2: It had to be something like this: “Flint’s left and I had to negotiate a treaty. Captain Rackham captured the governor and will help us.” Not having a cache wouldn’t have stopped them. Had Flint become a martyr they still would’ve fought as Jack said, even without cache. Not making Flint a martyr was the key. So they turned him into someone who left his allies in the middle of the war because he couldn’t be bothered to fight anymore.
This is one of the reasons I don’t believe Silver killed James (well, other than it being bullshit, but anyway…) Killing Flint would have made him a martyr, and John Silver, for all my dislike of him, isn’t stupid. He knows how these things work.
No but seriously, listen, Madi may have been forced to sign that damn treaty but I don’t believe she stopped fighting. She would have gotten Flint out of there. She would have tried to rescue his name and reputation. I actually rather think she might have been pissed enough at Silver that she revealed what he’d done. Imagine her telling the pirates and Maroons, “your general has been sold into slavery, the very same slavery we’re trying to fight.” Yeah, Oglethorpe’s plantation is getting burned down.