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Updated: June 16, 2025
As soon as Captain Morgan had received this letter, he called all his men together in the market place at Maracaibo, and after reading the contents both in French and in English, he requested the advice of his companions upon the whole matter, and asked whether they preferred to surrender all they had gained in order to obtain their liberty, or if they wished to fight for their possessions.
At last, after having closed his vile proceedings in the ordinary pirate fashion, by threatening to burn the town if he were not paid a ransom, Morgan thought it time for him to depart, for if the Spaniards should collect a sufficient force at Maracaibo to keep him from getting out of the lake, he would indeed be caught in a trap.
The work of organizing the new government did not interrupt the royalist activity in Venezuela nor the preparations made by Spain to suppress the revolution. The East and the Orinoco valley were in constant agitation, and we have seen that in the West, Coro and Maracaibo were on the side of Spain, and their governors ready to send help to the enemies of independence.
Computing it at this reasonable figure, the various prizes won by Henry Morgan in the West Indies would stand as follows: Panama, $1,500,000; Porto Bello, $800,000; Puerto del Principe, $700,000; Maracaibo and Gibraltar, $400,000; various piracies, $250,000 making a grand total of $3,650,000 as the vast harvest of plunder.
Hence they returned to Maracaibo, where being arrived, they found a general consternation in the whole city, to which they sent three or four prisoners to tell the governor and inhabitants, "they should bring them 30,000 pieces of eight aboard their ships, for a ransom of their houses, otherwise they should be sacked anew and burnt."
Then he sent again a messenger to the admiral, who was escaped ashore, and got into the castle, demanding of him a ransom of fire for Maracaibo; which being denied, he threatened entirely to consume and destroy it.
I have with me very good soldiers, who desire nothing more ardently than to revenge on you, and your people, all the cruelties, and base infamous actions, you have committed upon the Spanish nation in America. Dated on board the royal ship named the Magdalen, lying at anchor at the entry of the lake of Maracaibo, this 24th of April, 1669.
But in the midst of these disheartening circumstances, the pirate leader showed what an arrogant, blustering dare-devil he was, for, instead of admitting his discomfiture and trying to make terms with the Spaniards, he sent a letter to the admiral of the ships, in which he stated that if he did not allow him a free passage out to sea he would burn every house in Maracaibo.
The third vessel, not having an opportunity to escape, was taken by the pirates without the slightest resistance, and the passage from the lake was cleared. So the buccaneers sailed away, leaving Maracaibo and Gibraltar prostrate a second time. And now Captain Morgan determined to undertake another venture, the like of which had never been equaled in all of the annals of buccaneering.
The emissaries who went to Maracaibo were even sent to Porto Rico to be tried there as rebels and were sentenced to prison in that colony. Among the diplomatic representatives, some were well received and some were ignored.
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