BART (Jean)
(Dunkirk, 1650-1702.) Sailor from a family of merchant navigators.
Jean Bart, is a French sailor, born in Dunkirk on October 21, 1650, and died on April 27, 1702. He is the son of Cornil Bart and Catherine Jansen (Jan Bart, pronounced Yann for Jan and the "T" of Bart, Flemish, as the Dunkirks of the time would have pronounced it). Jean Bart is a Dunkirk corsair who became famous for his exploits during the wars of Louis XIV for whom he worked.
* September 16, 1652 Dunkirk passes into Spanish hands.
* June 23, 1658 During the Battle of the Dunes, Turenne's army retakes Dunkirk from the Spanish. The same evening, Louis XIV hands over the city to the English, then allies of France.
* 1662 At the age of 12, Jean Bart, a British subject, enlists as a cabin boy on a smuggling ship. On December 2, Louis XIV, who had just bought Dunkirk from Charles II of England, entered the city.
* 1666 France was now allied with the United Provinces against England. Cornil Bart (Jean's father) is killed in the service of the Dutch in the attack on an English vessel. The crew of the Cochon Gras, on which Jean Bart is embarked as a lieutenant, is responsible for monitoring the English. In the summer, Jean enlisted as a sailor on Les Sept Provinces, a ship in the Dutch fleet, under the orders of Vice-Admiral Van Ruyter.
* 1667. The United Provinces fleet sailed up the Thames and besieged London. The English and the Dutch sign the Treaty of Breda. Ruyter entrusts Jean Bart with the command of a brigantine:Le Canard Doré.
* 1672. When Louis XIV enters the war against Holland (War of Devolution), Jean Bart returns to France and embarks as second on board the Alexandre under the orders of caper Willem Dorne, to practice privateering. The following year, he commanded Le Roi David, a galliot armed with two cannons.
* 1674. On April 2, he seized his first prize:a Dutch dogre. On February 17, England signed peace with the United Provinces, already allies of Spain. On April 6, Bart seized an English pinnace, on May 16 a dogre. That year, eight other captures completed the picture.
* In April 1676, he embarked on La Royale, armed with eight guns, with which he seized four fishing boats. Then aboard the Grand Louis he captured twenty-eight vessels. In September, France declares war on the Hanseatic League. In Hamburg La Royale is seized. The corsair was however able to return to Dunkirk.
* 1677. Aboard La Palme, a twenty-four-gun frigate, Jean Bart set sail at the head of a small flotilla of six ships, which seize about twenty ships. Aboard the Dauphin, a fourteen-gun frigate, Jean boarded a Dutch four-master.
* 1678. Off the island of Texel, the small squadron of four ships commanded by Jean Bart, attacks the Shiedam, a powerful warship of the Dutch fleet. Jean is severely injured in the hands and face by the explosion of a grenade, a cannonball takes away shreds of flesh from his legs. The Shiedam was nevertheless towed to Dunkirk. Aboard the Mars, a twenty-six-gun corsair, he still boarded a few ships, when on August 10, France and Holland signed the Treaty of Nijmegen, thus ending the Dutch war.
* January 8, 1679, Louis XIV appointed him a lieutenant. France, England and the United Provinces are at peace. Jean Bart is idle.
* 1681. Three frigates leave Dunkirk to hunt the Barbary pirates who haunt the Mediterranean basin. Jean Bart commands La Vipère, a twelve-gun frigate. He captured a few pirate ships, but soon they signed a truce with France.
* 1682. Death of Jean Bart's mother, a few months later of his daughter, and at the end of year of his twenty-three-year-old wife Nicole.
* 1683. France is at war with Spain, Jean Bart captures one or two vessels on the Mediterranean side, but the Spanish navy was no match for the French navy, and Charles II of Spain quickly signed a truce.
* On August 14, 1686, he was appointed frigate captain of the navy royal, and commanded La Serpente, a twenty-four-gun frigate.
* 1688. France, allied with Denmark and the Ottoman Empire, entered the war against the league of Augsburg which united the 'England, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Savoy and Sweden.
* 1689. In the company of Forbin, he attacked two superiorly armed English ships po ur protect a convoy. Captured, they are imprisoned in Plymouth. They managed to escape and reached Erquy after three days of rowing.
* In 1691 Jean Bart took part in the Offshore Campaign under the command of Tourville. The same year, while a fleet of thirty-five to forty English ships blockaded the port of Dunkirk, Jean Bart managed to set sail, at night, with seven frigates and a fireship. The next day, he seized four ships loaded with goods for Russia and two English escort ships. Putting his catches in the shelter of a port in Norway, then at peace with France, Jean Bart sets sail again to seize a fleet of Dutch fishermen and the warship that accompanied them. In the process, he again raided the Scottish coast, where he plundered a castle and burned down four villages. In France, everyone has heard of the exploits of the privateer, so Louis XIV invites him to court.
* 1694. The blockade of the League of Augsburg raises the price of grain, the traders speculate, France is starving. Off Texel, the Dunkirk seized more than a hundred Dutch ships loaded with wheat, the news of this capture caused prices to fall and put an end to all speculation. Thus Jean Bart "...saved France by giving her bread" (Cantata to Jean Bart). For this feat, on April 19, Jean Bart received from the hands of Louis XIV, the Knight's Cross of the Order of Saint-Louis.
* June 17, 1696, he won another great victory at the Dogger Bank on the Dutch, taking or destroying eighty merchant ships.
'a pleurisy.