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Exquemelin accuses Morgan of setting fire to the city and endeavouring to make the world believe that it was done by the Spaniards. Wm.
On 6th March 1671, Morgan, after demolishing the fort and other edifices at Chagre and spiking all the guns, got secretly on board his own ship, if we are to believe Exquemelin, and followed by only three or four vessels of the fleet, returned to Port Royal. The rest of the fleet scattered, most of the ships having "much ado to find sufficient victuals and provisions for their voyage to Jamaica."
Lieutenant-Colonel Bradley, who, according to Exquemelin, had been on these coasts before with Captain Mansfield, landed near the fort on the 27th of December. He and his men fought in the trenches from early afternoon till eight o'clock next morning, when they stormed and carried the place.
The day after the capture, continues Exquemelin, "Captain Morgan dispatched away two troops of Pirates of one hundred and fifty men each, being all very stout soldiers and well armed with orders to seek for the inhabitants of Panama who were escaped from the hands of their enemies.
Some of these outlaws, says Exquemelin, would spend 2000 or 3000 pieces of eight in one night, not leaving themselves a good shirt to wear on their backs in the morning.
The buccaneers suffered severely, losing about 150 in killed and wounded, including Bradley himself who died ten days later. Exquemelin gives a very vivid account of the action. The buccaneers, he writes, "came to anchor in a small port, at the distance of a league more or less from the castle.
Yet in the following December the governor tells Albemarle that he has not altered his posture, nor does he intend until further orders. According to Exquemelin the first design of the freebooters had been to cross the island of Cuba in its narrowest part and fall upon Havana. The narrow entrance was secured by the two forts mentioned in the narrative, the St.
Both offers were refused, however, because the government feared that such privileges would lead to commercial abuses infringing on the monopoly of the Seville merchants. III. pp. 3-7; Add. MSS., 13,964, f. 26. The Spaniards estimated their loss at 100,000 pieces of eight. According to Exquemelin, before the fleet sailed all the officers signed articles regulating the disposal of the booty.
Exquemelin has left us a narrative of this exploit which is more circumstantial than any other we possess, and agrees so closely with what we know from other sources that we must accept the author's statement that he was an eye-witness. He relates the whole story, moreover, in so entertaining and picturesque a manner that he deserves quotation.
Exquemelin, himself originally an engagé, gives a most piteous description of their sufferings. He was sold to the Lieutenant-Governor of Tortuga, who treated him with great severity and refused to take less than 300 pieces of eight for his freedom.
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