l'Olonnais captured and beheaded the ship's entire crew save one, whom he spared so that a message could be delivered to Havana: "I shall never henceforward give quarter to any Spaniard whatsoever."

In 1666, l'Olonnais sailed from Tortuga with a fleet of eight ships and a crew of 440 pirates to sack Maracaibo in what is modern day Venezuela, joining forces with fellow buccaneer Michel le Basque.

At the time the entrance to Lake Maracaibo and thus the city itself was defended by the San Carlos de la Barra Fortress with sixteen guns, which was thought to be impregnable.

In 1667, after pillaging Puerto Cavallo on the coast of Honduras, l'Olonnais was ambushed by a large force of Spanish soldiers while en route to San Pedro.

Exquemelin wrote:"'He drew his cutlass, and with it cut open the breast of one of those poor Spanish, and pulling out his heart with his sacrilegious hands, began to bite and gnaw it with his teeth, like a ravenous wolf, saying to the rest: I will serve you all alike, if you show me not another way".Horrified, the surviving Spaniard showed l'Olonnais a clear route to San Pedro.

From here, he ran several operational attacks to Campeche, San Pedro Sula and Guatemala, and was trying to penetrate Nicaragua inland cities through the Nicaraguan river (now called El Rio Grande de Matagalpa).

Exquemelin wrote that the natives: "...tore him in pieces alive, throwing his body limb by limb into the fire and his ashes into the air; to the intent no trace nor memory might remain of such an infamous, inhuman creature".At some point before his death, he sailed briefly to Jamaica to sell off a prize ship.

In the 1980 film The Island, it is revealed that a secret enclave of pirates had been in existence for three hundred years, after it was established by Jean-David Nau (also known as François l'Olonnais).

Furthermore, his South American exploits might have been partial inspiration for the Errol Flynn character, Geoffrey Thorp, in The Sea Hawk.