Tortuga is home to some six hundred…
1638 CE
Tortuga is home to some six hundred buccaneers, or hunters of wild cattle, by the middle of the sixteenth century.
The Spaniards, harboring justifiable anxieties that Tortuga's increasing French colonists will one day invade Hispaniola, attack the island with eight hundred men in several canoes when many of the French are abroad at sea and others occupied in hunting.
After landing at Tortuga almost unseen, the Spaniards establish themselves on a mountaintop where, with the aid of enslaved men (black and white) and natives, they establish a battery.
The French meanwhile enlist the help of nearby buccaneers and filibusters, who land at night and attack the Spaniards just as the latter are preparing to launch their own attack.
The surprised Spaniards are completely routed, killed or driven from the island.
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