From unexpected successes by sea the Buccaneers made bold to attack the rich towns on the Spanish Main, which they held for heavy ransoms, or sacked with all the attendant cruelty of their ancestral Berserkers. Panama, Granada, Gibraltar, every town or fort of note, fell before the resistless buccaneers, until the names of Morgan, Portugues, Dampier, and Lolonois became words of terror to the Spanish colonists. Yet it must be borne in mind that the buccaneers were not pirates. They warred against one enemy, the same which had for years oppressed them and their brethren, while the countries to which they owed allegiance were too weak or too indifferent to protect their distant sons. When the buccaneer degenerated into the mere pirate, none were more prompt than his late comrades to follow up and punish the Ishmaelite. Buccaneer Morgan, knighted and made governor of Jamaica, was the terror of the West India pirates, though the virtue of his motives may fairly be questioned.
To her buccaneers England owes the birth of her great navy, whose first fame was won in the rout of the Spanish Armada. They were buccaneers who first sailed around the world; they founded the East India Company, and were Britain's sword and shield for the defence of her nascent colonies. Neglect and indifference rewarded their deeds, until they had grown strong enough to protect themselves. Spain had her paid servants in the very cabinets of England and France, a policy which she has not forgotten how to employ in other lands and later days.
Because of a growing respect for the law of nations, filibusterism, during the grave changes of the eighteenth century and the lull before the storm of the American revolutions, slumbered once again.
The American revolution meant the people defending its rights; the French revolution meant the people avenging its wrongs. Each was successful; both taught an undying lesson to humanity. Free America, with wise selfishness, aimed to assure and bequeath her liberty; Republican France, with loftier if less practical aims, sought to carry the gospel of freedom to all nations. She failed only when she yielded her dearly won liberty to the seduction of martial glory. Napoleon, the child of the people, became a parricide, and usurped the place of the fallen trinity--Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.