FREEBOOTERS (Fr. flibustiers), a name given to a class of piratical adventurers of all nations, but especially of France and England, who have obtained a place in history by the courage and intrepidity they displayed in executing the most difficult enterprizes. The origin of their history is involved in obscurity, nor has the derivation of their name been precisely determined; but the flibustiers of the French historians correspond to the buccaneers of our own writers. (See BUCANEERS.) The South American islands formed the chief theatre of their exploits; and such was the relentless hostility they exercised against the Spaniards, that during the latter half of the seventeenth century their commerce in those seas was almost utterly ruined. At the commencement of the following century these daring adventurers sustained a series of disasters which sensibly diminished their numbers; and their name, which during a period of fifty years had been so redoubtable and dreaded, ceased to be formidable from that time. The term freebooter has been applied in a general sense to robbers and other plunderers.