Minutes – De Pas Feuquieres

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Minutes – De Pas Feuquieres (at Martinique) - 12 July 1719

Minutes – De Pas Feuquieres - 12 July 1719

Secrétariat d'État à la Marine - Correspondance à l'arrivée en provenance de la Martinique 1717-1727 : Feuquières (François de Pas de Mazencourt, marquis de), gouverneur général des îles du Vent ◾ Correspondance ◦ Feuquières (François de Pas de Mazencourt, marquis de), gouverneur général des îles du Vent, et Besnard (Charles), intendant des îles du Vent ◦ 1719

12 juillet 1719

FR ANOM COL C8A 26 F° 96

Content Overview

Judgment against Sieur Lépine La Rapiere; they solicit the clemency of the king in favor of the condemned; registration of the new amnesty granted to the pirates; arrival of the Felicite, of Calais, Captain François Loiseau, coming from Cape Verde where he was plundered by a pirate; the Marie-Rose, Captain Etienne Le Tulle, was plundered by a Spanish corsair; establishment of a colony on the island of St. Lucia, of which M. de Saint-Martin is named commanding officer; the Venus will go to this island to confirm the taking possession.

feuilles 179-183:

As we have reason to believe, that Her Majesty has not given an order for the execution of the final judgment which she has ordered against the late Rapierre [criminal=pirate], only to make her feel the effects of clemency after she should have been informs of all the circumstances of this case, which is really serious and punishable in substance; We can not dispense ourselves with representing to the Council, that the Rapierre, having been more ignorant than of prepossessed intention of contravening the orders of the King, of which he has not conceived the consequence, appears to us not to be entirely unworthy of the grace which he dares to expect from his majesty. He has already undergone nine months of confinement, and that which he is obliged to submit to new orders as to what concerns him, to serve as a punishment for his giddiness and his confusion of youth on which he has had everything time to make healthy reflections. Thus we very humbly entreat the Council to be so kind as to intercede that it will be possible for him during the last six months of his detention, to have also the good fortune to have it loaded with the 1,000 livres which has been condemned to the King.

At the second session of our Council there was recorded the new amnesty of the King in favor of the pirates, and it will have been the same in Guadeloupe at this Council of July, as well as by the accuracy of Mr. de Feuquieres to send copies in all the islands of this government, and even to deliver it to all the masters of the vessels which navigate it, it is at this hour entirely public. The 3rd of this month anchored in Dogre Harbor the Felicity of of the port of Calais, about fifty tons and commanded by Captain Francois Louiseau. He left Calais on the 21st of March with the intention of going to the Isle of of Cape Verde to treat horses and chickens under a passport of S.A.S.* of the 17th of the same month. On the 27th of the said instant, at the height of Finistere, he was seized with a gust of wind from east to north-east, which broke the large yard in the middle, which had been re-placed and re-fitted; known as Cape Verde. On the 12th of April, when he landed at the said island, he encountered an English pirate ship** of thirty-six guns and three hundred men, who obliged him, or asked him for his passport, which was examined and rendered after many threats which ceased by the Captain's acquaintance with the second in command of the pirates, they contented themselves with taking from Lousieau a topsail, two pieces of rope, a greslin, a barrel of a hundred pounds of powder, eight water "anchors of life," sixty pounds of musket balls, three buccaneers, three chasseurs, and twelve pistols; after which they let him go, and on the same day he anchored at the Isle of Fire, or having spent six weeks in order to make his trade, he departed on the 12th of June with thirty-four horses and twelve chicks, two of each species have died in the crossing of Cape Verde in this isle.

On the 10th of this month, Estienne Le Culle, master of the vessel, Marie Noze, from this port, of sixty bariques [souls?], belonging to the Bastille, who lived in this town, having returned from the Spanish coast of the Trinite de Vent [Trinidad], where he went to fish from the Turtle under passport of S.A.S.*, reported what follows.

That the 3rd of the current, at the place of the said coast, called the great river, he would have been surprised by a Spanish corsaire of the Marguerite, mounted by about twenty-five men, and commanded by a Frenchman, Antoine, who, after having visited to see if there were no merchandise or cattle on their side, and having found nothing to convince him of the defended trade, did not fail to remove from him several ustensils, and especially two guns buccaneers, whom he promised, however, to return to Culle, if he wished to wait for him on his return from Tobago, where he was about to visit the English with whom only their nation was at war [War of Quadruple Alliance], and not with the French.

* Société par actions simplifiée (SAS, English: "simplified joint-stock company"), similar to East India Company.

** A vessel almost as large as Blackbeard's Queen Anne's Revenge.

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