Jacques de Sores

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Jacques de Sores
Huguenot
pirates

Jacques de Sores was a French

pirate and corsair who attacked and burnt Havana, Cuba
in 1555.

Other than his attack on Havana, little is known of de Sores. He was nicknamed "The Exterminating Angel" ("L'Ange Exterminateur").

François Le Clerc, who was called "Pegleg" or "Jambe de Bois" on account of his wooden leg.[1] Le Clerc and Sores had set out from France in 1553 with three royal ships and a number of privateers under commission from Francis I of France who was envious of the riches returning to Spain from the New World. Le Clerc had raided Santiago de Cuba in 1554, and some accounts mention a raid on Santiago de Cuba by de Sores, although whether this was as part of the attack by Le Clerc is not clear. He may have used Cayo Romano and Cayo Coco in the archipelago of Jardines del Rey
adjacent to the northern Cuban coast as a base of operations.

Details of the attack on Havana are also sketchy: the number of ships that de Sores used in the attack varies in different accounts from 2 to 20. Regardless of the number of ships involved, de Sores had little trouble in capturing the lightly defended town. Most accounts make it clear that he was expecting to find stores of gold in the town, while some claim he ransomed important members of the population. All agree that whatever his intention he was frustrated: he did not find vast reserves of gold in the city, and if he ransomed the population the ransom was mostly not paid. He destroyed the fortress of La Fuerza Vieja in today's Calle Tacón and burnt most of the town. He also burnt the shipping in the harbour and laid waste to much of the surrounding countryside, and seems to have found time to organise a play "to insult the pope".

Castillo de San Salvador de la Punta
were built on opposite sides of the entrance to Havana harbour.

The vision of Saint Teresa of Ávila of the Forty Martyrs of Brazil, the capture of the São Tiago is depicted below.

On the morning of 15 July 1570, off

dismembered[2] and threw their bodies into the sea off Tazacorte - crosses on the sea floor still mark the site at Malpique today. Inácio de Azevedo was one of the Forty Martyrs of Brazil [fr], beatified by Pope Pius IX
in 1854.

See also
  • France-Americas relations

Notes

  1. ^ a b c "Les anges noirs de la liberté" (in French). Géo. July 2001. Archived from the original on 10 January 2007. Retrieved 20 March 2007.
  2. ^ a b c Saturnino Monteiro, Armando da Silva (1996). Batalhas e Combates da Marinha Portuguesa (PDF) (in Portuguese). Lisbon: Livraria Sá da Costa. p. 325.

References

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