Under the repeated blows of the implacable Cardinal de Richelieu, that gloomy filler of the unity of the despotic power of kings, an immense reaction had been effected in ideas. It was a silent reaction, that from the outset sapped the minister's work, and he was far from suspecting its causes or power. It was more especially in the latter half of the seventeenth century that the world offered a strange spectacle. At that period, the Spaniards, who were possessors, by the right of force, of the greater part of America, where they had multiplied colonies, were masters of the sea which the celebrated "broom of Holland" had not yet swept. The English navy was only beginning to be formed, and, in spite of the continuous efforts of Richelieu, the French navy was not in existence. Suddenly several adventurers sprang up, no one knew whence, who, alone, castaways of civilization, men of all classes, from the highest to the most humble, belonging to all nations, but chiefly to the French, perched themselves like vultures on an imperceptible islet in the Atlantic, and undertook to contend against the Spanish power, after declaring a merciless war on their private authority. Attacking the Spanish fleet with unheard-of audacity, and, like a gadfly fastened to a lion's flank, holding in check the Spanish Colossus, they compelled it to treat with them on equal terms, with no other help but their courage and their energetic will. In a few years their incredible exploits and audacious coups de main inspired the Spaniards with such terror, and acquired for themselves such a great and merited reputation, that the disinherited of fortune, the seekers of adventures, flocked from all parts of the world to the island that served them as a refuge, and their number was so enormously augmented, that they almost succeeded in forming themselves into a nationality by the sole force of their will, and their boldness. Let us say in a few words, who these men were, and what was the origin of their strange fortune. For this purpose we must return to the Spaniards. The latter, after their immense discoveries in the New World, had obtained from Pope Alexander VI. a bull which conceded to them the exclusive possession of the two Americas. Supported by this bull, and considering themselves the sole owners of the New World, the Spaniards tried to keep all other nations away from it, and began to treat as corsairs all the vessels they came across between the two tropics. Their maritime power, and the important part they played at that time on the American continent did not leave the governments the power of protesting, as they would have desired, against this odious tyranny. Then it happened that English and French outfitters, excited by the thirst of gain, and paying no heed to the Spanish pretensions, equipped vessels which they dispatched to the so-coveted rich regions, to cut off the Spanish transports, plunder the American coast, and fire the town.