ize St. Augustine in Florida. They
landed before the city under French colours, but finding the Spaniards
prepared for them, gave up the project and looted some small
neighbouring settlements. On the return of Pain and two others to New
Providence, Governor Lilburne tried to apprehend them, but he failed for
lack of means to enforce his authority. The Spaniards, however, were not
slow to take their revenge. In the following January they sent 250 men
from Havana, who in the early morning surprised and plundered the town
and shipping at New Providence, killed three men, and carried away money
and provisions to the value of L14,000.[440] When Lilburne in February
sent to ask the Governor of Havana whether the plunderers had acted
under his orders, the Spaniard not only acknowledged it but threatened
further hostilities against the English settlement. Indeed, later in the
same year the Spaniards returned, this time, it seems, without a
commission, and according to report burnt all the houses, murdered the
governor in cold blood, and carried many of the women, children and
negroes to Havana.[441] About 200 of the inhabitants made their way to
Jamaica, and a number of the men, thirsting for vengeance, joined the
English pirates in the Carolinas.[442]

In French Hispaniola corsairing had been forbidden for several years,
yet the French governor found the problem of suppressing the evil even
more difficult than it was in Jamaica. M. de Pouancay, the successor of
d'Ogeron, died toward the end of 1682 or the beginning of 1683, and in
spite of his efforts to establish order in the colony he left it in a
deplorable condition. The old fraternity of hunters or cow-killers had
almost disappeared; but the corsairs and the planters were strongly
united, and galled by the oppression of the West India Company,
displayed their strength in a spirit of indocility which caused great
embarrassment to the governor. Although in time of peace the freebooters
kept the French settlements in continual danger of ruin by reprisal, in
time of war they were the mainstay of the colony. As the governor,
therefore, was dependent upon them for protection against the English,
Spanish and Dutch, although he withdrew their commissions he dared not
punish them for their crimes. The French buccaneers, indeed, occupied a
curious and anomalous position. They were not ordinary privateers, for
they waged war without authority; and they were still less pirates, for
t