Francois L'Ollonais

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Jean-David Nau (c. 1635 - c. 1668, ), better known as François l'Olonnais, was a pirate active in the during the 1660s. In his 1684 account The History of the Buccaneers of America, notes l'Olonnais' place of birth as being .

In One Piece, his name is the basis for Roronoa Zoro.

[edit] Early life

L'Olonnais first arrived in the Caribbean as an during the 1650s. By 1660, his indenture was complete and he began to wander the various islands, before finally arriving in and becoming a , preying in its vicinity on shipping from the and .

A year or two (dates regarding l'Olonnais are at best sketchy) into his piratical career, l'Olonnais was near , in . A party of Spanish soldiers attacked l'Olonnais and his crew, killing almost the entire party. L'Olonais himself survived by covering himself in the of others and hiding amongst the dead. After the Spaniards departed, l'Olonnais, with the assistance of some , escaped and made his way to . Shortly after this, he and his crew held a town hostage, demanding a from its Spanish rulers. The governor of sent a ship to kill l'Olonnais' party, but l'Olonnais captured and beheaded the entire crew save one, whom he spared so that a message could be delivered to Havana. In the message, l'Olonnais declared: I shall never henceforward give quarter to any Spaniard whatsoever.

[edit] The sacking of Maracaibo

In 1667, l'Olonnais sailed from Tortuga with a fleet of eight ships and a crew of six hundred pirates to sack . En route, l'Olonnais crossed paths with a Spanish treasure ship, which he captured, along with its rich cargo of , and more than 40,000 .

At the time, the entrance to (and thus the city itself) was defended by a of sixteen guns that was thought to be impregnable. L'Olonnais approached it from its undefended landward side and took it. He then proceeded to pillage the city, but found that most of the residents had fled and that their gold had been hidden. L'Olonnais' men tracked down the residents and them until they revealed the location of their possessions. They also seized the fort's and demolished most of the town's defence walls to ensure that a hasty retreat was possible.

L'Olonnais himself was an expert torturer, and his techniques included slicing portions of flesh off the victim with a sword, burning them alive, or "woolding", which involved tying knotted rope around the victim's head until their were forced out.

Over the following two months, l'Olonnais and his men raped, pillaged and eventually burned much of Maracaibo before moving south to , on the southern shore of . Despite being outnumbered, the pirates slaughtered Gibraltar's of 500 soldiers and held the city for ransom. Despite the payment of the ransom (20,000 pieces of eight and five hundred ), l'Olonnais continued to ransack the city, acquiring a total of 260,000 pieces of eight, gems, , as well as a number of slaves. The damage l'Olonnais inflicted upon Gibraltar was so great that the city, formerly a major centre for the exportation of cacao, nearly ceased to exist by 1680.

Word of his attack on Maracaibo and Gibraltar reached Tortuga, and l'Olonnais earned a reputation for his ferocity and cruelty and he was given the "Bane of the Spaniards" (: ). Seven hundred pirates enlisted with him when he mounted his next expedition, this time to the mainland, later that year. After pillaging , l'Olonnais was ambushed by a large force of Spanish soldiers en route to . Only narrowly escaping with his life, l'Olonnais captured two Spaniards. Exquemelin wrote:

"He drew his cutlass, and with it cut open the breast of one of those poor Spaniards, and pulling out his heart with his sacrilegious hands, began to bite and gnaw it with his teeth, like a ravenous wolf, saying to the rest: I will serve you all alike, if you show me not another way."

Horrified, the surviving Spaniard showed l'Olonnais a clear route. However, l'Olonnais and the few men still surviving were repelled, and retreated back to their ship. They ran aground on a in the coasts of Darien, province on Panamá, and, unable to dislodge their craft, headed inland to find food, but were captured by Kuna's Tribe in , and he was eaten by the . Exquemelin wrote that the natives:

"tore him in pieces alive, throwing his body limb by limb into the fire and his ashes into the air; to the intent no trace nor memory might remain of such an infamous, inhuman creature."