The History of Cuba - Willis Fletcher Johnson

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      Spain was at this time gradually working her defection, political and economic. Philip III. had died in 1621 and, as he had thrown the responsibilities of the government upon the shoulders of the Duke of Lerma, so his successor, Philip IV., left them to his favorite Olivares. Olivares immediately renewed the war with the United Provinces, which were still a thorn in the flesh of Spain, for, on being freed from the Spanish yoke, they had plunged into feverish activity which portended their development into a maritime and mercantile power bound in due time to rival and surpass Spain.

      The Dutch were by the nature of their country obliged to seek their means of subsistence upon the sea and in far-off regions. Their famous son, Hugo Grotius, had been the first to proclaim the freedom of the seas as an indispensable condition to the growth and progress of the world's civilization. Since Lisbon had closed her ports to the Netherlands and Spain was imposing a series of unreasonable restrictions upon the navigators of other countries, the Dutch had for some time past been determined to discover a passage by which their ships could penetrate the seas of Asia. Dutch mariners who had been in the employ of the Spaniards and Portuguese and had shared in their voyages of discovery, had brought home tales of the strange lands and stranger peoples, which stirred the imagination of the ambitious and capable nation. The unknown continents and islands stimulated the scholars' desire for investigation and research. Exaggerated reports about the mineral wealth and other treasures of the New World had roused the merchants' spirit of enterprise and acquisition. As visions of the riches that awaited development in those foreign climes, and of territories they might once call their own, rose before the minds of these merchant princes and lords of the sea, the thirst of conquest quickened in this sturdy seafaring people.

      Step by step the Dutch followed the discoveries and explorations of the Spaniards, and recorded and described them minutely. From the middle of the sixteenth century on the publishing houses of Amsterdam, Leyden and other centers of the printing trade of the country sent out books dealing with the new continent conquered by their enemy, and especially the West Indies. Stirred by this reading, the spirit of the people rose and demanded a share in the lands and the wealth which their mariners had helped to discover. There was an abundance of unemployed labor and capital in the country. Hence the government, knowing only too well that the future of the Dutch people lay on the seas, encouraged this spirit and deliberated upon numerous plans of exploration and colonization.

      The first step towards a realization of these plans was taken when a charter was granted to the Dutch East India Company, which gave that organization the exclusive right to commerce beyond the Cape of Good Hope on the one side and the Straits of Magellan on the other side. As it recalled similarly privileged institutions in feudal times, when the rights of the classes engaged in trade and industry had to be protected against violation by noble lords, more properly called robber barons, the ideal this company represented appealed to the people. Statesmen of other countries realized its advantages and the Dutch East India Company became the model for the great trade corporations which eventually sprang up in France and England.

      But the East alone could not engage all the forces of the active little country. The tales of the sailors and the books about the Western Hemisphere made the people look more and more longingly towards the continent and the islands across the Atlantic. There unlimited opportunities beckoned; there was an outlet for their energies. But unfortunately the Spaniards had long before this established their claims in that continent and the men at the helm of the Dutch government were determined to keep peace with Spain. Although Holland's great pioneer of the "freedom of the seas," Hugo Grotius, refers in his writings to the great plans upon which the Dutch were deliberating at the time when Captain John Smith sailed for Virginia, no step was taken in that direction until two years after the founding of Jamestown. The voyage of Henry Hudson up the river that bears his name, and the eventual establishment of the colony called Nieuw Amsterdam, did not conflict with any Spanish interests and opened the eyes of the enterprising people to other possibilities in the vast new continent. Before long the ships of the little confederacy were found in many harbors all along the Atlantic coast. They discovered some little islands in the West Indies, which the Spaniards had not found worth while to colonize, because their rocky structure was prohibitive to cultivation. So they did not hesitate to anchor their ships in the inlets of these islands and finally made them a center of contraband traffic with the continent.

      The States-General of Holland still hesitated to grant a charter to the long-projected West India Company. But they found means to open to private enterprise almost unrestricted facilities for operation. On the twenty-seventh of March, 1614, they enacted a measure giving private individuals an exclusive privilege for four successive voyages to any passage, harbor or country they should hereafter find. This gave a powerful impetus to the enterprise of Dutch mariners and merchants, and also to adventurers of divers nationality. Finally on the third of June, 1621, the Dutch West India Company received a charter for twenty-four years with privilege of renewal, which gave it the right to traffic and plant colonies on the coast of America from the Straits of Magellan to the extreme north. The ships of the company immediately adopted the policy of reprisals on Spanish commerce. In the expedition of Pit Hein in 1628, which has been narrated in the previous chapter, the privateers of the company secured booty eighty times more in value than all their own exports for the preceding four years had amounted to. Dutch buccaneers became as much of a menace to Cuban ports and to the ships plying between Cuba and other countries as the French and British had been.

      The sixty years of Philip IV.'s reign proved a long series of failures for Spain. They would have resulted in serious disadvantage to the American possessions, and especially to Cuba, had not the immediate successors of Cabrera in the governorship of Cuba been able men who managed the affairs of the island with sagacity and foresight. D. Juan Bitrian de Viamonte, Caballero de Calatrave, a native of Navarre, was appointed head of the administration and entered upon his duties on the seventh of October, 1630. As auditor of the interior was appointed the Licentiate Pedro so who a few months later was succeeded by D. Francisco Rege Corbalan. One of the most famous religious institutions in the West Indies was founded about this time. A pious woman, known as Sister Magdalen de Jesus, opened a retreat for women devoting themselves to a religious life; it was at first called Beaterio, but subsequently became known far and wide as the convent of the nuns of Santa Clara.

      Governor Bitrian de Viamonte was neither strong of physique nor of personality; yet he discharged the functions of his office most successfully. During his administration was projected the construction of two towers, one in Chorrera, the other in Cojimar. The garrison of the place was increased and Castellane was made a respectable stronghold. He also organized the militia, creating six companies in Havana, two in Santiago and two in Bayamo. He had, however, serious disagreements with the Marquis de Cadreyta, and being something of an invalid and considered unfit to defend the island against the attacks of some powerful enemy, he was removed to the comparatively easier post of Captain-General of Santo Domingo. His successor was the Field-marshal D. Francisco Riano y Gamboa, a native of Burgos. He suffered shipwreck on the coast of Mariel while on his voyage from Spain and lost everything but his patents, but was duly inaugurated on the twenty-third of October, 1634.

      The precautions taken by his successor to insure an effective defense of the island were by no means superfluous. For as the power of Spain was steadily declining, that of the Netherlands and of England was rising. The establishment of the Dutch along the Hudson, their founding of Nieuw Amsterdam and their settlements on some of the minor West Indies, had brought the danger of Dutch invasion nearer than ever before. The colonies founded by the British at Jamestown and Plymouth had brought within reach the eventuality of having to guard the Spanish possessions against the British as well. Dutch and British navigation on the Atlantic was vastly increasing and the future foreshadowed conflicts of the interests of Spain and Holland on the one, and Spain and England on the other side. The Cuban authorities, wrought up and kept in a perpetual state of tension by their experiences with the buccaneers, had become morbidly susceptible to danger of any kind. The appearance of a foreign ship in the neighborhood of Cuban waters sufficed to fill them with the gravest apprehension, lest the stranger might harbor hostile designs.

      These apprehensions were justified, for the Dutch soon resumed their operations against Cuba. It was reported that Maurice of Nassau himself had set out with a powerful

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