During the XVII century, a peculiarly calamitous time for the island of Menorca.  It appeared as if all the adverse factors were conferring to attack the island, the tranquillity and the lives of the unfortunate islanders.  In the course of the years from the XVII century a succession of grave plagues on the country, together with prolonged droughts gave origin to a tremendous famine in which, if the rich ate rye bread rarely, the poor had to sustain themselves with herbage from the field. Furthermore there was the threat of the then enemies of Spain, which were England, France, and Holland, who wished to invade Menorca, as well as the pirates from Algeria, Morocco, and Tunis who plagued the coast of the island until their defeat on the waters of Lepanto (Lepanto is the former name of the Gulf of Corinth. In 1571, the European powers defeated Turkey in a naval battle at Lepanto, apparently ending this threat.) The outrage of a bad governor and a grave crisis in the public morality gave the picture a more sinister end.  Besides, there were many bandits dwelling in caves and in the ancient prehistoric places so abundant on the island, putting the lives and properties of the Menorcans in constant danger and perpetrating in desolate places all sorts of atrocities, frequent robberies and murders. The life of Menorca had a great resemblance to the American West of the movies, in which only the law of the gun was imposed. Today all these things would be seen as lies if there were not an abundance of documented evidence.