rning, but
finding they could make no headway against the Jamaican militia, who
were now increased to 700 men, in the latter part of July they set sail
with their plunder for Hispaniola.[511] Jamaica had been denuded of men
by the earthquake and by sickness, and Lieutenant-Governor Beeston had
wisely abandoned the forts in the east of the island and concentrated
all his strength at Port Royal.[512] It was this expedient which
doubtless saved the island from capture, for Ducasse feared to attack
the united Jamaican forces behind strong intrenchments. The harm done to
Jamaica by the invasion, however, was very great. The French wholly
destroyed fifty sugar works and many plantations, burnt and plundered
about 200 houses, and killed every living thing they found. Thirteen
hundred negroes were carried off besides other spoil. In fighting the
Jamaicans lost about 100 killed and wounded, but the loss of the French
seems to have been several times that number. After the French returned
home Ducasse reserved all the negroes for himself, and many of the
freebooters who had taken part in the expedition, exasperated by such a
division of the spoil, deserted the governor and resorted to
buccaneering on their own account.[513]

Colonel, now become Sir William, Beeston, from his first arrival in
Jamaica as lieutenant-governor, had fixed his hopes upon a joint
expedition with the Spaniards against the French at Petit Goave; but the
inertia of the Spaniards, and the loss of men and money caused by the
earthquake, had prevented his plans from being realized.[514] In the
early part of 1695, however, an army of 1700 soldiers on a fleet of
twenty-three ships sailed from England under command of Commodore Wilmot
for the West Indies. Uniting with 1500 Spaniards from San Domingo and
the Barlovento fleet of three sail, they captured and sacked Cap
Francois and Port de Paix in the French end of the island. It had been
the intention of the allies to proceed to the _cul-de-sac_ and destroy
Petit Goave and Leogane, but they had lost many men by sickness and bad
management, and the Spaniards, satisfied with the booty already
obtained, were anxious to return home. So the English fleet sailed away
to Port Royal.[515] These hostilities so exhausted both the French in
Hispaniola and the English in Jamaica that for a time the combatants lay
back to recover their strength.

The last great expedition of this war in the West Indies serves as a
fitting cl