Note (return) — Chapter VII

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 François, 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