René Chartrand, The Armies and Wars of the Sun King 1643-1715 Volume 5: Buccaneers and Soldiers in the Americas (Helion, 2022)
René Chartrand continues his wide-ranging survey of military activities during the pivotal reign of Louis XIV. In this volume, we leave the cockpit of Europe for the turbulent Americas where regular and irregular warfare coexisted cheek by jowl. It is a fascinating and often eye-opening journey.
Chartrand sets his stall with a chronology of military events in the Americas through the long 17th Century. He notes that this theatre became an integral part of Louis’ imperial vision before narrating the background of French involvement in the Americas, where they competed with the Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, and English for control. Chartrand turns to the evolution of the buccaneers, men who were ‘left behind’ in the Caribbean islands then grouped together as the ‘Brethren of the Coast’ to form a powerful if ungovernable force. The Spanish, in particular, attempted to crush the buccaneers and were met with ferocious brutality in return.
We move on to the imperial power games in the Americas, starting with Louis’ ambitions in the Caribbean and Central America. Chartrand walks us through the early stages in the West Indies and Panama, folding the buccaneers into the international action. Then came the Dutch in 1674 with their powerful navy to fight the French in a war that lasted four years and saw several Caribbean islands change hands, though it was the French who came out on top. Chartrand’s attention turns to the ‘Peace’ of the 1680s, a term that did not apply to the Spanish as perennial targets of the French supported buccaneers. Their operations also extended into the Pacific region. France versus England and the Anglo-Spanish follows with King William’s War affecting the Caribbean in the 1690s. The French also encountered the Portuguese along the Amazon during this period. After a brief hiatus, war continued into the 18th Century with The War of the Spanish Succession. The intensity of the fighting from Florida to Rio de Janeiro is traversed nimbly by Chartrand’s episodic narrative style as he zooms in and out of key events.
The chapters switch from the narrative to surveys and analyses that read like extended appendices. Chartrand ponders the value and distribution of money before moving on to a survey of private and metropolitan forces in the Caribbean and the organisation of French marines, including uniforms and weapons, though just about every aspect of the soldier’s world is touched upon. The buccaneers are given similar treatment in my favourite chapter of the book. Surveys of militias and fortifications follow. The actual appendices cover artillery, maroons, and some aspects of buccaneer life.
This is easily my favourite volume so far in this Helion series exploring the Sun King’s wars. You could argue that there are two books here: there is action aplenty to follow in Chartrand’s engaging narrative section, and his survey of various aspects of the wars illuminates the narrative by digging a wee bit deeper into the soldiers who fought – his chapter on the buccaneers was very useful given how often they influenced events. The artistic support provided by Helion is first class too, incorporating contemporary illustrations mixed with excellent commissioned colour plates of some of the soldiers. There are too many jump-off points for further study in the text to list here, suffice to say this volume stands on its own as a worthwhile read and will spark many reading forays into the jungles and islands of the Caribbean region at the turn of the 18th Century.
