The Raid on Nassau was a privately raised Franco-Spanish expedition during the War of the Spanish Succession

War of the Spanish Succession

The War of the Spanish Succession was fought among several European powers, including a divided Spain, over the possible unification of the Kingdoms of Spain and France under one Bourbon monarch. As France and Spain were among the most powerful states of Europe, such a unification would have...

 led by Blas Moreno Mondragón and Clause Le Chesnaye. The joint bourbon

House of Bourbon

The House of Bourbon is a European royal house, a branch of the Capetian dynasty . Bourbon kings first ruled Navarre and France in the 16th century. By the 18th century, members of the Bourbon dynasty also held thrones in Spain, Naples, Sicily, and Parma...

 invaders attacked Nassau

Nassau, Bahamas

Nassau is the capital, largest city, and commercial centre of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. The city has a population of 248,948 , 70 percent of the entire population of The Bahamas...

, the capital

Capital City

Capital City was a television show produced by Euston Films which focused on the lives of investment bankers in London living and working on the corporate trading floor for the fictional international bank Shane-Longman....

 of the English

Crown colony

A Crown colony, also known in the 17th century as royal colony, was a type of colonial administration of the English and later British Empire....

 Bahamas

The Bahamas

The Bahamas , officially the Commonwealth of the Bahamas, is a nation consisting of 29 islands, 661 cays, and 2,387 islets . It is located in the Atlantic Ocean north of Cuba and Hispaniola , northwest of the Turks and Caicos Islands, and southeast of the United States...

 at the time and an important base of privateering for English corsairs aiming to end privateering actions in the Cuba

Cuba

The Republic of Cuba is an island nation in the Caribbean. The nation of Cuba consists of the main island of Cuba, the Isla de la Juventud, and several archipelagos. Havana is the largest city in Cuba and the country's capital. Santiago de Cuba is the second largest city...

n and Saint Domingue's

Saint-Domingue

The labour for these plantations was provided by an estimated 790,000 African slaves . Between 1764 and 1771, the average annual importation of slaves varied between 10,000-15,000; by 1786 it was about 28,000, and from 1787 onward, the colony received more than 40,000 slaves a year...

 Caribbean

Caribbean

The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...

 seas. The town of Nassau was quickly taken and sacked, plundered and burnt down.The fort of Nassau was dismantled, and the English governor, with all the English soldiers were carried off prisoners. One year later the new English governor Sir Edward Birch landing in Nassau found the island so abandoned that he was forced to ship back home.

Raid

The officers from Spain and France, who viewed Nassau as a mutual menace raised a Franco-Spanish expedition of French boucaniers and Spanish soldiers aboard two frigates, one commanded by Blas Moreno Mondragón and the other by Claude Le Chesnaye. They surprise 250 English inhabitants at the capital of New Providence

New Providence

New Providence is the most populous island in the Bahamas, containing more than 70% of the total population. It also houses the national capital city, Nassau.The island was originally under Spanish control following Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World, but the Spanish government showed...

slaughtering more than 100, seizing 22 guns, throwing down all the fortifications and returning to Santiago de Cuba a few days later with 13 prizes and eighty to a hundred prisoners. Among them was the governor Ellis Lightwood.

Aftermath

The English inhabitants retired to the woods till the danger was over. Returning they found the island completely ruined and reduced to a desert, they found means to remove themselves to other settlements. England had taken to little concern in the affairs of New Providence, that they did not even know of the catastrophe which had happened. Edward Birch was appointed as new governor, but when he went to Nassau found it entirely abandoned; so he was obliged to return home without having opened his commission.
Another enemy raid in 1706 left only twenty-seven families still cringing inside makeshift huts on New Providence Island, and no more than 400 to 500 English residents scattered considerable distress from more descents during the remainder of this conflict, while their scant overseas trade dried up and no new governors or assistance came out from England. Birch saw the inhabitants without "a shift to cover their nakedness" that he did not bother to unroll his commission before taking ship back to England.
John Graves (who had come to the Bahamas with Thomas Bridges in 1686 and served for at ime as colonial secretary) reported in 1706 that the few New Providence survivors "lived scatteringly in little hutts, ready upon any assault to secure themselves in the woods."