1713: the French attack on Curacao

Curacao, for those readers who aren’t familiar with the island, is part of the Dutch Antillies, and it is located some 70 kilometers north of Venezuela between Aruba and Bonaire. The Spanish arrived in 1499, and most of the native Arawak population had been deported by 1515. The Dutch captured the island in 1634 and subsequently fortified the island. Curacao was declared a free port in 1674, and the Dutch West Indies Company (DWIC) turned Curacao into an important hub for the slave trade as well as other forms of trade.

The War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714) involved, amongst many others, the Kingdom of France and Bourbon Spain fighting against the Netherlands, the Holy Roman Empire, Great Britain, and other allies. The year of 1713 saw Curacao under attack by the French, and more specifically a fleet commanded by the French freebooter Jacques Cassard (1679-1740), what seems to have been a fairly colorful character in the Golden age of piracy. Cassard came from a family of merchants in Nantes, and he began his career as a sailor at the age of 14. After some time in the French Navy, he became the captain of a merchantman, but he decide to embark on a career as a privateer when the War of the Spanish Succession broke out in 1701. He was quite successful and he was given an officer’s rank in the French navy in 1707, where his successes continued.

Cassard took command of a squadron of men-of-war consisting of nine vessels that had been fitted out privately in St. Malo and Nates in December 1711. He sailed off into the Atlantic, taking St. Iago on the Cape Verde Island before pillaging Montserrat and Antigua and ransoming Surinam. By January 1713, Cassard had been reinforced by six freebooter vessels commanded by a Collart as well as another three vessels from Guadalope. The squadron attacked St. Eustasius on January 25. The Dutch inhabitants scattered into the jungle, and Cassard obtained a small ransom before setting sail southwest towards Curacao.

 Cassard’s squadron reached Curacao on February 1713, and he paraded the squadron before Fort Amsterdam. He discovered that the defenders had been aware of his impending arrival thanks to information from the governor of St. Thomas, and there were also already lots of rumors of possible peace negotiations between the Netherlands and France.

The situation was further complicated for Cassard when the flagship of the squadron, the Neptune, ran into a reef. The ship was lost together with much of the siege train, namely 17 field pieces and 1,000 mortar shells. Meanwhile, the Rubis is carried away further west by wind and currents. The situations seems to have been a bit of a mess, since Cassard doesn’t land his troops until a full twelve days later, when 560 soldiers, 320 buccaneers and 180 sailors disembark at Santa Cruz Bay on western Curacao.

The Dutch defenders number 800 men under Governor Jeremias van Collen (1675?-1715). The DWIC had appointed him as governor of Curacao on December 11, 1711, but he had worked for the DWIC for many years (as had his brother Ferdinand, the future mayor of Amsterdam, back in the Netherlands). The Dutch ranks contained noblemen, plantation workers, merchants, tradesmen, Jews, including Captain Mordechay Henriquez, Lieutenant Aaron Levi Maduro, and Standard bearer Samuel Gomez, and even a couple of slaves, but few regulars, so they were limited to delaying actions against the French. However, the Dutch were ready for the landings, and the French suffered some 50 casualties, including Cassard himself, who was wounded in the foot. He ceded command to the commanding officer of the Téméraire, Captain Anne Henry de Bandeville de Saint Périer. The French pressed forward, and on February 22 a pitched battle was fought against a Dutch company entrenched on a hill featuring the strategically located Malpais plantation approximately eight kilometers northwest of Willemstad. The French Captain Rutty commanded the center, and he was supported by Collart on the left and probably a d’Espinay on the right. Captain Rutty attacked the center supported by Collart, and d’Espinay was eventually able to outflank the Dutch, forcing the defenders to retreat into Willemstad. Bandeville took Otrobanda, immediately to the west of Willemstad, and deployed three small mortars, but they did not pose a threat to Willemstad, which was also protected by three Dutch vessels anchored in the harbor. The French did wreak havoc on the unguarded plantations of Curacao, and several slaves joined the French. After few days of rampage, Bandeville sent an emissary under a flag of truce, probably on February 27, to propose terms. Governor van Collen negotiated for several more days, and a truce was decided upon on March 3. The French were to leave Curacao without further pillaging in exchange for a ransom of 115 000 Spanish pesos. The war ended with the Treaty of Utrecht on April 11, 1713, but Cassard returned to France with a loot worth between nine and ten million francs. Cassard's exploits won him the Order of Saint Louis.

After the end of the war in 1713, Cassard started numerous trials to obtain payments. He retired in 1731, but jealousy from fellow aristocrats and his own impudence made his life quite difficult. Jacques Cassard was declared insane in 1736 after insulting the Cardinal de Fleury, and detained in Ham, where he died four years later. 

Jacques Cassard by Pierren - Photographed in Histoire de la Marine française illustrée, Larousse, 1934., Public Domain <https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7544765>.

Sources

Mordechai Arbell. The Jewish Nation of the Caribbean. The Spanish-Portuguese Jewish Settlements in the Caribbean and the Guianas. Jerusalem: Gefen Publishing, 2002

Irmela Herzog and Vincent Mom 2019. Reconstructing the Military Infrastructure of Curaçao in the Late 18th Century. <https://www.chnt.at/wp-content/uploads/eBook_CHNT22_Herzog_Mom.pdf>

David F. Marley. Wars of the Americas: A Chronology of Armed Conflict in the New World, 1492 to the Present. Santa Barbera, ABC CIIO, 1998

Alphonse Rutten. Jacques Cassard et la pharmacie militaire à l'île de Curaçao en 1713. Revue d'Histoire de la Pharmacie Année 1996 310

E. P. Statham. Privateers and Privateering. Forgotten Books, 2017.