Henry Morgan Sacks Panama
Henry Morgan sacked Panama City in January 1671, the richest city on the Pacific coast of the Americas, and burned it to the ground. He commanded some 1,400 buccaneers from Jamaica under a commission from its governor, Thomas Modyford, authorising attacks on Spanish shipping and settlements — a standard instrument by which England waged war on Spain in the Caribbean without waging it in Europe. The expedition took the fortress of San Lorenzo at the mouth of the Chagres, then crossed the isthmus on foot in nine days through swamp and jungle, arriving starving, having eaten leather bags. The Spanish met them on open ground outside the city with a larger force including cavalry and a herd of cattle driven at their line. The buccaneers, many of them former hunters and expert marksmen, shot the horses and the cattle and broke the defence in a couple of hours. The city burned, whether fired by the retreating Spanish governor to deny the plunder or by the attackers. Most of the treasure had already been loaded on a ship that got away. Morgan's men extracted what they could over four weeks by torture, and he left with the bulk of it and a reputation for cheating his own crews. The raid violated a peace treaty signed in Madrid in 1670 that neither side in the Caribbean had yet heard of. Morgan was arrested and taken to London, was fêted there, knighted, and sent back as Lieutenant Governor of Jamaica with instructions to suppress piracy, which he did.
- Year: 1671 CE
- Category: Military
