a fort was built near the western extremity of the island, at the mouth where the river formed the port, and above the fort, a town which has remained the capital of the colony." Another source says that in 1638 merchants from Rouen built the first fort on the northwestern shore of the island of Cayenne. In 1643 Charles Poncet de Brétigny of the Compagnie du Cap du Nord, or Compagnie de Rouen(fr), arrived with 400 settlers. He bought the hill at the mouth of the Cayenne River from the local Kalina people (Caribs) and named it "Morne Cépérou" after the Kalina chief who sold it. The first wooden Fort Cépérou was built on the hill, and a village was built below it. Bretigny was ruthless and despotic, and terrorized both the colonists and the indigenous people. He persecuted and enslaved the Kalinas, who responded by revolting and slaughtering many of the colonists. In 1644 a Carib killed Bretigny with an axe to the head. Twenty-five Frenchmen survived, but none left Guiana alive. Fresh settlement attempts (1652–76) In September 1652 the twelve seigneurs of the Compagnie de la France équinoxiale landed 800 men at the tip of the Pointe du Mahury, where they found the 25 survivors of the Compagnie de Rouen. Jean de Laon, a king' engineer, replaced the wooden walls of the fort with a stone bastion called Fort Saint Michel. The purpose was to guard against attacks from the Caribs across the river, and attacks by the English and Dutch. All of the settlers had soon been killed by the Caribs or had escaped to Barbados. Guerin Spranger obtained a grant from the States General of the Netherlands and established a Dutch colony on Cayenne Island around 1656. By 1660 there were no Frenchmen left in Guiana. In 1664 Jean-Baptiste Colbert sent a force of 1,200 to recapture Cayenne from the Dutch. The town was rebuilt with 200 huts, and had 350 French settlers and 50 slaves. In 1666 the English commanded by Captain Peter Wroth visited the colony of Cayenne but did not harm the governor Cyprien Lefebvre de Lézy. Cayenne was sacked by an English fleet under the command of Rear-Admiral Sir John Harman in August 1667. Harman's fleet destroyed the fort and the town of Cayenne. After they left, from December 1667 the Jesuit father Jean Morellet was the de facto governor until the