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Fleau des Espagnois - Flail of the Spaniards

© Cindy Vallar

Born in France around 1635, Jean David Nau came to the Caribbean as an indentured servant during the 1650's. By 1660, however, he had completed his indenture and drifted to St. Domingue where he became a boucanier and eventually, a buccaneer whose career lasted seven years. Fellow pirates called him L'Ollonais. His successes garnered recruits eager to join his expeditions, but his brutality gained him notoriety as one of the cruelest of all pirates.

Most of what we know of L'Ollonais comes from a book, first published in 1678, entitled The Buccaneers of America by Alexandre Oliver Exquemelin. Like L'Ollonais, Exquemelin came to the islands as an indentured servant. From his last master, he learned the skills of a surgeon. He later sailed with Henry Morgan. Unlike L'Ollonais, Exquemelin retired from piracy to become a naval surgeon and wrote about his adventures with the buccaneers. His accounts of L'Ollonais, however, come from the sole survivor of an Indian attack that cost L'Ollonais his life in 1668 or 1669.

Early in his career, L'Ollonais became shipwrecked off the coast of Campeche. On shore Spanish soldiers attacked the pirates, killing all save L'Ollonais. Although wounded, he escaped by rubbing blood and sand over his body and then burying himself amongst the dead. After the Spaniards returned to Campeche, L'Ollonais made his way to the city wearing a disguise. Several slaves aided him in his escape and he sailed home to Tortuga.

While Spaniards celebrated his supposed death, he and his crew of pirates held a town for ransom. When the governor of Havana sent a ship to rescue the town, L'Ollonais and his pirates captured the rescuers. He cut off the heads of all but one soldier so that the survivor could deliver a message to the governor: "I shall never henceforward give quarter to any Spaniard whatsoever." It was an oath L'Ollonais kept, which was why Spanish seamen preferred to fight to the death or go down with their sinking ship rather than surrender.

In 1667, L'Ollonais sailed from Tortuga with at least six hundred fellow pirates aboard eight ships. En route to Maracaibo, they took a Spanish prize laden with 40,000 pieces of eight, jewels, and a rich cargo of cacao. Upon reaching their destination, they captured the sixteen-gun fort that protected the lagoon by approaching it from land rather than sea before descending on Maracaibo. Forewarned, the residents fled the city, but the buccaneers hunted down the citizens and brought them back to L'Ollonais, who tortured them until they revealed where they had hidden their wealth.