… The puffed up arrogance of the Spaniard was curbed by no prudential consideration; calling upon every saint in his calendar, and raining curses on the heretical buccaneers, he deprived them of their legitimate occupation, and created wilfully a set of desperate enemies, who harassed the colonial trade of an empire already betraying signs of feebleness with the pertinacity of wolves, and who only desisted when her commerce had been reduced to insignificance. … Devoured by an undying hatred of their assailants, the buccaneers developed into a new association—the freebooters." _C. H. Eden, The West Indies, chapter 3._ "The monarchs both of England and France, but especially the former, connived at and even encouraged the freebooters [a name which the pronunciation of French sailors transformed into 'flibustiers,' while that corruption became Anglicized in its turn and produced the word filibusters], whose services could be obtained in time of war, and whose actions could be disavowed in time of peace. Thus buccaneer, filibuster, and sea-rover, were for the most part at leisure to hunt wild cattle, and to pillage and massacre the Spaniards wherever they found an opportunity. When not on some marauding expedition, they followed the chase." The piratical buccaneers were first organized under a leader in 1639, the islet of Tortuga being their favorite rendezvous. "So rapid was the growth of their settlements that in 1641 we find governors appointed, and at San Christobal a governor-general named De Poincy, in charge of the French filibusters in the Indies. During that year Tortuga was garrisoned by French troops, and the English were driven out, both from that islet and from Santo Domingo, securing harborage elsewhere in the islands. Nevertheless corsairs of both nations often made common cause. … In [1654] Tortuga was again recaptured by the Spaniards, but in 1660 fell once more into the hands of the French; and in their conquest of Jamaica in 1655 the British troops were reenforced by a large party of buccaneers." The first of the more famous buccaneers, and apparently the most ferocious among them all, was a Frenchman called François L'Olonnois, who harried the coast of Central America between 1660-1665 with six ships and 700 men. At the same time another buccaneer named Mansvelt, was rising in fame, and with him, as second in command, a Welshman, Henry Morgan, who became the most notorious of all. In 1668, Morgan attacked and captured the strong town of Portobello, on the Isthmus, committing indescribable atrocities. In 1671 he crossed the Isthmus, defeated the Spaniards in battle and gained possession of the great and wealthy city of Panama—the largest and richest in the New World, containing at the time 30,000 inhabitants. The city was pillaged, fired and totally destroyed. The exploits