Olivier Levasseur known as "La Buse" (or "La Bouche") was born around 1680 in Calais, he was an authentic pirate who scoured the Indian Ocean. He was hanged high and short on July 7, 1730 at 5:00 p.m. in Saint-Paul, on Bourbon Island (today Reunion Island) for his crimes of piracy.
Legend has it that when he was on the scaffold with a rope around his neck, he would have thrown a cryptogram into the crowd, exclaiming:“My treasure to whoever will understand! “Who received the cryptogram? No one can tell. Since that day, many enthusiasts and treasure seekers have followed in his footsteps to find his fabulous treasure, estimated by some at several million euros.
The Pirate's Story
Born at the end of the 17th century, at a time when the Royal Navy was hunting the last pirates in the Caribbean Sea, he was a stalker of women at a very young age, and it was these exploits as a seducer that earned him his nickname La Buse.
He received his first ship, La Reine des Indes, by paternal inheritance. Installed on board, he cruises in the Arabian Sea and ransoms the peaceful Muslim ships that go on pilgrimage to Mecca. Encouraged by these first packages, he attacked more consistent targets by arming himself more heavily, and using Sainte-Marie Island, off the coast of Madagascar, as a rear base. He then teamed up with the English pirate John Taylor, also based on this island.
During the month of April 1721, the two associates seized La Vierge du Cap, a rich Portuguese 72-gun vessel which was seeking refuge in Saint-Denis à Bourbon following the storms that were raging in the ocean. The ship was carrying Count Ericeira, Viceroy of the Portuguese East Indies and the Archbishop of Goa. La Buse and Taylor did not demand a ransom from the viceroy but kept the cargo as booty:rivers of diamonds, jewels, pearls, gold and silver bars, furniture, cloth, sacred vessels and caskets of precious stones, a treasure that historians estimate at four and a half million euros.
La Vierge du Cap, revamped and renamed “Le Victorieux”, became La Buse’s ship. Pursued by a flag commanded by Duguay-Trouin, Taylor fled to the West Indies while La Buse retired to Île Sainte-Marie on the eastern coast of Madagascar where he retired taking advantage of the clemency charter offered by the King of France to the Filibusters. But he spared himself a long time before submitting to this charter:he returned the sacred vessels, but could not bring himself to return the rest of the booty, a sine qua non of the King's clemency. For a time, four years after his capture, he even tried to buy off Governor Antoine Desforges-Boucher, but the plan failed following the mysterious assassination of the latter's emissary.
Around 1729, he was working as a pilot in the bay of Antongil, in Madagascar, he offered his services to the ship "La Méduse", of the Compagnie des Indes, which wanted to enter the port. Captain d'Hermitte, the captain, recognized him as the one who had several times boarded his company's ships. He was arrested and taken to Bourbon Island to stand trial. There, he refuses to speak to the new governor, Pierre-Benoît Dumas.
At the end of his trial, crossing the bridge that spans the Ravine à Malheur, he blurted out to his guards:“With what I have hidden here, I could buy the whole island. »
Here is an excerpt from the judgment, dated July 7, 1730:
Desire by the Council the criminal trial extraordinarily conducted and instructed at the request and diligence of the Public Prosecutor, plaintiff and accuser, against Olivier Levasseur nicknamed La Buse, accused of the crime of piracy [...]. The Council condemned him and condemns him to make honorable plea before the main door of the church of this parish, naked in his shirt, the rope around his collar and holding in his hand a burning torch of the weight of two pounds, for there, to say and declare aloud and intelligible that maliciously and recklessly he did for several years the profession of pirate, of which he repents and asks forgiveness from God, from the King. [...] Executed at five o'clock in the evening on the seventh of July one thousand seven hundred and thirty.
Signed Chassin - Dumas - Villarmoy - G. Dumas - de Lanux
The treasure hunt
The treasure hunt began around 1923 on the island of Mahé in the south of the Seychelles, in land by the sea belonging to a certain Madame Savy. This lady one day discovered carved stones on the edge of the sea, and while inspecting the surroundings she unearthed other rocks carved by the hand of man.
On these sculptures one could distinguish messages in sibylline language half erased by the wear of time. We could make out representations of animals:dogs, snakes, turtles, horses and shapes of objects as well as human beings:an urn, hearts, the figure of a young woman, a man's head and a monstrously open eye.
The following hypothesis was then put forward:these rock sculptures could be linked to ideographic, Indonesian and Pascuan writings, where the snake and the turtle are frequently found. But for the rest a question mark remained.
To find out more, excavations were then carried out and two coffins were discovered near the eye containing human remains, in which pirates were identified by the gold ring on their left ear.
The ideas joining together, we came to the hypothesis of a treasure. Made aware of this discovery, a notary from the island presented himself to Madame Savy, declaring to her that he had in his possession documents relating to a treasure buried in an island in the Indian Ocean and he was certain that the location of the treasure is only possible by comparing the documents he possessed and the signs appearing on the sculptures.
Unfortunately, this problem was much more difficult to solve than the notary had thought.
His archives consisted of a cryptogram which could only be deciphered from the Clavicles of Solomon, two autograph letters, a will and documents written in rebus or at least in initiatory writing which could be put in relation to Masonic symbolism.
These documents explicitly affirmed the existence of a treasure (see several) located on an island in the Indian Ocean. However, the name of this treasure island was not mentioned anywhere. This gave free rein to the most hazardous speculations.
The proof of a logical link between the different documents of the notary was not fully evident. Despite this, tradition linked the fabulous treasure of La Buse to that of Nagéon de L'Estang, known as “The Booty”, on the assumption that the two treasures may have formed one, by way of succession and theft.
The Cryptogram of La Buse
This message seems to be written in a "Pig Pen Cipher" type alphabet which is simply a monoalphabetic substitution that has persisted for centuries in various forms. This mode of encryption was notably used by the Templars. The decryption of the cryptogram gives the following result which remains relatively hermetic
AFTER I HAVE A PAIR OF PIJON TIRE SKET
2 DOORS QE SE A J HORSE HEAD F UNE KORT
F ILT T IN SHIEN TEU PRENE A UNE CULLIERE
OF HONEY LE E FO V TE FOUSSE N MAKE S AN ONGAT
METTE ONGAT ON KE PATAIE DE LA PERTOT OITOU SN
V PULE ONGAT OL VS PRENE A 2 LE T CASSE
ON THE WAY YOU MUST QCEUT TOIT A NOI TIE COUVE
TO ENPECGE A WOMAN DH RENG T YOU NAVE
RVA WILL SERVE YOU FOR DOBAUC GEA AND FOR VENGRAAI
AND PORE PINGLE OR EIUI LE TURLORE
IL J NOUR LAIRE PITER A DOG TURQ UN LE NENDE
QAMER OF WELL TE C I AND ON R A VOV THE NQUIL NI
SEIUD FKU A FEMMR QI WANTS TO MAKE NH MET SE
DETE SOUTH RE IN DU UI O OU QN SLEEPING A MAN
SSCFVMM/PL SHOULD ONLY RENDER UDL A FURQE DIF
Other treasure clues
In 1947 the Englishman Reginald Cruise-Wilkins studied the problem and discovered that the affair had a connection with the twelve labors of Hercules. Until 1970, he searched and dug in the Seychelles island Mahé. In a cave, besides old pistols, a few coins, and other remains, he found nothing.
Around the character
The pirate La Buse is at the center of a graphic novel by Lewis Trondheim and Appollo entitled Ile Bourbon 1730. In a very romantic way, the authors imagine the story of a young ornithologist passionate about piracy landing on Ile Bourbon for a few days or week before the hanging of La Buse.
In the film Captain Blood, by Michael Curtis, he is killed in a duel by the protagonist.