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.

Fléau des Espagnols, "Scourge of the Spaniards", among the most ruthless and barbaric pirates to have ever sailed under the black flag.

As a child, born Jean David Nau, François l'Olonnais was sent from France to the French island of Martinique to work as an indentured servant. He served his time and moved on to join the buccaneers of Hispaniola. Gaining the favor of the French governor of Tortuga, Monsieur de la Place, he was given command of a small ship and set out to seek his fortune.

In the early days of conquest, his ship ran aground in a storm and his entire crew was slaughtered by Spaniards. He survived by smearing himself in the blood of the fallen and laying among the dead. Later, he snuck into Campeche disguised as a Spaniard, escaping with a band of French slaves to Tortuga as the city celebrated his death.

His reign of terror continued as he partnered up with other freebooters and recruited indentured servants, escaped slaves and transported criminals. While taking a Spanish town hostage, a ten-gun ship crewed by ninety men was sent by the governor of Havana to capture and hang him and his crew. The buccaneer captured two fishermen and their canoes and, with his men, snuck up to the docked ship, boarding it from both sides at daybreak and battening the crew below. One by one he brought them up to be decapitated until at last he came to the negro hangman, his appointed executioner, who pleaded for his life. He was thoroughly interrogated and then brutally slain. The last man was spared and sent to Havana with a message: I shall never henceforward give quarter to any Spaniard whatsoever.

He went on to sack Maracaibo and Gibraltar in the Gulf of Venezuela. Through murder, pillaging and torture, the buccaneer earned himself a reputation for his cruelty and depravity across the West Indies. Skilled in interrogation, his techniques included cutting off portions of enemy flesh, burning them alive, or "woolding", which involved tightening a rope around the enemy's head until the eyes bulged out.

During attacks in San Pedro, he interrogated captured prisoners involved in a failed ambush on his party. Driven to madness by one man's silence, he carved out his heart and began to gnaw upon it. Shortly after the incident, his crew defected and fled, his ship wrecked and it was rumored that François l'Olonnais was captured and killed by Native Americans.

In truth, his body washed up on the island of Shartak. The rest is bloody history.