rrebod, to send 4,000 negroes to la Espanola,
Cuba, and Puerto Rico. Garrebod sold the concession to a Genovese firm
(1517), but negroes remained very scarce and dear in San Juan till
1530, when, by special dispensation of the empress in favor of some
merchants, 200 negroes were brought to this island. They were greedily
taken up on credit at exorbitant prices, which caused the ruin of the
purchasers and made the city authorities of San Juan petition her
Majesty April 18, 1533, praying that no more negro islaves might be
permitted to come to the island for a period of eighteen months,
because of the inability of the people to pay for them.

In Governor Lando's letter of July, 1534, above quoted, he informs the
emperor that in the only two towns that existed in the island at that
time (San Juan and San German) there were "very few Spaniards and only
6 negroes in each." The incursions of the French and English
freebooters, to which he refers in the same letter, had commenced six
years before, and these incursions bring the tale of the island's
calamities to a climax.

CHAPTER XIV

ATTACKS BY FRENCH PRIVATEERS--CAUSE OF THE WAR WITH FRANCE--CHARLES
V.--RUIN OF THE ISLAND

1520-1556

The depredations committed by the privateers, which about this time
began to infest the Antilles and prey upon the Spanish possessions,
were a result of the wars with almost every nation in Europe, in which
Spain became involved after the accession of Charles, the son of
Juana, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella and Philip I, Archduke of
Austria.

The young prince had been educated amid all the pomp and splendor of
the imperial court. He was a perfect type of the medieval cavalier,
who could break a lance with the proudest knight in the empire, and
was worthy in every respect of the high destiny that awaited him. At
the age of twenty he became the heir to eight kingdoms,[33] the
recognized ruler of the Netherlands, lord of vast territories in
Africa, and absolute arbiter of the destinies of the Spanish division
of the New World.

Scarcely had this powerful young prince been accepted and crowned by
the last and most recalcitrant of his kingdoms (Cataluna), and while
still in Barcelona, the news arrived of the death of his grandfather,
Maximilian, King of the Romans and Emperor elect of Germany.
Intrigues for the possession of the coveted crown were set on foot at
once by the prince, now Charles I of Spain and by Francis I, King o