ac came to the
rescue of Cuba. The unrest due to the disputed Spanish succession
encouraged the defiant attitude of the British. In the year 1707 a
British armada appeared on the coast for the purpose of engaging in
propaganda against Philip V. and winning over the population to the
support of the Austrian Archduke's claims. They flooded the island with
grandiloquent proclamations and tried to bribe the people by making the
most alluring promises. But D. Luis Chacon was not the man to betray the
king to whom the island had sworn allegiance at his accession in 1700.
He so effectively replied with cannons that the conspirators withdrew.

The next duly appointed governor of Cuba and the thirty-second in order
was Colonel D. Laureano de Torres Ayala, a native of Havana, Knight of
the Order of Santiago and former Governor of Florida. He entered upon
his office on the eighteenth of January, 1708. His attention was at once
directed to an economic problem of great importance. The landowner Orri,
an official in the service of Spain, had conceived the project to sell
the tobacco on the island for the government. This measure was opposed
by the speculators in tobacco, who sold it without custom duties to the
Peninsula and other parts of America. But Governor Torres was so
impressed with the advantage which would accrue from the new arrangement
to the government of Spain, that he did not rest until the measure was
carried and enforced. The Exchequer of Spain was henceforth enabled to
purchase almost the entire tobacco crop and to make enormous profits
thereby, which the coffers of the kingdom, depleted by the many wars of
the past century, sorely needed. For the successful negotiation of this
matter, which created the government's tobacco monopoly, the governor
was rewarded with the title Marquis de Casa-Torres.

Governor Torres like his predecessors was much concerned with the safety
of the island, and accordingly resumed work on the Havana forts. He
added to the fortifications by having the bulwark halfway between la
Punta and la Fuerza built; it was considered of great importance at that
time, but was later demolished, when Governor Don Dionisos Martinez
proceeded with the wall of la Punta in the same direction. The Marquis
de Casa-Torres had grave disputes with the Lieutenant-Auditor Don Jose
Fernandez de Cordova, which caused endless discussion, not only among
the officials of the island, but also in the population. The Court