Born at
Calais during the
Nine Years' War (1688–1697) to a wealthy
bourgeois family, Levasseur became an architect after receiving an excellent education. During the
War of the Spanish Succession (1701–1714), he procured a
letter of marque from King
Louis XIV and became a
privateer for the French crown. When the war ended he was ordered to return home with his ship, but he instead joined the pirate company of
Benjamin Hornigold in 1716. Though he already had a scar across one eye limiting his sight, Levasseur proved himself a good leader and shipmate. After a year of successful looting, the Hornigold party split, Levasseur partnering briefly with
Samuel Bellamy before deciding to try his luck on the Brazilian Coast aboard a stolen 22-gun merchant frigate named
La Louise. He attacked many boats and ships on his way to the south of Brazil, most notably a slave ship coming from Angola, whose crew was abandoned to sink in their ship after it was robbed and damaged. He then abandoned 240 stolen slaves on an island off
Macaé (next to
Rio de Janeiro) before a Portuguese armed boat gave him chase. After skirmishes with the Portuguese at
Ilha Grande and
Ubatuba, where ten pirates were killed,
La Louise took shelter in
Cananéia for some days. There Levasseur was informed of a rich French merchantman in the nearby bay of
Paranaguá. While giving it chase,
La Louise was caught in a storm off
Cotinga Island and sank on 9 March 1718, with the death of about 80 of its crew. Levasseur escaped on a small brigantine that escorted his ship, and from there went south to
São Francisco do Sul, where he robbed a boat full of
cassava flour, in order to feed his surviving crew, sailing back to Cananéia. The pirates then sailed further north preying on ships again. Levasseur later reappeared in the Caribbean in June of that year in a smaller vessel that he had managed to steal on his way back from Brazil, but was almost captured by under the command of Captain Hume, and fled with much of his valuables to the Caribbean area in a smaller sloop. In 1719, he operated together with
Howell Davis and
Thomas Cocklyn (who had also served under Moody) for a time. In 1720, they attacked the slaver port of
Ouidah,
Kingdom of Whydah (on the coast of what is now
Benin), reducing the local fortress to ruins. Later that year, he was shipwrecked in the
Mozambique Channel and stranded on the island of
Anjouan in the
Comoros. His bad eye had become completely blind by now, so he started wearing an
eyepatch. From 1720 onwards, Levasseur launched his raids from a base on the island of
Sainte-Marie, just off the coast of
Madagascar, together with pirates
John Taylor,
Jasper Seagar, and
Edward England. The
Great Mughal's heavily armed but also heavily laden
pilgrim ships to
Mecca sailed these seas. Levasseur's quartermaster at this time was
Paulsgrave Williams, who had been Bellamy's quartermaster and fellow captain until Bellamy was killed in a storm off Cape Cod. They first plundered the
Laccadives, and sold the loot to Dutch traders for $75,000. Levasseur and Taylor eventually got tired of England's humanity and marooned him on the island of
Mauritius. They then perpetrated one of piracy's greatest exploits: the capture of the Portuguese great galleon
Nossa Senhora do Cabo (
Our Lady of the Cape) or
Virgem Do Cabo (
The Virgin of the Cape), which was loaded full of treasures belonging to the
Bishop of Goa, the
Patriarch of the East Indies, and the
Viceroy of Portugal, who were both on board returning home to
Lisbon. The pirates were able to board the vessel without firing a single
broadside because the
Cabo had been damaged in a storm; to avoid capsizing the crew had dumped all 72 cannons overboard, then anchored off
Réunion island to undergo repairs. (This incident would later be used by
Robert Louis Stevenson in his novel
Treasure Island, in which the galleon is referred to as
The Viceroy of the Indies in the account given by his famed fictional character
Long John Silver.) The booty consisted of bars of gold and silver, dozens of boxes full of golden
Guineas, diamonds, pearls, silk, art, and religious objects from the
Se Cathedral in
Goa, including the
Fiery Cross of Goa, made of pure gold and inlaid with diamonds, rubies, and emeralds. It was so heavy that it required three men to carry it to Levasseur's ship. In fact, the treasure was so huge that the pirates did not bother to rob the persons of the ship's passengers, something they normally would have done. When the loot was divided, each pirate received at least $50,000 worth of golden Guineas, as well as 42 diamonds each. Seagar died when they sailed to Madagascar to divide their take; Levasseur and Taylor split the remaining gold, silver, and other objects, with Levasseur taking the golden cross. In 1724, Levasseur sent a negotiator to the governor on the island of Bourbon (present-day Réunion) to discuss an
amnesty that had been offered to all pirates in the Indian Ocean who would give up their practice. However, the French government wanted a large part of the stolen loot back, so Levasseur decided to avoid the amnesty and settled down in secret on the
Seychelles archipelago. Eventually he was captured near
Fort Dauphin, Madagascar. He was then taken to
Saint-Denis, Réunion, and hanged for piracy at 5PM on 7 July 1730. ==The treasure==