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Updated: June 21, 2025
The reinforcements he had received from Ducasse numbered 1100, and of these 650 were buccaneers commanded by Ducasse himself. He had nine frigates, besides seven vessels belonging to the buccaneers, and numerous smaller boats. The appearance of so formidable an armament in the West Indies caused a great deal of concern both in England and in Jamaica.
In the following April Ducasse, the new French governor of Hispaniola, sent 400 buccaneers in six small vessels to repeat the exploit, but the marauders met an English man-of-war guarding the coast, and concluding "that they would only get broken bones and spoil their men for any other design," they retired whence they had come. Two months later, however, a much more serious incursion was made.
Baron Ducasse, in an interesting paper In the Revue Historique for February, 1880, has recounted all the unfortunate Louis Bonaparte's attempts to escape having royalty forced upon him. The Batavian deputation in reply announced to him the death of that official, "The hereditary Prince," they said, "has received in compensation Fulda; hence you can have no reasonable objection.
Jamaica had been denuded of men by the earthquake and by sickness, and Lieutenant-Governor Beeston had wisely abandoned the forts in the east of the island and concentrated all his strength at Port Royal. It was this expedient which doubtless saved the island from capture, for Ducasse feared to attack the united Jamaican forces behind strong intrenchments.
Ducasse, who had returned to Petit Goave when de Pointis sailed for France, sent one of his lieutenants on a mission to the French Court to complain of the ill-treatment he had received from de Pointis, and to demand his own recall; but the king pacified him by making him a Chevalier of St. Louis, and allotting 1,400,000 francs to the French colonists who had aided in the expedition.
Ducasse, although six years earlier he had written home urging just such an enterprise against Vera Cruz or Cartagena, now expressed his strong disapproval of the project, and dwelt rather on the advantages to be gained by the capture of Spanish Hispaniola, a conquest which would give the French the key to the Indies.
Among all the officers now swarming Havana none attracts more admiring attention than General Ducasse, a tall, fine-looking mulatto, who was educated at the fine military school of St. Cyr. He is of extremely polished manners and undeniable force of character, can make a brilliant address and has great influence among the masses.
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