5. The Terrible Ordeal of Maracaibo
Once he got back to Tortuga, Francois L’Olonnais resumed his depredations against Spain. In 1666, he 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. When he reached Maracaibo, he discovered that the citizens had fled. He tracked them down in the surrounding jungles, captured them, brought them back, and tortured them into revealing where they had hidden their valuables.
For the next two months, the people of Maracaibo were subjected to terrible depravities by L’Olonnais and his men, who murdered, pillaged, and violated both women and men. The pirates 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, but they stumbled into an ambush in Honduras and were massacred. L’Olonnais was one of the few survivors who managed to escape back to a ship, but it ran aground off the coast of Panama. Disembarking, he led his men inland in search of food, only to get captured, killed, and eaten by an indigenous tribe.
