Part 120

About the middle of the 16th century, certain of the Protestants of France began to turn their thoughts to the New World as a possible place of refuge from the persecutions they were suffering at home. "Some of the French sea-ports became strong-holds of the Huguenots. Their most prominent supporter, Coligny, was high admiral of France. These Huguenots looked toward the new countries as the proper field in which to secure a retreat from persecution, and to found a new religious commonwealth. Probably many of the French 'corsarios' following the track of the Portuguese and Spaniards to the West Indies and the coasts of Brazil, were Huguenots. ... The first scheme for a Protestant colony in the new world was suggested by Admiral Coligny in 1554, and intended for the coast of Brazil, to which an expedition, under Durand de Villegagnon, was sent with ships and colonists. This expedition arrived at the Bay of Rio de Janeiro in 1555, and founded there the first European settlement. {1149} It was followed the next year by another expedition. But the whole enterprise came to an end by divisions among the colonists, occasioned by the treacherous, despotic, and cruel proceedings of its commander, a reputed Catholic. The colony was finally subverted by the Portuguese, who, in 1560, sent out an armament against it, and took possession of the Bay of Rio de Janeiro. ... After the unfortunate end of the French enterprise to South America, Admiral Coligny, who may be styled the Raleigh of France, turned his attention to the eastern shores of North America; the whole of which had become known in France from the voyage of Verrazano, and the French expeditions to Canada and the Banks of Newfoundland." In February, 1562, an expedition, fitted out by Coligny, sailed from Havre de Grace, under Jean Ribault, with Réné de Laudonnière forming one of the company. Ribault arrived on the Florida coast in the neighborhood of the present harbor of St. Augustine, and thence sailed north. "At last, in about 32° 30' North he found an excellent broad and deep harbor, which he named Port Royal, which probably is the present Broad River, or Port Royal entrance. ... He found this port and the surrounding country so advantageous and of such 'singular beauty,' that he resolved to leave here a part of his men in a small fort. ... A pillar with the arms of France was therefore erected, and a fort constructed, furnished with cannon, ammunition, and provisions, and named 'Charlesfort.' Thirty volunteers were placed in it, and it became the second European settlement ever attempted upon the east coast of the United States. Its position was probably not far from the site of the present town of Beaufort, on Port Royal River. Having accomplished this, and made a certain captain, Albert de la Pieria, 'a soldier of great experience,' commander of Charlesfort, he took leave of his countrymen, and left Port Royal on the 11th day of June," arriving in France on the 20th of July. "On his arrival in France, Ribault found the country in a state of great commotion. The civil war between the Huguenots and the Catholics was raging, and neither the king nor the admiral had time to listen to Ribault's solicitations, to send relief to the settlers left in 'French Florida.' Those colonists remained, therefore, during the remainder of 1562, and the following winter, without assistance from France; and after many trials and sufferings, they were at last forced, in 1563, to abandon their settlement and the new country." Having constructed a ship, with great difficulty, they put to sea; but suffered horribly on the tedious voyage, from want of food and water, until they were rescued by an English vessel and taken to England.

J_. G. Kohl, History of the Discovery of Maine (Maine Historical Society Collection, 2d series, volume 1), chapter 11._

ALSO IN: _F. Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World, chapter 3._

_Father Charlevoix, History of New France; translated by J. G. Shea, book 3 (volume 1)._

_T. E. V. Smith, Villegaignon (American Society of Church History, volume 3)._

FLORIDA: A. D. 1564-1565. The second Huguenot colony, and the cry in Spain against it.

"After the treacherous peace between Charles IX. and the Huguenots, Coligny renewed his solicitations for the colonization of Florida. The king gave consent; in 1564 three ships were conceded for the service; and Laudonnière, who, in the former voyage, had been upon the American coast, a man of great intelligence, though a seaman rather than a soldier, was appointed to lead forth the colony. ... A voyage of 60 days brought the fleet, by the way of the Canaries and the Antilles, to the shores of Florida in June. The harbor of Port Royal, rendered gloomy by recollections of misery, was avoided; and, after searching the coast, and discovering places which were so full of amenity that melancholy itself could not but change its humor as it gazed, the followers of Calvin planted themselves on the banks of the river May [now called the St. John's], near St. John's bluff. They sung a psalm of thanksgiving, and gathered courage from acts of devotion. The fort now erected was called Carolina. ... The French were hospitably welcomed by the natives; a monument, bearing the arms of France, was crowned with laurels, and its base encircled with baskets of corn. What need is there of minutely relating the simple manners of the red men, the dissensions of rival tribes, the largesses offered to the strangers to secure their protection or their alliance, the improvident prodigality with which careless soldiers wasted the supplies of food; the certain approach of scarcity; the gifts and the tribute levied from the Indians by entreaty, menace or force? By degrees the confidence of the red men was exhausted; they had welcomed powerful guests, who promised to become their benefactors, and who now robbed their humble granaries. But the worst evil in the new settlement was the character of the emigrants. Though patriotism and religious enthusiasm had prompted the expedition, the inferior class of the colonists was a motley group of dissolute men. Mutinies were frequent. The men were mad with the passion for sudden wealth; and in December a party, under the pretence of desiring to escape from famine, compelled Laudonnière to sign an order permitting their embarkation for New Spain. No sooner were they possessed of this apparent sanction of the chief than they began a career of piracy against the Spaniards. The act of crime and temerity was soon avenged. The pirate vessel was taken, and most of the men disposed of as prisoners or slaves. The few that escaped in a boat sought shelter at Fort Carolina, where Laudonnière sentenced the ringleaders to death. During these events the scarcity became extreme; and the friendship of the natives was forfeited by unprofitable severity. March of 1565 was gone, and there were no supplies from France; April passed away, and the expected recruits had not arrived; May brought nothing to sustain the hopes of the exiles, and they resolved to attempt a return to Europe. In August, Sir John Hawkins, the slave merchant, arrived from the West Indies. He came fresh from the sale of a cargo of Africans, whom he had kidnapped with signal ruthlessness; and he now displayed the most generous sympathy, not only furnishing a liberal supply of provisions, but relinquishing a vessel from his own fleet. The colony was on the point of embarking when sails were descried. Ribault had arrived to assume the command, bringing with him supplies of every kind, emigrants with their families, garden-seeds, implements of husbandry, and the various kinds of domestic animals. The French, now wild with joy, seemed about to acquire a home, and Calvinism to become fixed in the inviting regions of Florida. {1150} But Spain had never abandoned her claim to that territory, where, if she had not planted colonies, she had buried many hundreds of her bravest sons. ... There had appeared at the Spanish court a commander well fitted for reckless acts. Pedro Melendez [or Menendez] de Aviles ... had acquired wealth in Spanish America, which was no school of benevolence, and his conduct there had provoked an inquiry, which, after a long arrest, ended in his conviction. ... Philip II. suggested the conquest and colonization of Florida; and in May, 1565, a compact was framed and confirmed by which Melendez, who desired an opportunity to retrieve his honor, was constituted the hereditary governor of a territory of almost unlimited extent. On his part he stipulated, at his own cost, in the following May, to invade Florida with 500 men; to complete its conquest within three years; to explore its currents and channels, the dangers of its coasts, and the depth of its havens; to establish a colony of at least 500 persons, of whom 100 should be married men; with 12 ecclesiastics, besides four Jesuits. ... Meantime, news arrived, as the French writers assert through the treachery of the court of France, that the Huguenots had made a plantation in Florida, and that Ribault was preparing to set sail with re-enforcements. The cry was raised that the heretics must be extirpated; and Melendez readily obtained the forces which he required."

_G. Bancroft, History of the United States (author's last revision), part 1, chapter 4._

ALSO IN: _G. R. Fairbanks, History of Florida, chapters 7-8._

_W. G. Simms, History of South Carolina, book 1._

FLORIDA: A. D. 1565. The Spanish capture of Fort Caroline and massacre of the Huguenots. Founding of St. Augustine.

"The expedition under Menendez consisted of an army of 2,600 soldiers and officers. He sailed straight for Florida, intending to attack Fort Caroline with no delay. In fact he sighted the mouth of the port [Sept. 4, 1565] two months after starting; but, considering the position occupied by the French ships, he judged it prudent to defer the attack, and make it, if possible, from the land. A council of war was held in Fort Caroline, presided over by Ribaut. Laudonnière proposed that, while Ribaut held the fort with the ships, he, with his old soldiers, who knew the country well, aided by the Floridans as auxiliaries, should engage the Spaniards in the woods, and harass them by perpetual combats in labyrinths to which they were wholly unaccustomed. The advice was good, but it was not followed. Ribaut proposed to follow the Spanish fleet with his own--lighter and more easily handled--fall on the enemy when the soldiers were all disembarked, and, after taking and burning the ships, to attack the army. In the face of remonstrances from all the officers, he persisted in this project. Disaster followed the attempt. A violent gale arose. The French ships were wrecked upon the Floridan coast; the men lost their arms, their powder, and their clothes; they escaped with their bare lives. There was no longer the question of conquering the Spaniards, but of saving themselves. The garrison of Caroline consisted of 150 soldiers, of whom 40 were sick. The rest of the colony was composed of sick and wounded Protestant ministers, workmen, royal commissioners,' and so forth. Laudonnière was in command. They awaited the attack for several days, yet the Spaniards came not. They were wading miserably through the marshes in the forests, under tropical rains, discouraged, and out of heart." But when, at length, the exhausted and despairing Spaniards, toiling through the marshes, from St. Augustine, where they had landed and established their settlement, reached the French fort (Sept. 20), "there was actually no watch on the ramparts. Three companies of Spaniards simultaneously rushed from the forest, and attacked the fortress on the south, the west and the south-west. There was but little resistance from the surprised garrison. There was hardly time to grasp a sword. About 20 escaped by flight, including the Captain, Laudonnière; the rest were every one massacred. None were spared except women and children under fifteen; and, in the first rage of the onslaught, even these were murdered with the rest. There still lay in the port three ships, commanded by Jacques Ribaut, brother [son] of the unfortunate Governor. One of these was quickly sent to the bottom by the cannon of the fort; the other two cut their cables, and slipped out of reach into the roadstead, where they lay, waiting for a favourable wind, for three days. They picked up the fugitives who had been wandering half-starved in the woods, and then set sail from this unlucky land. ... There remained, however, the little army, under Ribaut, which had lost most of its arms in the wreck, and was now wandering along the Floridan shore." When Ribaut and his men reached Fort Caroline and saw the Spanish flag flying, they turned and retreated southward. Not many days later, they were intercepted by Menendez, near St. Augustine, to which post he had returned. The first party of the French who came up, 200 in number, and who were in a starving state, surrendered to the Spaniard, and laid down their arms. "They were brought across the river in small companies, and their hands tied behind their backs. On landing, they were asked if they were Catholics. Eight out of the 200 professed allegiance to that religion; the rest were all Protestants.' Menendez traced out a line on the ground with his cane. The prisoners were marched up one by one to the line; on reaching it, they were stabbed. Next day, Ribaut arrived with the rest of the army. The same pourparlers began. But this time a blacker treachery was adopted." An officer, sent by Menendez, pledged his honor to the French that the lives of all should be spared if they laid down their arms. "It is not clear how many of the French accepted the conditions. A certain number refused them, and escaped into the woods. What is certain is, that Ribaut, with nearly all his men, were tied back to back, four together. Those who said they were Catholics, were set on one side; the rest were all massacred as they stood. ... Outside the circle of the slaughtered and the slaughterers stood the priest, Mendoza, encouraging, approving, exhorting the butchers."

_W. Besant, Gaspard de Coligny, chapter 7._

The long dispatch in which Menendez reported his fiendish work to the Spanish king has been brought to light in the archives at Seville, and there is this endorsement on it, in the hand-writing of Philip II.: "Say to him that, as to those he has killed, he has done well; and as to those he has saved, they shall be sent to the galleys."

_F. Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New World, chapters 7-8._

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ALSO IN: _C. W. Baird, History of the Huguenot Emigration to America, volume 1, introduction._

FLORIDA: A. D. 1567-1568. The vengeance of Dominic de Gourgues.

"As might have been expected, all attempts to rouse the French court into demanding redress were vain. Spain, above all other nations, knew the arts by which a corrupt court might be swayed, and the same intrigues which, fifty years later, sent Raleigh to the block and well-nigh ended the young colony of Virginia, now kept France quiet. But though the court refused to move, an avenger was not wanting. Dominic de Gourgues had already known as a prisoner of war the horrors of the Spanish galleys. Whether he was a Huguenot is uncertain. Happily in France, as the history of that and all later ages proved, the religion of the Catholic did not necessarily deaden the feelings of the patriot. Seldom has there been a deed of more reckless daring than that which Dominic de Gourgues now undertook. With the proceeds of his patrimony he bought three small ships, manned by eighty sailors and a hundred men-at-arms. He then obtained a commission as a slaver on the coast of Guinea, and in the summer of 1567 set sail. With these paltry resources he aimed at overthrowing a settlement which had already destroyed a force of twenty times his number, and which might have been strengthened in the interval. ... To the mass of his followers he did not reveal the true secret of his voyage till he had reached the West Indies. Then he disclosed his real purpose. His men were of the same spirit as their leader. Desperate though the enterprise seemed, De Gourgues' only difficulty was to restrain his followers from undue haste. Happily for their attempt, they had allies on whom they had not reckoned. The fickle savages had at first welcomed the Spaniards, but the tyranny of the new comers soon wrought a change, and the Spaniards in Florida, like the Spaniards in every part of the New World, were looked on as hateful tyrants. So when De Gourgues landed he at once found a ready body of allies. ... Three days were spent in making ready, and then De Gourgues, with a hundred and sixty of his own men and his Indian allies, marched against the enemy. In spite of the hostility of the Indians, the Spaniards seem to have taken no precaution against a sudden attack. Menendez himself had left the colony. The Spanish force was divided between three forts, and no proper precautions were taken for keeping up the communications between them. Each was successively seized, the garrison slain or made prisoners, and, as each fort fell, those in the next could only make vague guesses as to the extent of the danger. Even when divided into three the Spanish force outnumbered that of De Gourgues, and savages with bows and arrows would have counted for little against men with fire arms and behind walls. But after the downfall of the first fort a panic seemed to seize the Spaniards, and the French achieved an almost bloodless victory. After the death of Ribault and his followers nothing could be looked for but merciless retaliation, and De Gourgues copied the severity, though not the perfidy of his enemies. The very details of Menendez' act were imitated, and the trees on which the prisoners were hung bore the inscription: 'Not as Spaniards, but as traitors, robbers, and murderers.' Five weeks later De Gourgues anchored under the walls of Rochelle. ... His attack did not wholly extirpate the Spanish power in Florida. Menendez received the blessing of the Pope as a chosen instrument for the conversion of the Indians, returned to America and restored his settlement. As before, he soon made the Indians his deadly enemies. The Spanish settlement held on, but it was not till two centuries later that its existence made itself remembered by one brief but glorious episode in the history of the English colonies."

_J. A. Doyle, The English in America: Virginia, &c., chapter 5._

ALSO IN: _W. W. Dewhurst, History of St. Augustine, Florida, chapter 9._

FLORIDA: A. D. 1628. Claimed by France, and placed, with New France, under the control of the Company of the Hundred Associates.

See CANADA: A. D. 1616-1628.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1629. Claimed in part by England and embraced in the Carolina grant to Sir Robert Heath.

See AMERICA: A. D. 1629.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1680. Attack on the English of Carolina.

See SOUTH CAROLINA: A. D. 1680.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1702. Adjustment of western boundary with the French of Louisiana.

See LOUISIANA: A. D. 1698-1712.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1740. Unsuccessful attack on St. Augustine by the English of Georgia and Carolina.

See GEORGIA: A. D. 1738-1743.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1763 (February). Ceded to Great Britain by Spain in the Treaty of Paris.

See SEVEN YEARS WAR.

FLORIDA: A. D. 1763 (July). Possession taken by the English.

"When, in July [1763], possession was taken of Florida, its inhabitants, of every age and sex, men, women, children, and servants, numbered but 3,000; and, of these, the men were nearly all in the pay of the Catholic king. The possession of it had cost him nearly $230,000 annually; and now it was accepted by England as a compensation for Havana. Most of the people, receiving from the Spanish treasury indemnity for their losses, had migrated to Cuba, taking with them the bones of their saints and the ashes of their distinguished dead. The western province of Florida extended to the Mississippi, on the line of latitude of 31°. On the 20th of October, the French surrendered the post of Mobile, with its brick fort, which was fast crumbling to ruins. A month later, the slight stockade at Tombigbee, in the west of the Chocta country, was delivered up. In a congress of the Catawbas, Cherokees, Creeks, Chicasas, and Choctas, held on the 10th of November, at Augusta, the governors of Virginia and the colonies south of it were present, and the peace with the Indians of the South and South-west was ratified."

_G. Bancroft, History of the United States (Author's last revision.), volume 3, page 64._

FLORIDA: A. D. 1763 (October). English provinces, East and West, constituted by the King's proclamation.

See NORTHWEST TERRITORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1763.

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FLORIDA: A. D. 1779-1781. Reconquest of West Florida by the Spanish commander at New Orleans.