ABSTRACT
Since we understand that because of your majesty's benevolence and clemency, happy events which befall your majesty's servants and vassals will afford your majesty pleasure, we have determined to render your majesty a brief and succinct account of the victories which this current year of [ 15]67 we in this little city have won over two very large corsair armadas, one French and the other English. If compared with the glorious achievements of your majesty's captains in Italy, Flanders, Barbary and other parts of the world, these victories of ours seem a little or a worthless thing, we entreat your majesty to consider that in its own way black jet is as fine as precious carbuncle, and if, yonder, others achieve great victories, also they possess a corresponding equipment of very good arms, very experienced soldiery and very excellent officers, and, what is more important still, they have nearer at hand the good fortune of Caesar, while this city, although rich and a source of much profit to the royal treasury because of the pearl fisheries carried on here, is nevertheless so small that its residents and transients together are not usually more than sixty men, inexperienced and lacking many arms, and, what is worse, far outside your majesty's thoughts. Therefore if these have undertaken and accomplished a worthy deed, their success must be attributed solely (p. 2) to God, the Victor in battles, and to the skill of our captain general, and to the desire which he and this city have always had, and have, to serve your majesty.
