The Sack of Panamá
Captain Morgan and the Battle for the Caribbean
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Captain Henry Morgan's capture of the city of Panamá in 1671 is seen as one of the most audacious military operations in history. In The Sack of Panamá , Peter Earle masterfully retells this classic story, combining thorough research with an emphasis on the battles that made Morgan a pirate legend.
Morgan's raid was the last in a series of brutal attacks on Spanish possessions in the Caribbean, all sanctioned by the British crown. Earle recounts the five violent years leading up to the raid, then delivers a detailed account of Morgan's march across enemy territory, as his soldiers contended with hunger, tropical diseases, and possible ambushes from locals. He brings a unique dimension to the story by devoting nearly as much space to the Spanish victims as to the Jamican privateers who were the aggressors.
The book covers not only the scandalous events in the Colonial West Indies, but also the alarmed reactions of diplomats and statesmen in Madrid and London. While Morgan and his men were laying siege to Panamá , the simmering hostilities between the two nations resulted in vicious political infighting that rivaled the military battles in intensity.
With a wealth of colorful characters and international intrigue, The Sack of Panamá is a painstaking history that doubles as a rip-roaring adventure tale.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his latest vivid and well-researched account of the great era of piracy, historian Earle (The Pirate Wars, etc.) focuses on the greatest achievement of the English corsairs who sailed to Jamaica and their leader Henry Morgan. The capture and sack of Panama in 1671 was the culmination of five years of no-quarter warfare between Spain and Britain in the Caribbean. During that time, one island was captured three times by different people; two cities and three towns were sacked; and Morgan's buccaneers annihilated a Spanish fleet in less than two hours. Earle's extensive use of unexplored Spanish records enables him to avoid the triumphalism of most Anglocentric accounts of these operations. Still, it's clear that Morgan and his followers were willing to accept almost any risk to make profit and harm Spain, and were vicious even by 17th-century standards. The Spaniards appear consistently behind the curve, ascribing their catastrophes to God's will instead of developing their ability to fight back. Ultimately, the English government ended buccaneering's heyday, to preserve a treaty that ended the war with Spain in Europe but hopes for friendly relations in the Caribbean were destroyed by the flames in Panama on January 28, 1671.
