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The Golden Age of Piracy’s Most Terrifying Pirates

Khalid Elhassan March 7, 2025 16 min

Piracy - A Tortuga buccaneer — A Tortuga buccaneer. Wikimedia

14. The Terrifying Exterminator of the Spanish

Piracy - Daniel Montbars, better known as The Exterminator — Daniel Montbars, better known as The Exterminator. Barcelona Metropolitan

French buccaneer Daniel Montbars (1645 – disappeared 1707), better known as Montbars the Exterminator, earned his nickname and then some. One of the seventeenth century’s most feared pirates, Montbars became known as the Exterminator because of the excessive glee and bloody mindedness he displayed in killing Spaniards. Born into a wealthy family, Montbars was raised and educated in France as a gentleman. In childhood, he read of the cruelties visited by the Conquistadors upon the New World natives, and came to hate Spain and all things Spanish. Montbars joined his uncle in the French Royal Navy in 1667, and accompanied him to the Caribbean. There, his anti-Spanish sentiment grew in leaps and bounds when his ship was sunk in a battle against Spaniards, during which his uncle was killed.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.