Anne Dieu-le-veut
Anne God-the-Wants
It is difficult to know what is veracious in connection with her. One knows
nothing of his origins, even less his childhood. It is believed that it unloads
in the island of the Tortoise at the time of the Governor of Ogeron which tries
"to stabilize" the population of flibustiers by introducing women there.
Obviously, as for the "girls of Roy" in Quebec, these women are not "fresh and
innocent couventines". They lived, they have the spirit of adventure and
probably left in Europe a past charged. For flibustiers, that does not take
anything less.
Anne would have become the wife Pierre Length, a French buccaneer who is the
founder of Port-François with St-Domingue. Very quickly, it is pointed out by a
quite square character. When Anne wants something, it as surely obtains it as if
God wanted it. From where its nickname. After the death of Pierre length, it
only lives on the island of the tortoise until the morning when...
... the legend takes the changing. Because the continuation of the history of
Anne God-the-wants is in my opinion a beautiful invention. But true or false,
the account testifies to the phantasms that the flibustiers have... or that the
chroniclers have who report their lives to us! At all events, Anne thus lives
only until the morning or one teaches him that celebrates it Laurent de Graaf
said "coarseness" about it during a drinking bout, the previous night.
Anne is annoyed. She will find of Graaf which ferments its wine in the medium
of the tavern. She awakes it with kicks and causes it in duel. Laurent draws his
sabre with the intention to spit it at once, but Anne God-the-Wants disarms it
of a blow of gun. After which, Laurent becomes again gentleman and supports that
its principles prohibit to him to fight against a woman.
What Anne answer: "If has midday you did not join me on the place, I will
return to seek you and you will see how a woman can split you the cranium". The
come hour, Laurent de Graaf makes him excuses rather... and asks it in marriage,
affirming that it will make him a worthy partner. Proposal that Anne accepts.
The two years which follow, one always sees it at the sides of Laurent de Graaf
on the bridge of his ship.
The superstition of the sailors wants that a woman on board carries bad luck.
Quite to the contrary, Anne God-the-Wants has the reputation to carry chance.
But one day the chance however turns. Going to the attack of a Spanish ship of
strong tonnage, Laurent de Graaf is killed by a ball. Half-compartment in two
pennies eyes of Anne. (What is probably an invention basing itself on the fact
that De Graaf died about 1704 in unknown circumstances).
At once, Anne-God-the-wants takes the command of the ship. Far from fleeing
in front of Spanish superior in a number, it carries out its crew to the
boarding. The combat is baited and the flibustiers are overcome. The men are
carried out and thrown over edge, Anne, wounded of one ball to the thigh, is
transported in Vera Cruz then in Carthagène, two cities that Laurent de Graaf
plundered a few years earlier.
At this time, the notoriety of Anne is so large that it is said that
Pontchartrain, Secretary of State to the marine of France, intercedes near King
d' Espagne and obtains his release. It is the last mention of Anne. Afterwards,
one does not know any more what it becomes. If not that it would have had a girl
(of Laurent de Graaf?). One day that an applicant insists a little too much with
his demand for marriage, the girl of Anne, causes it in duel for good to render
comprehensible itself: "do not be to You my kind. You measuring rods?!". Such
mother, such girl! |