Though he mainly went by the name of 'Gabriel Milan', he identified himself as "Don Franco de Tebary Cordova" in his correspondence with King Frederick III of Denmark-Norway.
[4] Milan was first married to the daughter of Benjamin Musaphia, a Jewish scholar and author of a number of scientific works regarding archaeology, Semite philology, and alchemy.
In this capacity, Milan composed reports on political and commercial matters, which afforded him confidential relations with various important people at the Danish Court.
[7] The recommendation, dated March 14, was signed by the executive committee of the directors, consisting of Albert Gyldensparre, a brother of the disgraced Count Griffenfeld; Abraham Wüst, later to become a member of the Board of Trade; and Edward Holst.
[8] To take the new governorship and his retinue over to the West Indies, the King set aside the warship Fortuna, armed with forty guns, and provided the ship with a crew of eighty men.
Milan brought his family (his wife; his grown son, Felix; and his other four children), a governess, three maids, three lackeys and laborer, and a Tartar.
Captain Meyer was entrusted with the secret order directing that, in case of Milan's death, Lassen would succeed him as the Governor.
[10] Milan tried in vain to get an appointment to the Board of Trade on the ground that he knew the tricks of traders and money-changers, and he accumulated a list of claims against his royal master for services rendered in the Netherlands—from espionage to loans of money—which he had small chance of collecting in cash.
His prospects of getting into the employ of the state were improved when, on January 18, 1682, he secured a certificate showing that he had discussed with a Hamburg Lutheran minister the relative merits of Catholicism and Protestantism, and thereby become convinced of the truth of the Augsburg Confession, and partook of the Holy Communion.
However praiseworthy the King's selection of this 53-year-old soldier of fortune for service in the company might have been from motives of humanity, his choice could scarcely have been looked upon by hard-headed business men with anything but misgivings.
This was shown clearly enough two months before the latter's arrival, when, on May 22, a Spanish captain, Antonio Martino, landed and carried fifty-six slaves off to Hispaniola or Haiti.
Instead of sending his deposed predecessor back to Copenhagen to answer for his stewardship over the company's affairs, and to act as defendant in a suit brought by his brother Nicholas, he clapped him into confinement, first keeping him at the fort as his guest, but later putting him in a prison cell.
By this time, matters had grown rather beyond her power of control despite all her influential friends and her genius for intrigue, so she confined herself to taking measures to save what she could of the family property.
The story of how Governor Milan, his sick body racked with fever almost from the first, restlessly suspicious and ofttimes with reason of his fellow men, jealous of his official power and position, administered the affairs of St. Thomas during his sixteen months' incumbency may be dealt with rather briefly.
In place of Lieutenant Heins, who happened to be absent on the company's business when Milan arrived, the governor promptly appointed his son, Felix.
For trifling misdemeanors, he instituted elaborate investigations and meted out extravagant fines and punishments where a wiser man would have overlooked the whole matter.
When in the spring following the departure of the Fortuna (on March 31, 1685), Milan got wind of what he at once suspected to be a nefarious plot against his life, he vented his fury upon the unfortunate persons with swift and fiendish vengeance.
The captain's report when he arrived on June 10, 1685, without Adolph Esmit, and even without a word from Milan, gave the directors and shareholders food for thought.
[23] Sitting in his private room and surrounded by all manner of firearms, the governor drew the parley out for three days before he finally surrendered to the king's representative.
Mikkelsen's intimation that Milan's attitude rendered him liable to the charge of rebellion, combined with the fact that the men on whom he could depend were rapidly diminishing in number, brought the governor to his knees.
Adolph Esmit and his wife, Charity, likewise the company's merchant, Niels Lassen, who had been in prison since April 30, were taken out of their dungeons and put on board ship.
A few extracts from a letter written by the official reporter, Andrew Brock, to director Albert Gyldensparre on June 30, 1686, just before the Fortuna sailed, will give an idea of the proceedings.
"I wish for my part that your Excellency could have been here a single day and heard what thundering there has been in the commission, with howling, shouting, and screaming, one against the other, and I had to write it into the protocol just as fast [as they spoke] .
The letters of the two prisoners, Esmit and Lassen, which were sent over at the same time, bore out on the whole the testimony of the planters, whose sympathies were on the side of those two victims of Milan's wrath.
Besides the two governors with their families and enslaved servants, the list of passengers included Niels Lassen, Gerhart Philipsen, and John Lorentz, whose testimony was desired in the suits.
A commission was appointed within a week to try the case against Milan, but delays in getting the tangled evidence straightened prevented a decision being reached before November 17, 1687.
Adolph Esmit's long imprisonment both on St. Thomas and in Copenhagen in 1686 and 1687 had given him grounds for appearing as the injured party, and for demanding some form of restitution.