François l'Olonnais

Jean David Nau, better known as François l'Olonnais, and also called l'Olonnois, the Olonés, Lolonois and Lolona (Les Sables-d'Olonne, France, 1630 – Darién, present-day Panama, 1669), was a French buccaneer of the XVII century.

El Olonés arrived in the Antilles enlisted in the French army, completing his military service. Once finished, he preferred to stay in Santo Domingo in the company of the adventurers and filibusters who lived there. He became fond of the lifestyle of those people from whom he learned a lot for his future exploits. Having won the admiration of the French governor of the island of La Tortuga, De La Place, he entrusted him with a small ship to combat the Spanish fleet in the waters of the Caribbean Sea.

After some initial successes, the ship sinks in a storm on the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula with important loot accumulated in its raids. Upon returning to the Tortuga, she obtains a new ship from the governor and heads to the Gulf of Campeche. There he is defeated and loses a large part of the crew who are captured and shot by the Spanish; However, he cunningly manages to save himself by stealing an enemy ship. Shortly after, on the Cuban coast, with two canoes and just 25 men, he captured a Spanish ship with 90 sailors on board; Of these, only one saved his life and Olonés sent him to Havana with a message to the governor of Cuba in which he stated that he would dedicate his life to piracy and that he would never allow himself to be captured alive by Spain.

From then on all his raids took place in the Sea of the Antilles (or Caribbean Sea), Lake Maracaibo and Central America. The Spanish could never defeat him either by land or by sea, until he was finally captured by indigenous people from a Kuna tribe who killed him in a ritual.

Some of his attacks as a pirate were carried out under the auspices of the French government that was in those years of the XVII century. at war against Holland and Spain.

He always followed the same terrifying tactic with his prisoners: he interrogated them, tortured them and chose someone who would serve as an example to the others, who either cut his body into pieces or ripped his chest out, taking out his heart, which Sometimes he chewed and spit in the faces of others. He was a feared and hated character because of his cruel habits and for having watered the fields and towns of Hispanic America with innocent blood.

Looting of Maracaibo and Gibraltar

In 1666 he returned to Turtle Island and together with Michel "le basque" (& # 34; el vasco & # 34;), he assembled a small fleet of 8 ships and 650 men with the mission of attacking the coasts of the southern Caribbean. The Olonés headed to the Gulf of Venezuela from there it passed to the mouth of Lake Maracaibo where the Castillo de San Carlos was located, armed with 16 cannons, which had been built to protect the Maracaibo bar against pirate attacks. They took it in less than three hours. From there they marched towards Maracaibo and found the city completely empty, but they obtained large quantities of food, farm animals, wine and much cognac. The expedition was a success with a large loot of about 20,000 reales, various merchandise and 20 prisoners who were cruelly tortured. They took over the best houses to house the troops and made the church premises their headquarters. They found no other riches, so the Olonés sent a contingent to capture the people they found and once captured they would give news about the place where the coveted treasures were hidden. The looting and torture were more terrible than ever. The churches were burned and all enemy ships destroyed. The loot collected was considerable. In this kind of carnage (caused among other things by the enormous hatred that the Olonés professed against the Spanish) the ship's doctor of the pirate fleet, Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin, tells of a case in which he was an eyewitness:

I attended a scene that really made me afraid. In the first moments of the looting, having made a prisoner, the Olonés demanded that he lead his men to those places where there were greater wealth, because his desire to seize them was very great. But the prisoner was very brave and refused. The Olonés threatened him with cruel torments, but the prisoner still resisted. Then the Olonish ordered him to be tied to a tree and, when his men had rushed to comply with this order, he of a pull separated the prisoner's chest from his jacket, and then extracted his knife and set him a decay that torn his flesh. The blood sprouted at once, but this did not stir up Olonés. With the ferocity that gave his hatred to the Spaniards, he put his hand in the prisoner's wound and ripped his heart, which offered one of his own men. He ate it raw, with the still palpitating flesh.

Alexandre Olivier Exquemelin

For two months they continued to raid the plantations, imprisoning people for slavery and accumulating all kinds of wealth, food and goods that they could transform into money. Rich prisoners were systematically tortured in order to find out where they kept the rest of the wealth they owned.

After the Maracaibo expedition, the pirates moved to Gibraltar, south of Lake Maracaibo, an important shipping site for cocoa and Varinás tobacco, highly appreciated in Europe, where they devastated the garrison of 500 soldiers. Despite paying a ransom of 20,000 pieces of gold and 500 heads of cattle, the Olonés plundered the city, obtaining a loot of 260,000 pieces of gold, jewels, silver ingots, silks and slaves. The disaster inflicted on Gibraltar was so great that the city never recovered from such an attack. The filibusters celebrated greatly with dances and games and in a short time they squandered the newly acquired fortune. In three weeks the pirates spent the loot in the taverns and brothels of Maracaibo.

The story of the attacks on Maracaibo and Gibraltar, although very softened and with many licenses, is used by Emilio Salgari in his novel The Black Corsair.

Back on the island of La Tortuga, Olonés earned the nickname "Calamity of the Spaniards" (Fléau des Espagnols) for his cruel ferocity in the attacks on the Venezuelan coasts.

The Gulf of Honduras and the coast

From the island of Santo Domingo the Olonés left with a fleet of 6 ships, 700 men and abundant provisions. In the south of the island of Cuba, the canoes necessary to be able to move through shallow waters without running aground were stolen from fishermen. Then the pirates head to Puerto Cabello (Venezuela) where they sack the city with several losses. On his way back, he was surprised by a Spanish squad and Olonés escaped unharmed after several confrontations en route to Cape Gracias a Dios, between the current countries of Honduras and Nicaragua. The favorable wind ceased completely and the boats were pushed by the tides to the Gulf of Honduras. The food had already run out, so the first thing the pirates did was attack an indigenous village and confiscate all the corn plus the edible animals. They repeated the attacks and robberies in all the villages located around the gulf, spreading panic among their inhabitants.

Then they headed towards the Spanish town called San Pedro. Once again they sailed with their canoes along the coast of Yucatán, attacking all the indigenous people they found. The arrival of another Spanish ship was expected, which suffered the same fate as the previous ones. The pirates captured him. Later the Olonés proposed to invade Guatemala but part of the crew decided to separate and travel in light boats until they reached Tortuga. The Olonés and the pirates who followed him approached Cape Gracias a Dios, and after a failed foray through the jungle they returned to the sea to also head to Tortuga.

In May 1667, the governor of Cuba organized an expedition against the pirates who were prowling the coast, with the galley slave La Virgen del Rosario at the helm. Once again the confrontation ended in failure for the Spanish. In this altercation was the Olonés who on this occasion came out badly hurt and had to flee to his refuge on Turtle Island.

Campeche

The next expedition of Olonés and his pirates was in Campeche, on the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, to whose beaches they swam after enduring a storm and losing their ships. This time they were less lucky because the Spanish attacked them and won the game. Seeing himself lost, the Olonés knew how to deceive his enemies, who believed him dead. When he regained strength and healed wounds he was able to convince some slaves to help him escape in his master's canoes and in this way he arrived back in Tortuga. From there he prepared another expedition whose objective was the northern coast of Cuba where he achieved new victories and more treasures.

Death

For months he terrorized the coasts of Central America again, committing robberies, assaults and murders, until the Olonés was shipwrecked with his men on a sandbank. The crew is hungry and, despite all measures (unloading cannons and heavy objects), the ship cannot refloat. For six months, the Olonés must defend themselves from the incessant attacks of the Indians and, finally, with only 150 men, they manage to use flat boats built by them to reach the mouth of the San Juan River, which opens the way to Lake Nicaragua.. But once there, the Indians and the Spanish forced him to retreat. He must continue with the help of sails, making the coasts of the Gulf of Darien. Having gone ashore to find food and drinking water, one day he was surprised by natives belonging to the Kuna tribe, who practiced cannibalism, Olonés and all his men were attacked; Only one man manages to save himself from the fight and escape. This was the one who later recounted how the Darién Indians caught the Olonés and dismembered him alive to throw his pieces into the fire, according to the witness:

...they fired him and dismembered him, roasted him and... ate him.