside the harbor, but the impregnable mountains rose from the West, approaching the shore itself. “Fifty people could hold out here against a thousand,” Dampir stated with satisfaction, recalling how five pirates from the Davis team defended the inviolability of his “den” from the attacks.
And there is no need to confuse such lamps with the “pirate republics” such as Tortuga, which will be discussed separately.

Nevertheless, sea robbery could not bloom here with such a magnificent color, if not for the political intrigues between Spain, on the one hand, and England, France and Holland – on the other. Indeed, at that time, during the rapid development of the European bourgeoisie, it was sometimes difficult to find the difference between trade and an undisguised robbery. To weaken their sworn enemy – Spain – the British and the French supported the Caribbean pirates, or at least did not repaire them to obstacles.

By increasing cooperation with England and France, “cape” developed, and over time, entire pirate republics were created under the protectorate of England and France.

1631. On the southern coast of Tortuga, part of the most Mammary company, consisting of one and a half hundred bugans, filibusters and colonists, which was thrown out by the Spaniards from the island of St. Cristopher, landed. Tortuga was known to them long before that and the French called the island of the new Normandy. Bucaniers who hunted on this island found a shelter
On Espanyol. They built a small village on the southern shore next to the harbor, divorced the plantations of tobacco, sugar and indigo and began to go hunting and to pirate raids for the “big land”, that is, Espanyol.

The appearance directly on the route of the Spanish fleets of the free community of bugans and filibusters seriously concerned the royal administration. The robbery nest that formed on the coward turned into a serious obstacle to the delivery of American gold and silver to Spain and melted a constant threat to the king’s possessions in Cuba, Puerto Rico, in South and Central America. Pirates from the cowls had a wide network of secret refugees scattered in small islands throughout the Kariban Sea, from the desert bays of the southern coast of Cuba to the labyrinths of the Bahamas and the wrecked islands. There were organized ambushes that laid the trading ships, from there they set off in search of the Spanish ships with the treasures of America who had lost from the course. Tortuga also had its own food base, located on the Greater Earth neighboring with the island, Espanyola. It was separated by a small 10-kilometer bay from Tortuga. Bucaniers who went to Espanyol for hunting wild pigs and cattle turned the island into the center. The Spaniards have repeatedly made attempts to get rid of uninvited neighbors and conducted punitive expeditions on Tortuga and Espanyola. They destroyed the Bucanier villages, burned forest huts and organized a livestock extermination of livestock on the islands. However, the measures of the Spanish authorities, who sought to survive from the island of the “hunters” who were falling there, did not take success, because, sensing danger, the forest tramps simply left with their belongings deep into the island and “dissolved” among the nearby
hills and rocks.

In January 1635. The Spaniards decided to put an end to the gangster village and sent a punitive expedition to Tortuga, led by Don Rui Fernandez de Fuenmayor. With his 250 soldiers, the Spanish Grand landed on the island, finding about six hundred settlers of both sexes there. He resolutely cleansed the island of this “badge”: he hung all men who came to his eyes and took out women and children from him on his ships. He burned the village to the village and, honestly fulfilling the assigned mission, left in the opposite direction. Three years later, the Spaniards again ravaged the island. It seemed that their problems with Tortuga were over. But it wasn’t there! Set Europeans flew to Tortuga, like bees on honey. As we have seen, the “glorious” island has already entered the orbit of the interests of England and the Providen company and for some time after the Spanish “Triumph” was under the control of the British who squeezed the French. One of the natives of Albion, Captain Willis, enjoyed such a great influence on Tortuga that he changed
local rulers like gloves. In 1640. On the island, who came from Nevis with three
Hundreds of settlers “Captain” of the coastal brothers Roger (in some sources – Robert) Flood.

But the French did not doze off, who were so easy to take up positions on Tortuga. As a result, the colonization process carried out in the 1630–1640s. The joint -stock company of American Islands led to the appearance of rather autonomous French settlements in the windward islands, the power over which was in the hands of private individuals or relatively independent of the company of rulers. All these rulers needed military power that could help them defend their own interests in the struggle with both their rivals and the local population. And it is not surprising that free flibs have turned
In that trump card, having received which, it was possible to succeed.

With the gradual stabilization of power and the destruction of the “kingdom of unrest” so hated by Louis XIV, the state in the person of the young king, demanding humility from subjects, began to take away the control levers of management to their hands. In this sense, the events in the Antille Islands were crowded with changes that took place in France. Repressions began, and the local kings ceased to be invulnerable, counting on remoteness from the metropolis.

As the intervention of the Parisian authorities increased in the economic situation on the island, merchants left these lands. Deprived of the influx of goods exhausted by fines and solid prices for products, desolation began. The population also gradually moved from the island to the “large land”, where several French settlements arose. Total hunting for prizes as the basis of the economy could not ensure peaceful prosperity. Torstuga phenomenon – free Flibustier community – was too burdensome burden. When the new governor of Tortuga Pierre Paier Taren de Cussi arrived in 1684. to the island, it turned out that
About half of the white population of the territories subject to it is somehow connected with the free fishing. In the report to Jean-Batista Kolber de Seniele of August 24, 1684. He gave a list of filibusters who settled in his possessions. The picture is quite curious: approximately half of the population of Tortuga was engaged in capet, combining sea “crafts” with peaceful activities to one way or another. However, the population gradually left Tortug, and dashing filibusters could not feel on the “native” island as much as before. The result can be summed up by the words: “The island of Tortuga is an inaccessible cliff, where trade occurs only seven thousand ecu a year. This island was the first French possession, and the hazel for forty years was a refuge of flibs. Now he is not suitable for anything “. The pirate freesty on the coward came to an end.

Fanding at the island space of the Antilles of the Seas, we distinguish in all this gigantic water expanse a very special geopolitical zone. And from the time when the Anglo-French fight for St. Cristopher began, before the conclusion of the Utrekhtsky agreements
XVIII century. The situation in this zone has undergone cardinal changes.

And all this boundless space of the Antilles of the Antilles unexpectedly turned out to be too tight. Criminal to the old centers of the Spanish West Indies- Cuba, Puerto-Rico and the eastern part of Espanyola- joined the newly formed zones of European intervention that arose
In the places of the previous Flibustier parking lots. Pirates, as if through the “island sieve” penetrating the closed territory of the Spanish seas, only cleared the way to “late” powers that began to penetrate the New World. Opponents and at the same time neighbors, colonial powers took previously free sea zones with the islands under control and during many years of wars distributed spheres of influence, fixing the section by international agreements.

The center of British influence (let’s not forget about the North American British colonies holding the West India of the Assistry) at first was located on Barbados, where in 1625. The first English settlements arose. Gradually, he moved to Jamaica, captured by the Spaniards in 1655. and turned into the main military hand of England, which was simultaneously the center of cape. After a protracted military battle of the end of the XVII – the first third of the XVIII in. Nevis, Angilla, Barbuda, part of St. Cristopher, former French Antigua and not colonized by Spain Montserrat remained behind the crown. From the north, on trade routes to North America, there were Bahamas with the famous New Providence, which turned after the war for the Spanish inheritance into a kind of “British Tortuga in Bagams”.
The eternal competitor of England on the seas, the Republic of the United Provinces after 1634. She kept Aruba, Kurasao, Bonayre in a group of leeward islands, as well as settled from 1632. “Picture” Tobago. In the north of the windward islands, the Dutch managed to preserve the islands of Saba, Sint-Estaus and in 1648. divided with the French Saint-Martin. The French kingdom with the hands of the bugans squeezed the Spaniards from Espanyola, conquering the western part of the island, connected to a single administrative region with Tortuga.

Martinika became the citizen of French dominance on the islands, where the residence of the General Lieutenant of the French Islands moved from St. Cristopher. The main base of the Navy was also located here. Under control, the French also kept Guadeluupu and its island “Sector” (Mari Galant, Desirad, Le Sent), “Sector” of St. Cristopher (September Bartelmi,
Santa Curus, part of Saint-Martin) and islands located south of Martinics (St. Lucia, Grenada and Grenadines), which became in the XVIII in. The main object of rivalry with England.By the 20th. XVIII century., When long wars ended for hegemony in Europe, the sea powers divided
The vast basin of the Caribbean Sea. Whatever allied combinations and no matter what fierce forms are acquired by the naval rivalry, there were no more free territories in the West Indies (if you do not take into account the tiny unusual islands). For pirates, the new sovereign mosaic did not promise anything good.

Not many more than two centuries of a merciless fight for the ocean spaces have passed. When she was just beginning, the vast ocean seemed to be some giant ghostly abyss, hidden behind the line of reality. The pursuit of the development of this water mirage led to European expansion. As a result, the outline of the ocean turned out to be fairly drawn. After the Madrid, Ratisbon and Utrecht agreements, the sea was included in the system
international treaties and gained the legal status of state property, divided between European powers. The once-blanket of sea spaces, fragmented into many free zones, filled criminal gangstones and marginal groups of bugans, forbans, pirates, corsers, filibusters and kau-killer in the XVI-XVII centuries. In the colonial possessions for the freemen of the “people of the sea” there was less and less space. Recent expansion soldiers, combining the functions of a military colonist and robber, now posed a potential threat to their own employers.

It stands with me nearby,
The boarding knife shines
We plowed a gray -haired ocean more than once,
We are kings on the sea.
Our desperate, daring, robbery clan
The merchants are overcome by fear.
Chorus:
Let the guns and the musk are beating,
The boarding blades shine!
Enemy flags fall on the yut.
We defeated them, sailors!
Glory to the restless waves of the ocean!
Glory to the power of the bumpy arm!
The devil leads us along the seas,
We are not afraid of God’s anger,
We do not believe the Cross and the Holy Gifts,
We love wine and girls.
But once the last moment will come,
Do not get back from fate,
And then we will direct our old brig
Direct road to hell ..
Corsarov’s song

The inherent free thoughts, indominivability, social antagonism and unwillingness to reckon with the rules of the game imposed by the authorities, turned the recent allies into enemies of the established new order. The ocean was now too small for the state and the sea freemen to get along. Streams of uncontrollable demobilized thugs from the British, French, Dutch and Spanish fleets, poured into the ocean after the sea wars on the threshold of the 17th – 18th centuries, became the last straw that overwhelmed the cup of patience of the sovereign authorities. The fright prompted the adoption of the appropriate measures. It took more than a dozen years of anti -pirate war so that the European colonial empires coped with the escalation of marine banditry. The free naval community played a role-now it has become an extra player, finally having lost the features of the state ally and turning into a persecuted criminal-angle community. The ocean section ended – there was no place for the pirates in the new space.

“Crime and punishment”

But we will return to the life of the pirate community, or rather, to an integral part of the pirate-colonial life-justice and retaliatory actions by the pirates, as well as the “Pirate Code”.

Pirate Code of Honor defined the system of justice of the robbery world. Any “offense” was considered through the prism of how much it went beyond the accepted charter. If we analyze the rules of Roberts, in which the “schedule” of the pirate hostel is most detailed, we can see how sometimes the pirate society differs from the usual ideas about its notorious recklessness and anarchy. In everything regarding their own safety, the sailors showed marginal composure and rigidly regulated the difficult moments of everyday life. Firstly, as we have already emphasized earlier, they in every possible way sought to avoid conflict situations on the ship.
They not only avoided duels on ships, but introduced prohibitions to play on money on cards or bone. Justice made the court compiled from representatives of the Pirate Brotherhood. Cases of betrayal, desertion and violations of discipline in the conditions of “wartime” were punishable. The Pirate Court represented a harsh test for all its participants, since a human life was a bet on it. Not every court ended so tragically. The pirates were not at all gloomy misanthropes and loved to amuse themselves in a rude manner. The ability to relax, have fun, drink it well in a complacency. The superstitions of these ignorant people and loyalty to marine traditions brought more “rainbow” shades into the ordinary life of the crew.

The world of pirates was the world of robbers and killers. He was not at all humane, and in the moods of his inhabitants, philanthropy was pushed into the background. The pirate brotherhood was built on the brutal practice of retaliation for betrayal, treason, and those who entered into the struggle,
lived under the oppression of a constant threat to become a victim of merciless revenge and reprisals from their enemies. Mutual assistance and revenge went hand in hand – the victims of retaliation became equally, the fugitives who tried to end their criminal past, and pursuers, pirate hunters. The pirates have developed the sophisticated ways of executions that applied to “their people” and to the captives who fell into their hands. In the arsenal of funds that were widely used by pirates and created the atmosphere of mortal danger around them, of course, torture. They were used in most cases not in order to enjoy the torment of the victim, but as a means to knock out information from the captives who fell into the hands of the robbers. There were real sadists among the robber brotherhood, similar. His cruelty, about which the ominous glory was everywhere, instilled such horror that the Spaniards, for example, when they met him at sea, fought to the last, because there was never mercy from this monster. The Pirate Edward Law left a terrible memory of himself. During his robber raids, he acted with sophisticated cruelty, leaving his memory as one of the most ferocious and bloodthirsty murders. His crew was “about a hundred desperate guys who are only on the gallows. ”

But the nasty side to cruelty answered with cruelty: the captured pirates were also tortured without understanding, this is a capper or a bandit. After the failure of d’Oheron landing in Puerto Rico, the Spaniards killed all the wounded and cut off their noses and ears. Then they showed these trophies to the prisoners in order to frighten them with this testimony of their victory. After that, they arranged a “knightly” tournament – they tied the captives to the trees and at full gallop threw spears in them, rewarding the most accurate prizes. Having been in “military” exploits, the soldiers switched to other joys: they put meat in front of the hungry French, and those who tried to grab a piece beat Machete’s arms.

The reason for this cruelty is the morals of the then European. In this era of religious wars, the persecution of dissenters, frequent public executions, where people went, as if to entertainment, violence reigned in Europe. “I have to live at such a time,” wrote Michelle Montaigne, “when there are more than enough examples of incredible cruelty around us, caused by the decomposition generated by our civil wars;In ancient chronicles, we will not find stories about more terrible things than those that we are doing now every day. “.