Episode 478: Pirates!

of Europe and Asia. Czar Peter the Great of Russia and Saltan Ahmed the Third of the Ottoman Empire drew their mighty realms together for a brief but important prelude to the conflicts that we're going to come. This was not a border skimmish, I want to be clear. This was The Russo Turkish War of seventeen ten to seventeen eleven.

Was a brief but dramatic escalation in the long saga of confrontation between the Christian Orthodox Russians and the Muslim Mottoman Empire, each of which wanted supremacy over the contested lands of Eastern Europe and critically access to the Black Sea. Now, the war's spark did not ignite in Moscow or Constantinople, but in the fields of Poltava a battle, and we

mentioned a couple of times. That was when in July of seventeen oh nine, Peter the Great delivered a crushing defeat to Charles the twelfth of Sweden, a battle that marked a turning point in the Great Northern War. Humiliated and wounded, Charles fled with a small band of royal retainers across the Neper River and into Ottoman territory. What he wanted was two things, refuge and revenge. Charles presence at the Ottoman court provided a volatile mix, a restless

and charismatic figure. He constantly berated the Sultan and his ministers, portraying Peter as this growing threat to Islam, to the balance of power, and to the Ottoman Empire and its dignity. He urged Amid the Third to take up arms, not only to defend the sanctuary of an honored guest, but

to strike a blow against Russian ambition. While Peter was still entangled in European conflicts and the Ottomans frankly had cause to be concerned here, Russian influence was expanding southward into the Step and the Ukrainian lands, once ruled by the Crimean Tartars and Ottoman vassals. The fortress of Asov, captured by Peter in sixteen ninety six, stood as a

symbol of Russian encroachment toward the Black Sea. Now, with Charles the twelfth whispering in his ear and Peter's power on the rise, the Sultan was persuaded the time had come for the Ottoman to make a stand now. Peter, for his part, believed that he could cow the Ottomans into neutrality with diplomacy, but his emissaries, ill timed, over confidence and maybe just a bit too blunt, failed to ease tensions. When the Saltan declared war in late seventeen ten,

Peter responded with surprising boldness. Rather than wait for the Ottomans to strike, he led a Russian army of nearly forty thousand men into Madavia in the summer of seventeen eleven. It was bold, yeah, sure, it was also extremely dangerous. Peter intended to join forces with the Moldovian ruler Dmitri Cantemer, who had pledged his support and promised local supplies, but

the Ottomans were prepared and they moved decisively. Grand Vizier Baltaki Memet Pasha led a force at least twice as big, supported by Crimean Tartar cavalry and irregulars, and they were able to complet depletely encircled the Russian advance. By July, Peter's forces found themselves trapped on the banks of the Pruth River. The Moldovian countryside proved barren and unsupportive, and the promised provisions never arrived in sufficient quantity. Heat, hunger, disease,

it all racked the Russian camp. As Peter wrote in his letter to his wife Katherine, quote, our army is in a most desperate situation, with no hope but in God and in your courage. And it was at this moment, under the scorching summer sun, as the ring of Ottoman soldiers closed tighter and tighter around the Russian camp, that a really extraordinary event happened. Catherine, then still Peter's consort and not yet Empress, accompanied her husband on the campaign.

As the crisis deepened. She played an unusual role for a royal consort. She gathered the court's jewelry and her own treasures into a chest and then sent them along with a diplomatic appeal to the Ottoman busier. To be clear, this was a bribe, plain and simple. Babm Met Pasha, though poised for victory, remained cautious. His army had the Russians surrounded. Yes, that's true, but he feared prolonging the campaign because who knew fortune and the tide of war

could turn against him, as it so often did. He knew the train was harsh, he knew that supplies were short, even though he had more, and he knew that the Tartars were unruly allies at the best. Perhaps more crucially, he feared that an all out assault on Peter might provoke a broader European war. The bribe rich, generous and timely, offered a face saving way to end the standoff, and so on the twenty first of July seventeen eleven, the two sides reached an agreement known as the Treaty of Pruth.

The terms were relatively mild for the Russians, considering the fact that they were totally surrounded. Peter agreed to one, returned the fortress of Asov to the Ottomans to dismantle newly built Russian forts along the Nista River. Three cease interference in Polish affairs and abandoned his support for anti Ottoman elements in the Balkans. And four allowed the defeated Charles the twelfth to return freely to Sweden. In return, the Russian army was permitted to withdraw intact, and the

war ended almost as fast as it started. For Peter, it was a big setback. It was an ignoble retreat, true, but it had not been a catastrophe for the Ottomans. It was a diplomatic success, but with many, including the janissaries in Pallas faction, outraged that Peter had been allowed to escape, escapegoat was necessary, while taki met met Pasha was quickly dismissed, a casualty of internal politics and the

salt desire to deflect blame. True, the War of seventeen ten to seventeen eleven was brief and frankly anticlimactic, but it left its mark. The loss of Azov halted Russian ambitions toward the Black Sea, at least temporarily. Peter, chastened, but undeterred, turned back to his grand project of westernization and centralization. Catherine would later become empress in her own right, and the story of her face in the calm of crisis that the Proof became part of a romanov legend.

As for Charles the twelfth, he didn't go home. He lingered in Ottoman lands for years, a royal guest turned prisoner, before he finally made a dramatic escape. His crusade against Peter ultimately failed, and Sweden's time as a great power ended. And so the Proof campaign closed with neither a thunderous battle nor glorious triumph, but with a quiet retreat and

stack of signed papers. It was a moment of imperial brinksmanship and reminded all of Europe just how much things were changing, but how much at the moment they also remained the same. In the early years of the eighteenth century, France wanted to carve out a new empire along the twisting waterways of the North American Frontier. Was a bold vision for control that would link their holdings in Canada to the Gulf of Mexico and into the Caribbean, which

we'll talk about in a moment. It would be fought through a series of forts, trading posts, and settlements at the very heart of a vision would rise a city unlike any other in the French colonial world. Frankly, their only success, New Orleans, a city burn of mud, ambition,

imperial dreams, and Delta realities. Frankly, the story of New Orleans begins decades before its founding, with the voyage of Renee Robert Cavier Sieur de Salla, who was born in sixteen eighty two and journeyed down the Mississippi River and it's claimed entire basin for France. He named its La Luisiana in honor of the King Louis the fourteenth. Though Lassalle's efforts to settle the Gulf coast failed disastrously, he was actually murdered by his own man in a failed

expedition to Texas, his claim remained. In the years that followed, the French grew increasingly anxious about Spanish and English ambition in the region. The Mississippi River, they well understood, was the key to controlling the continent's interior, and its mouth would be the gateway to an empire. But holding that key would require a foothold near the Gulf, an output that could withstand storms, hostile powers, and of course, the perils of a terrain that's so swampy it's actually below

sea level. Enter stage left. Jean Baptiste le Moyen de Bndal a Canadian born officer and colonial administrator with a sharp mind and a tireless sense of duty to France, and he had explored the lower Mississippi as early as sixteen ninety nine with his brother Pierre le Moyne de Libertae, and by seventeen eighteen Bienville had become the de facto

leader of France's southern colony. He had established settlements at Mobile in Biloxi, but he saw the need for a much more strategic site, something farther upriver, less exposed to hurricanes, and better situated for trade in So in the spring of seventeen eighteen, Bimville made his decision. He ordered a new city built on a crescent bend of the Mississippi River, about one hundred miles from its mouth. The land was low, marshy and flanked by swamps and bayous, but Bienville believed

it offered three crucial advantages. Proximity to the river, access to Lake ponm train via Bayous Street Saint John, and bitfensibility should foreign natives threaten the Gulf coast. The site was therefore christened La Nouvelle Orleons, in honor of Philippe, the second Duke of Orleans, the regent of France during the minority of the now King Louis the fifteenth But there was very little that was regal about the land itself.

According to one French officer quote, the site of New Orleans is the worst in all of Louisiana, full of mosquitoes, snakes, and stagnant water. Still the work began. The early years of New Orleans were a lesson in perseverance. The labor was grueling. Much of it was carried out by enslaved Africans, who were forced to clear cypress groves, dig canals, and

haul timber and searing heat. Bienville relied heavily on enslaved labor, not only because it was cheap and durable, but because African workers brought knowledge of rice cultivation, drainage, and tropical survival that proved essential in a hostile landscape. The French also imposed labor obligations on convicts and indentured servants sent from rants. Some were debtors, others were prostitutes, petty criminals,

or political reasons. In fact, I did this in a book a couple of years ago Filais des Cassette women who were sent to balance the gender ratio of the colony and encourage permanent settlement, whether they wanted to go or not. By seventeen twenty one, the layout of the city had started to take shape. Engineer Adrian de Pager drafted a formal street grid, which today we call the French Quarter. It has sixty six square blocks radiating from

the Palace des Arms, known later as Jackson Square. The streets bore the name of saints, royal family members in prominent nobles chartres. Royal bourbon timber houses with pitched roofs and raised foundations began slowly but steadily to line the muddy streets. In seventeen twenty two, just four years after its founding, New Orleans became the capital of French Louisiana,

replaced Biloxi. The decision with both strategic and symbolic. New Orleans was now not only a port and military post, but he was the administrative and cultural heart of France's southern colony. The city, however, remained a precarious settlement. In that exact same year, seventeen twenty two, a hurricane devastated most of what had been built. Pauger himself died shortly thereafter,

likely from disease, but the colony persisted. Trade trickled up the Mississippian out to the Caribbean, Sugar, tobacco, furs, and indigo moved through the port. Slavery expanded, and so did the city's population of free people of color, Creole, and Native peoples who lived on the margins of the colony and its economy. In seventeen twenty seven, a French visitor described the city as quote an odd mixture of elegance

and decay. Were the scent of perfume mixes with that of the swamp, and the sound of the church bell's echo over the cries of the marketplace end quote. By the seventeen thirties and seventeen forties, New Orleans had begun to develop a unique cultural identity. It was a city of contradictions, Catholic, of course, but raucous, hierarchical, but very fluid, French, but already full of African, Caribbean and indigenous influences. Music,

markets and languages blended in the humid air. The city became a gateway for enslaved Africans, but also a refuge for some who found ways through military service, manumission, or skilled labor to rechieve freedom. New Orleans was still small, maybe only fifteen hundred people by the mid eighteenth century, but it was alive. It had become, in the words of one colonial official, a town born not of stone and law, but of river and rumor empire and entropy.

The founding of New Orleans was not a straightforward tale of triumph. It was a muddy gamble, born of geopolitical anxiety and sustained through the labor of the enslaved, the ambition of a colonial elite, and the resilience of those with little choice but to survive in its swamps and shadows.

But from that precarious start is going to grow, I think personally, the most distinctive city in the United States, a place where empire ironically once staked its claim and where culture would one day bloom in ways that the French court could never have imagined. To the south of New Orleans and the glittering waters of the Caribbean, where Spanish galleons once sailed heavy with New World gold. There were rows in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries,

a lawless brotherhood that haunted the seas. These were the pirates of the so called Golden Age of piracy. This was a ragged, brutal, and quite frankly, often misunderstood group of seafarers who struck fear into empires and fascination into us today. They operated in crumbling havens like Nassau, Tortuga and Port Royal, where the rum flowed and kings held no sway, where a man could become rich or dead

by the turn of the tide. Now, the roots of the pirate age weren't forged in lawlessness alone, but honestly throughout the building of empire. In the late sixteen hundreds, the great European powers Spain, England, France and the Netherlands waged constant battles for dominance over the Caribbean and the Americas. The Spanish, first to colonize the region, grew steadily wealthy on silver and sugar from the Indies in Peru, but they were stretched thin and their treasure fleets became tempting

targets for their rivals enter stage left privateers. These were state sanctioned raiders like Francis Drake and Henry Morgan, who sailed under the flag of their crown and had what was called a letter of mark. A letter of mark was kind of like, how should I put this a

navy on the cheap? So if you didn't want to build a navy, but you had a group of investors who had a ship and had some cannons, and some guys who weren't above slitting a few throats, you could give them a litter of mark, which is the right to attack the vessels of a country you're at war with. These men blurred the lines frankly between piracy and patriotism. They plundered with official blessing at least all their targets

were the enemies of the realm. But peace, when it came in the early eighteenth century after the War of Spanish Succession, suddenly put thousands of privateers out of a job. The crowns of Europe had no more use for them. Sailors who had been trained in violence found themselves unemployed in a region where sugar barons grew rich and common men starved, so they turned to piracy, not out of insanity, but as a means of survival and to an extent,

of revenge. Nowhere in the Caribbean did piracy flourish more than Nassau on the island of New Providence in the Bahamas. There, in the second decade of the seventeen hundreds, hundreds of pirates gathered and declared what became known, at least in myth as the Pirate Republic. They flew the Jolly Roger, answered to no king, and governed themselves with a code of conduct that, crude as it was, offered sailors more

freedom and more fairness than in merchant marine navies. At the center of this fraternity stood the names that we still know today, Charles Vain, the fiery Englishman who defied both kings and fellow pirates. Calico Jack Rackham, whose banner showed a skull above crosswords. And Bonnie and Mary Reid, two women who disguised themselves as men so they could join the brotherhood of plunder. But the most feared of all was a towering figure with smoke in his beard

and fire in his eyes. He was born by the name Edward Teach perhaps Bach, We're not sure, but history knows him as Blackbeard. Blackbeard first emerged in the historical record around seventeen sixteen, having served a deprivateer during the wars. He was tall and broad shouldered, according to Captain Charles Johnson, an early chronicler of pirates whose seventeen twenty four book

A General History of the Pirates remains foundational. If embellished, black Beard would weave lit fuses into his beard before battle, so smoke curled around his face like some demon of the deep. He captained a fearsome warship, the Queen Anne's Revenge, a former French slave ship that he fitted with forty guns. With it, he blockaded the port of Charleston, South Carolina in seventeen eighteen, holding the entire city hostage until the citizens delivered a chest of medicine for his crew. Yet,

Blackbeard's terror was mostly theatrical. According to Johnson, quote, it was a principle of his not to do mischief to those he took if they did not resist end quote. His was a reign of psychological warfare, where image and reputation did most of the work for him. Still, his defiance of authority couldn't go unanswered. When Blackbeard accepted a royal pardon and briefly settled in North Carolina, he did not stay tame for long. Rumors swirled that he resumed

piracy with the quiet consent of corrupt colonial officials. In November of seventeen eighteen, Virginia Governor Alexander Spotswood sent Lieutenant Robert Maynard of the Royal Navy to hunt him down. The final confrontation came near Aroca Coke Island. In a brutal hand hand fight, Maynard's men boarded Blackbeard's sloop. It said that Blackbeard took five bullets and over twenty sword wounds until he finally fell. His head was cut off and hung from the bow spirit of Maynard's ship, a

grim warning to those who would follow his path. Beard's death did not end the piracy, but it signaled its turning. By the seventeen twenties, the major colonial powers began cracking down with greater force. The British Royal Navy was deployed to the West Indies. Governors offered pardons to repentant pirates, and the ports that once welcomed the outlaw crews were slowly brought to heal. The dream of pirate freedom unraveled.

Many of the most infamous captains were hanged, Charles Vaine in seventeen twenty one, Calico Jack in seventeen twenty Mary Reid died in prison, and Bonnie disappeared from the record. Some say she escaped, others say she married and vanished into quiet anonymity. In the mid seventeen thirties, a golden age of Caribbean piracy was all but over. The sea was no longer a place of anarchy. It was once again the highway of empire at the age of Pirates

never truly died. It lived on, of course, in ballots and tails, told in taverns, and in the minds of those who romanticize their exploits. The pirate flag would slowly become a symbol not only a plunder but of liberty. Now. Of course, in reality, piracy was brutal business. It was

born of hardship, desperation, of violence. But within its ranks were glimpses of something new, something that was altogether more common in the New World, a place where people who were low born could rise, where slaves could win freedom, where women fought as men, and where empires could be mocked with impunity. The Caribbean, once choked with golden laden galleons, became the stage for this strange drama, and amid the poems and trade winds, the ghost of Blackbeard still lnkers,

his name spoken not in fear but in legend. Now, next time, we're going to start a little story arc as we get into what's called the Seven Years' War in Europe, or the French and Indian War if you're more familiar in North Amyerica. That's going to set the stage as we turn to our next major historical epoch, which will of course be the age of the American Revolution.