t
nightfall. Angulo offered a ransom of three thousand ducats, declaring
that no more could be raised. The Frenchmen scorned the offer, and
demanded thirty thousand pesos--eighty thousand had been collected at
Santiago the year before--and a hundred loads of bread. Angulo
protested his inability to raise such an amount, but begged for time in
which to see what he could do.

A week passed, the French occupying Havana at their ease and Angulo
scouring the surrounding country, ostensibly for ransom money but in
fact for men and arms. By the end of the week he had surreptitiously
collected a force of 335 men, of whom about thirty-five were Spaniards
and the rest negroes and Indians. They were armed chiefly with clubs and
stones. Himself and eight others were mounted on horseback. With this
motley force he hoped to surprise the French by night, and to capture
Rojas's house, where he would take Sores himself prisoner and release
the Spanish captives.

The desperate plan would probably have succeeded had not some of the
Indians indiscreetly uttered their war cry as they rushed upon the
house, arousing the Frenchmen and giving them time to close and bar the
massive doors. The few Frenchmen who were sleeping outside of the house
were quickly overcome and slain, and Angulo laid siege to the house
itself, summoning Sores to surrender. The French commander was furious
at what he not unreasonably regarded as a breach of the truce. Moreover,
his brother was among those who had been killed outside the house. In a
fury he ordered that all the Spanish prisoners in the house be put to
death. This was quickly done, with the exception of Lobera, who was
confined in an upper room. Sores reserved the killing of him for
himself, and entered the room where Lobera was for that purpose. Lobera
defended himself, meanwhile protesting that he had had no part in the
treachery; and his evidently honest pleas moved a French officer to
intervene in his behalf and to disarm Sores. Then, at the direction of
Sores, Lobera showed himself at a window and addressed Angulo,
reproaching him for the breach of truce, and imploring him to withdraw.
Angulo refused, declaring that he had already recaptured the town, and
that at daylight he would complete the work by capturing the Rojas house
and its inmates.

With the coming of daylight, however, the folly of this course became
apparent. Angulo had, indeed, a larger force than the Frenchmen still
remaining in H