Francois L’Olonnais
Jean-David Nau, better known as Francois L’Olonnais (1630 – 1669), was one of history’s most ruthless and feared pirates, whose reputation for brutality stood out even in age and within a profession where brutality was the norm. He had a particular bone to pick with the Spanish, and his relentless pursuit of that vendetta earned him the nickname “The Flail of Spain”.
Born in dire poverty in France, L’Olonnais’ family sold him into indentured servitude as a child, and as such he arrived in the Caribbean at age 15, to spend the next ten years of his life toiling on Spanish plantations. He performed back-breaking menial work in harsh conditions and endured such mistreatment and sundry humiliations that, by the end of his term of indentured servitude in 1660, he had a developed a burning hatred of Spain and all things Spanish.
Changing his name to Francois L’Olonnais, he moved to Tortuga, a French island north of modern Haiti that was a nest of piracy and lawlessness at the time. There, he joined its buccaneers and showed such zeal that within a short time Tortuga’s French governor gave L’Olonnais his own ship, a letter of marque authorizing him to prey on Spanish shipping as a privateer, and turned him loose. He set himself apart with a reputation for viciousness and ferocious cruelty in the treatment of prisoners, particularly Spanish ones – an expert torturer, he reveled in slicing off strips of his victims’ flesh, burning them, or tightening ropes around their skulls until their eyeballs popped out of their sockets.
Early in his career, he was shipwrecked off Yucatan, and while most of the crew survived to reach the shore, most were killed soon thereafter when Spanish soldiers found and fell upon them. L’Olonnais survived by covering himself in blood and viscera, and hiding among the dead. Later, he snuck into a nearby town which was celebrating the killing of the pirates and arranged for an escape back to Tortuga.
He resumed his depredations against Spain, and in 1666 assembled a fleet of 8 ships and 440 pirates to attack Maracaibo in modern Venezuela. En route, he came across and looted a Spanish treasure ship, which yielded 260,000 Spanish dollars, in addition to gemstones and cocoa beans. Arriving at Maracaibo, he discovered that the citizens had fled, so he tracked them down into the surrounding jungles, and tortured them into revealing where they had hidden their valuables. He and his men then spent two months engaged in widespread rape, pillage, and murder, and finally put the town to the torch and tore down its fortifications before leaving.
The following year, L’Olonnais led an even bigger pirate expedition against Central America, only for his men to get ambushed and massacred in Honduras. He was one of the few survivors who managed to escape back to a ship, but it ran aground off the coast of Panama. Disembarking, L’Olonnais led his men inland in search of food, only to get captured, killed, and eaten by an indigenous tribe.
