Sack of Funchal by the French

One of the greatest calamities ever to strike this archipelago was the sack by the French Huguenots. The memory of the event no longer survives in local tradition, as do those of the floods of 1803 and the cholera of 1856, because it happened at a time very remote from our own. Yet the Madeiran chronicles and many historians of our country refer to it with genuine horror, painting it in the dark colours of the great tragedies and the most dreadful catastrophes.

The year was 1566. The fifth captain-donatary (capitão-donatário) of Funchal, Simão Gonçalves da Câmara, was away in Lisbon, and the captaincy was governed by his uncle, Francisco Gonçalves da Câmara. The Portuguese Gaspar Caldeira was one of the many traders on the Gold Coast (Costa da Mina) who dealt in the gold and other goods that the natives traded on the African coast. Having abused the privileges granted to him by the royal regulations (regimento), Caldeira had to take refuge in France, and all his property was then confiscated. Deprived of these exemptions and privileges and forced to live outside his homeland, he neither acknowledged his error nor sought to justify himself; instead, he swore to wreak the most terrible vengeance and the vilest of reprisals on his fellow countrymen. He knew of Madeira’s prosperity and the importance of its great trade, and he was well aware how weak were the defences that could be mustered here against an attack by armed ships. So he conceived the plan of assaulting this island, thereby carrying out his dark revenge and making good the loss of the property that the confiscation had taken from him.

In Bertrand de Montluc he found an excellent instrument for his plans. Montluc was a gentleman of the household of King Charles IX and the son of Marshal de Montluc, who left his name in history for the acts of heroism he performed on the battlefield and also for the Memoirs of his life that he wrote, which went through several editions. It is impossible today to know whether Bertrand de Montluc was already preparing to roam the seas on risky ventures of privateering and piracy when he met Gaspar Caldeira, or whether it was Caldeira who, knowing the bold and adventurous spirit of the French fidalgo (nobleman of the lesser nobility), led him to undertake that perilous enterprise.

Montluc had obtained Charles IX’s approval for the venture he had embarked on, but he concealed from the monarch his secret designs and the shady negotiations he had entered into with Gaspar Caldeira. He drew a considerable number of noblemen into his plans, chiefly from the old province of Guyenne. The Viscount of Jas was vice-admiral of this small pirate fleet, and also on board were Fabien de Montluc, a son of the Viscount of Pompadour, the Baron of Guitimeres, son of the viscount of the same title, and many other members of noble French families. They may not have known Montluc’s hidden aims, but it is quite certain that in those times robbery, depredation and plunder were fully justified in some European countries when crowned by acts of rare valour or by decisive strokes of daring.

In three large ships and eight smaller vessels, Montluc embarked about twelve hundred men, among them Gaspar Caldeira, Belchior Contreiras, António Luís and, it seems, other degenerate Portuguese as well. They left Bordeaux at the beginning of September 1566. According to Edmond Falgairolle, they were driven by a violent storm to put in at Madeira; but there is no doubt that their destination was this island and that their sole purpose was to rob and sack it, as indeed they did.

The author just cited says that Bertrand de Montluc, caring little for the leisure he enjoyed in France and weary of the intrigues of the court, had resolved to risk his life in African waters by attempting to found a fortress in East Africa, intended to protect French trade with those regions and with the countries of the East. He adds that when they reached Funchal and landed some men to take on water, they were met by the Portuguese with cannon fire, and that then ‘Montluc, carried away by his fervent enthusiasm and his great desire to make a name for himself, seized the opportunity to strike a real surprise blow and so affront the pride of Spain and Portugal, regarded at the time as the true masters of the seas’. The Madeiran chronicles and the Portuguese historians make not the slightest reference to any hostile reception of Charles IX’s subjects. Relations between France and our country were then quite friendly, and it is hard to believe that the Madeirans would have acted in that way, unless Montluc’s squadron appeared at Funchal in warlike array and with every appearance of true corsairs, as indeed they were. To understand the intentions of the pirate Montluc, it is enough to recall that on the eve of the day he assaulted Madeira he made a landing on Porto Santo (‘holy harbour’), unleashing all his fury on the defenceless inhabitants of that island. Moreover, the ferocious rage with which he attacked the city, the unheard-of cruelties he committed and, above all, the terrible sack to which he subjected Funchal, stripping it of its riches and loading them into eleven vessels, are eloquent and undisputed proof that this was an act of plain and simple piracy, and never a reprisal to avenge an injury received.

Gaspar Frutuoso devotes some forty pages to a detailed account of the many acts of violence and cruelty committed by the French during the sixteen days they remained in Funchal, in their terrible work of destruction and slaughter. Yet he does not give us a complete overall picture of that horrifying assault, in which human beasts gave free rein to their cannibal instincts, turning a rich city at the height of its prosperity into a field on which a bloody battle might have been fought, where nothing remained but the useless leavings of the plunder of an unbridled soldiery.

Without going on at excessive length, it is impossible for us to describe those Dantesque horrors, which, as the ‘Longing for the Homeland’ (Saudades da Terra) says, caused ‘more evils by deeds than men can imagine, or words can tell, or Christians can believe’.

The pirates landed at Praia Formosa (‘beautiful beach’) at about nine o’clock in the morning on 3 October and at once marched on the city, entering it at two different points. At the Portão de São Paulo (St Paul’s Gate) they met stubborn resistance, and several dozen men fell dead there on both sides. Having forced this entrance, they made for the Fort of São Lourenço (St Lawrence), where the governor, with the forces at his disposal, resisted them bravely but had to yield to the seasoned strength and numbers of the attackers. Some pockets of resistance also formed in other parts of the city, but they proved entirely useless in the face of the fury and numbers of the pirates. Forces were organised in various parts of the island, ready to march on the city. However, persuaded by reports sent from Funchal that their presence would only further inflame the corsairs’ rage, they decided to turn back, leaving the corsairs complete masters of the situation.

In the assault on the Fort of São Lourenço, Bertrand de Montluc was mortally wounded. He was buried on the very spot where the fighting took place, and the Viscount of Jas succeeded him in command.

The sack followed, and for sixteen days the eleven ships were crammed with the richest and most varied spoils. Whatever they could not carry aboard was spoilt or destroyed. Thus they poured away thousands of pipas of wine and ruined thousands of arrobas of sugar. The contents of the wealthy houses, the silver of the churches and convents and the stocks of the great warehouses filled several ships. The damage those barbarians caused here is reckoned at some millions of cruzados.

The victims of the attackers’ fury are put at three hundred, some killed defending the city, but most of them savagely butchered by Montluc’s soldiery. Frutuoso says, and it is regarded as established fact, that a considerable part of the invaders were Huguenots. This readily explains the outrages and sacrileges they committed in the churches, not only sacking them and stripping them of all their riches, but also desecrating them, especially the images and objects used in worship.

From the fright and alarm caused by the arrival of the submarine in December 1916, one may fairly judge the panic and terror that spread among the population during the sack by the French.

By the time help arrived from Lisbon, the corsair ships had already weighed anchor and sailed for the Canary Islands, where they sold a considerable part of their abundant booty.

On 22 October 1566 our ambassador in France presented Charles IX with a forceful protest, demanding exemplary punishment of the culprits. Forquevaux, France’s representative in Lisbon, hastened to express his deep regret to our government, promising severe punishment of the criminals. Charles IX and the queen mother showed themselves extremely grieved by these most sorrowful events. Despite our ambassador’s efforts, however, those horrendous crimes went unpunished. Only the Portuguese Gaspar Caldeira was executed in Lisbon, because the same ambassador had managed to have him arrested in a fortress in Biscay, where he had been lured by deception. Some of Montluc’s companions were powerful and influential men in their own country, and many dozens of the attackers belonged to the most distinguished French families, which sufficiently explains their impunity.

The terrible sack that the people of Funchal suffered in 1566, briefly mentioned above on the basis of Gaspar Frutuoso’s narrative, is perhaps the greatest calamity ever to have befallen our city and some of its surroundings. It is regrettable that no rigorous and thorough study has yet been made of so sad and lamentable an event, as we have already noted elsewhere in this work. Simply as a contribution, we shall transcribe an interesting article by Stephens Gaselee, former director of the archives of the ‘Foreign Ofice’ in London, published in the Diário da Madeira (‘Madeira Daily’) of 9 February 1937, which is of some interest to this subject:

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I recently had the good fortune to acquire a diplomatic document that relates to this incident, and I believe that an account and transcription of it may interest the readers of the Diário da Madeira. This document, written on a double sheet of quarto-sized paper, is addressed on the back “Ao muito honrrado embax(ad)or Do cristianissimo snnor “Rey de França em cortte de Castela” (To the most honourable ambassador of the Most Christian Lord King of France at the court of Castile).

This message, about which I have something more to say, was presumably endorsed by the recipient, and the date it bears is not entirely clear – “XVI J I an 1567”. It also bears the impressed seal of the Cardinal Regent of the Kingdom (reino, i.e. mainland Portugal), later the Cardinal-King Henrique of Portugal. The text is as follows:

Most honourable ambassador,

By the treasurer Le Fevre I received your letter of the 26th of last month, and from it I understood that, as soon as you learned of the outrages that Captain Montluc and those of his company committed on the island of Madeira, you informed the Most Christian Lord King of France of it by express courier, and of the sorrow this news caused him and of what he ordered on account of it, all of which I saw in the copies of the letters and papers you sent me. I thank you greatly for the affection and love you show towards my affairs and for the diligence with which you informed the Most Christian Lord King of France of what happened on the said island. For I trust and hold it certain that, just as he, even before learning in detail of the great and many outrages and excesses that the said Montluc and his vassals committed on the said island of Madeira, to the great disservice of Our Lord and contrary to what befitted so ancient a peace and friendship as the King my lord and the kings his predecessors have always had with the kings of France, wished to make known how much it displeased him that Montluc had not observed what he had prohibited and forbidden him, and judged him a rebel and disobedient; so likewise, after hearing João Pereira, formerly ambassador of the King my lord, he will make such a demonstration in this case that the King my lord may rightly be satisfied with it, and the world may know that the mind and intention of the said Lord King are what should be expected of him. Written in Lisbon on 16 December 1566. The Cardinal Infante Henrique.

The text of the message is written in a good chancery hand in the fashion of the period, and the signature on the document is in the Cardinal Regent’s own hand. As is apparent from the text, this was not really the beginning of the diplomatic correspondence. Father Fernando da Silva says: “On 22 October 1566 our ambassador in France presented Charles IX with a vigorous protest, demanding exemplary punishment of the guilty. Forquevaux, France’s representative in Lisbon, hastened to express his deep regret to our government, promising severe punishment of the criminals.” The letter transcribed above is presumably the official acknowledgement of Forquevaux’s note, expressing gratitude and the hope that the villains would in future be punished (which in fact never happened, for with the exception of Caldeira the other corsairs were never punished).

But was Forquevaux the French ambassador in Lisbon? I doubt that he was, because this letter was sent to him “at the court of Castile”. The reference books at my disposal did not enable me to resolve this doubt, so I consulted my friend the Count of Tovar, of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Lisbon, who is well known as a scholar of Portuguese diplomatic history and has published several books on the subject. I think I may venture to quote here two or three paragraphs of his prompt and kind reply:

“In April 1561 a gentleman of the court of Charles IX named Saint-Sulpice arrived in Lisbon as French ambassador. I do not know how long he remained in Portugal, but in the list of French ambassadors drawn up by Caix de Saint-Amour (Recueil des Instructions, Portugal, p. LIII) there is an entry that reads:

1566 N., ambassadeur, envoyé par Charles IX. (1566 N., ambassador, sent by Charles IX.) The author does not cite his source, but he evidently found somewhere the information that in that year, 1566, a French ambassador was sent to Lisbon. Might this ambassador not be Forquevaux, who was in Madrid as resident ambassador and may have been sent to Lisbon on some extraordinary mission? If so, the mission cannot have lasted long, because there is a letter from him to his government dated Madrid, 19 December 1566.

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The hypothesis that he was also and simultaneously accredited in Lisbon as resident ambassador does not seem acceptable to me, because I know of no example from that period that would support it. If Caix de Saint-Amour’s note refers to him, it is to be believed that he came as ambassador extraordinary on a special mission.

And so I think the problem must be left, unless some expert on diplomatic history can shed further light on Forquevaux’s diplomatic activity in the latter part of 1566.

I intend to present the original document that gave me the subject of this article to the Regional Museum in the Palácio de São Pedro (St Peter Palace).’