t so high was the
feeling between the two factions that the greatest confusion reigned in
the government of the island until the arrival of Inchiquin in May
1690.[499]

The Revolution of 1688, by placing William of Orange on the English
throne, added a powerful kingdom to the European coalition which in 1689
attacked Louis XIV. over the question of the succession of the
Palatinate. That James II. should accept the hospitality of the French
monarch and use France as a basis for attack on England and Ireland was,
quite apart from William's sympathy with the Protestants on the
Continent, sufficient cause for hostilities against France. War broke
out in May 1689, and was soon reflected in the English and French
colonies in the West Indies. De Cussy, in Hispaniola, led an expedition
of 1000 men, many of them filibusters, against St. Jago de los
Cavalleros in the interior of the island, and took and burnt the town.
In revenge the Spaniards, supported by an English fleet which had just
driven the French from St. Kitts, appeared in January 1691 before Cap
Francois, defeated and killed de Cussy in an engagement near the town,
and burned and sacked the settlement. Three hundred French filibusters
were killed in the battle. The English fleet visited Leogane and Petit
Goave in the _cul-de-sac_ of Hispaniola, and then sailed to Jamaica. De
Cussy before his death had seized the opportunity to provide the
freebooters with new commissions for privateering, and English shipping
suffered severely.[500] Laurens with 200 men touched at Montego Bay on
the north coast in October, and threatened to return and plunder the
whole north side of the island. The people were so frightened that they
sent their wives and children to Port Royal; and the council armed
several vessels to go in pursuit of the Frenchmen.[501] It was a new
experience to feel the danger of invasion by a foreign foe. The
Jamaicans had an insight into the terror which their Spanish neighbours
felt for the buccaneers, whom the English islanders had always been so
ready to fit out, or to shield from the arm of the law. Laurens in the
meantime was as good as his word. He returned to Jamaica in the
beginning of December with several vessels, seized eight or ten English
trading sloops, landed on the north shore and plundered a
plantation.[502] War with France was formally proclaimed in Jamaica on
the 13th of January 1690.[503]

Two years later, in January 1692, Lord Inchiquin als