Panama, past and present/Chapter 7
CHAPTER VII
HOW MORGAN THE BUCANEER SACKED OLD PANAMA
THERE are three sundry places where this citie (Old Panama) may without difficulty be taken, and spoyled by the Pirates. . . . And forasmuch as the most part of these people (the citizens) are marchants, they will not fight, but onely keepe their owne persons in safetie, and save their goods; as it hath bene sene heretofore in other places of these Indies. . . . Therefore it behooveth your majestie to fortifie these places very strongly."
So wrote Baptista Antonio, an Italian surveyor who had been sent by Philip II of Spain to report on his cities in the West Indies in 1587. Of the three ways he mentioned by which pirates could come to attack Old Panama, one was through the Darien country to the east, and nothing was done to prevent it. The second was by way of Nombre de Dios, but that town was already being abandoned for Porto Bello, healthier and strongly fortified with stone castles. The third route was up the Chagres, and the King did build a small wooden castle, called Fort San Lorenzo, to protect the mouth of the river. But nothing was done at Old Panama.
Yet with a little strengthening here and there, it could have been made a formidable place to attack. The sea protected it on the south with a broad belt of quicksands at low tide; on the west lay a marshy creek crossed by a narrow stone arch; and on the north or landward side was a swamp, drained by another stream (also crossed by a stone bridge, recently discovered) that flowed into the harbor on the east.
GALLEON
The space so enclosed was fourteen hundred and twelve varas (yards) from east to west, by four hundred and eighty-seven from north to south, and the city had only seven streets running up from the sea, and four along the beach. There were three plazas, on the largest of which stood the Cabildo or city hall, court house, jail, hospital, and other public buildings, which were of stone, and the cathedral, which at first was made of wood, like all the private houses. Scattered about the city were three small monasteries and a convent, and on a rocky knoll by the harbor stood the barracks of the Genoese company that traded in negro slaves.
These slaves were very numerous. In 1575, fifty-six years after the foundation of the city, there were only four hundred houses and five hundred Spanish citizens in the place, but the blacks and mulattoes numbered over three thousand. They drove the mules on the Royal Road, manned the flat-boats on the Chagres, cultivated the few fields and gardens; in short, did all the work while their masters made money in trade and speculation.
It was not so much the treasure-trade with Peru that brought wealth to the citizens of Old Panama, for that was a royal monopoly that profited only the king—and the officials that handled it. Neither was it the pearls from the Pearl Islands, nor the gold from the struggling placer-mines in Veragua. For a short time there was a profitable trade with the Philippines, soon stopped by a foolish royal decree. But what really profited the Isthmian merchants was the trade in smuggled goods.
Foreigners were strictly forbidden to trade with the Spanish colonies, and when the yearly plate-fleet came to Porto Bello, it was supposed to bring only homemade goods. But Spain has never been a great manufacturing country, and the company which had the monopoly of that trade usually sent only one small ship load. So when each of the other vessels sent ashore her sails to make a great booth for the busy weeks of the "Galleon Fair," there were more things sold than ever saw Spain or paid duty to the king. Every once in a while, the Spanish government would make an attempt to stop this free-trading by savagely attacking the foreign traders. So they had stirred up Sir Francis Drake against them, and now they were to rouse the bucaneers.
These were men of all nations, but principally English, French, and Dutch, who made a living hunting the wild cattle, descendants of stock introduced by the first Spanish discoverers, in the West Indian islands. They cured or dried the beef over a bed of live coals, after a fashion taught them by the Indians, and called by the French boucan, and from this they became known as the "boucaniers" or "bucaneers." When the Spaniards tried to drive them away by killing off the wild cattle, these fierce cowboys of the sea began to hunt the Spaniards. Paddling up astern of a becalmed galleon in their dug-out canoes, the bucaneers would put an ounce ball from one of their long, heavy muskets into every head that showed at a port-hole or over the rail; then, wedging the rudder fast, they would swarm on board with knife and cutlass. Soon they were capturing Spanish ships of war and cities, and they helped the British government under Cromwell turn the island of Jamaica from a Spanish into an English colony. The city of Port Royal, in that island, became their headquarters, and it was from there that they followed Henry Morgan to Porto Bello and Old Panama.
Henry Morgan was the son of a Welsh farmer. He ran away to sea as a boy, joined the bucaneers, and by his great skill both as a sailor and a fighter, became their leader. Like Sir Francis Drake's, his exploits are too many to be told here, but unlike Drake, who was of a noble and generous nature and fought like an honorable soldier, Harry Morgan was a greedy, bloodthirsty pirate. His men hated him, but they followed him, for he always led them to victory.
Sailing quietly up to a spot near Porto Bello, one dark night in 1669, Morgan landed with four hundred and sixty bucaneers, and before the garrison could take alarm, the town and all the castles but one were in his hands. This last fort was defended valiantly, from dawn till noon, when Morgan forced some captured priests and nuns to place scaling-ladders against the wall, knowing the Spaniards would not fire on them. So the bucaneers captured the fort and put all within it to the
A BUCANEER.
sword, the brave commander having refused to accept quarter. After plundering the city and torturing the inhabitants, Morgan sailed away; but first he answered the governor of Panama, who sent a man under a flag of truce, to ask him with what sort of weapons his men had captured so strong a city. Morgan gave the messenger a pistol and a few small bullets, as a sample or "slender pattern," with the word that he would himself come to Panama and take them back within a twelvemonth.
Next year the advance forces of the bucaneers, four hundred strong, under Captain Bradley, landed near the mouth of the Chagres and attacked Fort San Lorenzo. Here double walls of palisades, filled in with earth, ran round the top of a steep hill. Outside was a ditch, inside were heavy cannon and a picked garrison of Spanish regulars. They beat off the first assaults with great loss to the bucaneers, one of whom was shot through the body by an Indian bowman in the fort. Pulling out the arrow, the plucky pirate wrapped a bit of cotton round it, rammed it into his musket and fired it back. Set on fire by the powder, the burning arrow fell on a palm-thatched roof, and before the Spaniards could put it out, the powder-magazine had exploded and the castle was all ablaze. As the palisades burned, the earthworks crumbled into the ditch, and the bucaneer marksmen easily picked off the soldiers from the darkness of the jungle. When Fort San Lorenzo was stormed next morning, not a single officer and only thirty soldiers, twenty of whom were badly wounded, were left alive out of a garrison of three hundred and fourteen men. No place was ever defended more gallantly.
Morgan came in with his fleet and after placing garrisons both here and at Porto Bello, he started up the Chagres River with a picked force of fourteen hundred men. Very foolishly, they took only enough provisions to last two days. The Spaniards retreated before them, devastating the country, and for nine terrible days the bucaneers struggled on, eating their leather belts, grass, leaves, or anything that would fill their stomachs. Two hundred died of starvation or were shot by hostile Indians,
ARMS OF THE OLD CITY OF
PANAMA.
Granted by royal decree, September 15th, 1521. In 1581, the city was given the title of "Very noble and very loyal."
but the rest won through to the hill, called ever since the "Hill of the Bucaneers," from which they caught their first glimpse of Old Panama.
The city had been steadily growing until 1640, when it contained seven hundred and fifty houses with eight thousand inhabitants, about a quarter of whom were white. Four years later, a great fire destroyed most of the town, including the cathedral, and if we make no allowance for this setback, the former rate of increase would give us, by the end of 1670, about ten thousand inhabitants, and a thousand houses of all sorts. Among these was a splendid new stone cathedral, dedicated only five years before Morgan came.
For the defense of the city, the governor, Don Juan Perez de Guzman, mustered a force of four hundred cavalry, and twenty-four infantry companies of one hundred men each. This must have called out virtually every able-bodied white man and free mulatto and negro in Old Panama, for they could not have armed the slaves without turning them into Cimaroons. The best of the regular troops had been lost at Fort San Lorenzo, and the bulk of de Guzman's force was raw militia, many of the infantry being armed with fowling-pieces or shotguns.
Opposed to them were twelve hundred veteran fighting-men, no longer weak with hunger, for the Spaniards stupidly let a herd of cattle stray in their enemies' path, and the bucaneers had a great feast and a good night's rest before the battle. An Indian guide led them away from the ambuscades and batteries placed on the Royal Road, forcing de Guzman to attack the English on the open plain before the city. The battle began at sunrise on the twenty-eighth of January, 1671.
The Spanish cavalry charged impetuously, but the bucaneer marksmen coolly shot half the squadron out of their saddles at the first volley, and soon scattered the rest, though they rallied again and again. An attempt was made to drive a herd of two thousand wild bulls over the bucaneers, who easily stampeded them in every direction. Nothing was left but the huddled mass of Spanish foot soldiers, inferior both at long range and hand-to-hand fighting, but brave enough to stand their ground until six hundred of them were killed. Then they broke and fled into the city.
De Guzman, after vainly trying to rally his defeated troops, blew up the powder-magazines, which started fires all over the city. To make it worse, many houses were set on fire by revengeful negro and Indian slaves. By the time Morgan's men had stormed the batteries that defended the bridges, a strong sea breeze was sweeping the flames through the town. Both the bucaneers and the citizens tried to stop the fire, blowing up some of the houses in its path and tearing down others, but by the next morning, Old Panama was a heap of ashes.
Morgan camped in the ruins for a month, torturing prisoners and hunting for treasure. He found much less than he expected, for a galleon had escaped to sea with all that belonged to the church and the king. After plundering the islands and all the country round, and receiving ransom for their prisoners, the bucaneers returned to Fort San Lorenzo. Here that old villain Morgan got the treasure on board his own ship and sailed away, leaving his comrades in the lurch. With this doubly stolen money, he not only bought a pardon from King Charles II, but became Sir Henry Morgan, lieutenant-governor of Jamaica, and a most merciless catcher and hanger of bucaneers!
Among the men deserted by Morgan was Jan Esquemeling, a Dutchman, who wrote a most entertaining book on "The Bucaneers of America." In it he declares that Old Panama contained two thousand richly furnished mansions, besides five thousand smaller houses. Now Esquemeling never entered the city until it was already on fire, and to any one acquainted with the facts, this part of his narrative reads like a boasting pirate's yarn, smacking strongly of Sindbad the Sailor. Yet on the strength of it, modern historians have credited Old Panama with a population of from thirty to fifty thousand and luxury
That far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind.
But the Spanish chroniclers make no mention of any such amazing growth after the fire of 1644; and the recent excavations made on the site by the Panamanian government show no ruins outside the quadrangle of fourteen hundred and twelve by four hundred and eighty-seven yards enclosed by the sea and the two creeks. Inside that space there is not room for seven thousand huts, let alone houses, after you allow for eleven streets, three plazas, and a sizable cathedral. To-day, the vine-clad shell of that cathedral's tower, the stone arches of two bridges, and a few bits of jungle-smothered wall, are all that mark the spot where stood the proud city of Old Panama.
