"Paris is no place in these times for a Huguenot lad from Navarre," said
Dominic de Gourgues, of Mont-de-Marsan in Gascony. "His father, François
Debré, did me good service in the Spanish Indies. One of these days,
Philip and his bloodhounds will be pulled down by these young terriers
they have orphaned."
"If the Jesuits have their way all Huguenots will be exterminated, men,
women and children," said Laudonnière, with a gleam of melancholy
sarcasm in his dark pensive eyes. "Life to a Jesuit is quite simple."
"My faith," said Gascon, twisting his mustache, "they may find in that
case, that other people can be simple too. But I must be off. I thank
you for making a place for Pierre."
In consequence of this conversation, when Ribault's fleet anchored near
the River of May, on June 25, 1564, Pierre Debré was hanging to the
collars of two of Laudonnière's deerhounds and gazing in silent wonder
at the strange and beautiful land.
"The fairest, fruitfullest and pleasantest land in all the world," Jean
Ribault had said in his report two years before to Coligny the Great
Admiral of France. Live-oaks and cedars untouched for a thousand years
were draped in luxuriant grape-vines or wreathed with the mossy gray
festoons of "old men's beard." Cypress and pine mingled with the
shining foliage of magnolia and palm. From the marsh arose on sudden
startled wings multitudes of water-fowl. The dogs tugged and whined
eagerly as if they knew that in these vast hunting-forests there was an
abundance of game. In this rich land, thus far neglected by the Spanish
conquistadores because it yielded neither gold nor silver, surely the
Huguenots might find prosperity and peace. Coligny was a Huguenot and a
powerful friend, and if the French Protestants now hunted into the
mountains or driven to take refuge in England, could be transplanted to
America, France might be spared the horrors of religious civil war.
Pierre was thirteen and looked at least three years older. He could not
remember when his people and their Huguenot neighbors had not lived in
dread of prison, exile or death. When he was not more than ten years old
he had guided their old pastor to safety in a mountain cave, and seen
men die, singing, for their faith. After the death of his father and
mother he had lived for awhile with his mother's people in Navarre, and
since they were poor and bread was hard to come by he had run away the
year before and found his way to Paris, where Dominic de Gourgues had
found him. If the Huguenots had a safe home he might be able to repay
the kindness of his cousins. Meanwhile the country, the wild creatures,
the copper-colored people and the hard work of landing colonists and
supplies were full of interest and excitement for Pierre.
Satouriona, the Indian chief, showed the French officers the pillar
which Ribault's party had set up on their previous visit to mark their
discovery. The faithful savages had kept it wreathed with evergreens
and decked with offerings of maize and fruits as if it were an altar.
Unfortunately not all the colonists were of heroic mind. Most who had
left France to seek their fortunes were merchants, craftsman and young
Huguenot noblemen whose swords were uneasy in time of peace. French
farm-laborers were mainly serfs on Catholic estates, and landowners did
not wish to come to the New World. Thus the people of the settlement
were city folk with little experience or inclination for cultivating the
soil. The Indians grew tired of supplying the wants of so large a number
of strangers. Quarrels arose among the French. A discontented group of
adventurers mutinied and went off on a wild attempt at piracy. They
plundered two ships in the Spanish Indies and were caught by the Spanish
governor. The twenty-six who escaped his clutches fled back to the fort,
which Laudonnière had built and named Carolina. His faithful lieutenant
La Caille arrested them and dragged them to judgment. "Say what you
will," said one of the culprits ruefully, "if Laudonnière does not hang
us I will never call him an honest man." The four leaders were promptly
sentenced to be hanged, but the sentence was commuted to shooting. After
that order reigned, for a time.
Some of the tradesmen ranged the wilderness, bringing back feather
mantles, arrows tipped with gold, curiously wrought quivers of beautiful
fur, wedges of a green stone like beryl. There were reports of a gold
mine somewhere in the northern mountains. Ribault did not return with
the expected supplies, the Indians had mostly left the neighborhood, and
misery and starvation followed, for the game, like the Indians fled the
presence of the white men. The Governor began to think of crowding the
survivors into the two little ships he had and returning to France.
Matters were in this unsatisfactory state when Captain John Hawkins in
his great seven-hundred-ton ship the _Jesus_, with three smaller ones,
the _Solomon_, the _Tiger_ and the _Swallow_, put in at the River of May
for a supply of fresh water. He gave them provisions, and offered
readily to take them back to France on his way to England, but this
offer Laudonnière declined.
"Monsieur Hawkins is a good fellow," he observed dryly to La Caille,
"and I am grateful to him, but that is no reason why I should abandon
this land to his Queen, and that is what he is hoping that I may do."
Others were not so long-sighted. The soldiers and hired workmen raised a
howl of wrath and disappointment when they heard that they were not to
sail with Hawkins, and openly threatened to desert and sail without
leave. Laudonnière answered this threat by the cool statement that he
had bought one of the English ships, the _Tiger_, with provisions for
the voyage, and that if they would have a little patience they might
soon sail for France in their own fleet. Somewhat taken aback they
ceased their clamor and awaited a favoring wind. Before it came, Ribault
came sailing back with seven ships, plenty of supplies, and three
hundred new colonists.
The fleet approached as cautiously as if it were coming to attack the
colony instead of relieving it, and Laudonnière, who saw many of his
friends among the new arrivals, presently learned that his enemies among
the colonists had written to Coligny describing him as arrogant and
cruel and charging that he was about to set up an independent monarchy
of his own. The Admiral, three thousand miles away, had decided to ask
the Governor to resign. Ribault advised him to stay and fight it out,
but Laudonnière was sick and disheartened. Life was certainly far from
simple when to use authority was to be accused of treason, and not to
use it was to foster piracy, and he had had enough of governing colonies
in remote jungles of the New World. He was going home.
To most of the colonists, however, Ribault's arrival promised an end of
all their troubles. Stores were landed, tents were pitched, and the
women and children were bestowed in the most comfortable quarters which
could be found for them just then. To his great satisfaction Pierre
found among the arrivals his cousin Barbe and her husband, a carpenter,
and her three children, Marie, Suzanne and little René. The two young
girls regarded Cousin Pierre as a hero, especially when they learned
that the bearskin on the floor of their palmetto hut had but a few
months ago been the coat of a live black bear. It had been caught
feasting in the maize-fields of the Indians, by their cousin and another
youth, and shot with a crossbow bolt by Pierre. They thought the roast
corn and stewed clams of their first meal ashore the most delicious food
they had ever tasted, and the three-cornered enclosure in the forest
with the wilderness all about it, the most wonderful place they had
seen.
Little did these innocent folk imagine what was brewing in Spain. The
raid of French pirates upon the Jamaican coast had promptly been
reported by the Adelantado of that island. Spanish spies at the French
court had carefully noted the movements of Coligny and Ribault. Pedro
Menendez de Avila, raising money and men in his native province of
Asturia in Spain for the conquest of all Florida, learned with horror
and indignation that its virgin soil had already been polluted by
heretic Frenchmen.
Menendez had in that very year gained permission from the King of Spain
to conquer and convert this land at his own cost. In return he was to
have free trade with the whole Spanish empire, and the title of
Adelantado or governor of Florida for life--absolute power over all of
America north of Mexico, for Spain had never recognized any right of
France or England in the region discovered by Cabot, Cartier, Verrazzano
or others. Menendez was allowed three years for his tremendous task. He
was to take with him five hundred men and as many slaves, a suitable
supply of horses, cattle, sheep, hogs, and provisions, and sixteen
priests, four of whom were to be Jesuits. He had also to find ships to
convey this great expedition.
But Menendez had been playing for big stakes all his life. He was only
ten years old when he ran away and went to sea on a Barbary pirate ship.
While yet a lad he was captain of a ship of his own, fighting pirates
and French privateers. He had served in the West Indies and he had
commanded fleets. King Philip had never really understood the enormous
possibilities of Florida until Menendez explained them to him. The soil
was fertile, the climate good, there might be valuable mines, and there
were above all countless heathen whom it was the deepest desire of
Menendez to convert to the true faith. In this last statement he was as
sincere as he was in the others. He expected to do in Florida what
Cortes had done in Mexico. Now heresy, the unpardonable sin, burned out
and stamped out in Spain, had appeared in the province which he had
bound himself at the cost of a million ducats to make Spanish and
Catholic. With furious energy he pushed on the work of preparation.
He had assembled in June, 1565, a fleet of thirty-four ships and a force
of twenty-six hundred men. Arciniega, another commander, was to join him
with fifteen hundred. On June 29 he sailed from Cadiz in the _San
Pelayo_, a galleon of nearly a thousand tons, a leviathan for those
days. Ten other ships accompanied him; the rest of the fleet would
follow later. It was the plan of Menendez to wipe out the garrison at
Fort Caroline before Ribault could get there, plant a colony there and
one on the Chesapeake, to control the northern fisheries for Spain
alone. On the way a Caribbean tempest scattered the ships and only five
met at Hispaniola, but Menendez did not wait for the rest. When he
reached the Florida coast he sent a captain ashore with twenty men to
find out exactly where on that long, lonely shore line the French colony
had squatted.
About half past eleven on the night of September 4, the watchman on one
of the French ships anchored off shore saw the huge _San Pelayo_, the
Spanish banner lifting sluggishly in the slow wind, coming up from the
south. Ribault was in the fort, so were most of the troops, and three of
the ships were anchored inside the bar. The strange fleet came steadily
nearer, the great flagship moved to windward of Ribault's flagship the
_Trinity_, and dropped anchor. The others did likewise. Not a word was
spoken by friend or foe. The Spanish chaplain Mendoza afterward wrote:
"Never since I came into the world did I know such a stillness."
A trumpet sounded on the _San Pelayo_. A trumpet sounded on the
_Trinity_. Menendez spoke, politely.
[Illustration: "'GENTLEMEN, WHENCE DOES THIS FLEET COME?'"--_Page_ 204]
"Gentlemen, whence does this fleet come?"
"From France."
"What is it doing here?"
"Bringing soldiers and supplies to a fort of the King of France in this
country--where he soon will have many more," flung back the Breton
captain defiantly.
"Are you Catholics or Lutherans?"
This time a score of clear voices reinforced the
Captain's--"Lutherans--Huguenots--the Reformed Faith--The Religion!" And
the Captain added, "Who are you yourself?"
"I am Pedro Menendez de Avila, General of the fleet of the King of
Spain, Don Felipe the Second, who come hither to hang and behead all
Lutherans whom I find by land or sea, according to instructions from his
Majesty, which leave me no discretion. These commands I shall obey, as
you will presently see. At daybreak I shall board your ships. If I find
there any Catholic he shall be well treated. But every heretic shall
die."
The reply to the rolling sonorous ultimatum was a shout of derision.
"Ah, if you are a brave man, don't put it off till daylight! Come on now
and see what you will get!"
Menendez in black fury snapped out a command. Cables were slipped, and
the towering black hulk of the _San Pelayo_ bore down toward the
_Trinity_. But the Breton captain was already leading the little fleet
out of danger, and with all sail set, went out to sea, answering the
Spanish fire with tart promptness. In the morning Menendez gave up the
chase and came back to find armed men drawn up on the beach, and all
the guns of the ships inside the bar pointed in his direction. He
steered southward and found three ships already unloading in a harbor
which he named San Augustin and proceeded to fortify.
In Fort Caroline, Pierre Debré, awakened by the sound of firing, ran
down to the beach, where a crowd was gathering. No one could see
anything but the flashes of the guns; who or what was attacking the
ships there was no way of knowing. The first light of dawn showed the
two fleets far out at sea, and Ribault at once ordered the drums to beat
"To arms!" They saw the great galleon approach, hover about awhile, and
bear away south. When the French fleet came back later, one of the
captains, Cosette, reported that trusting in the speed of his ship he
had followed the Spaniards to the harbor where they were now landing and
entrenching themselves.
The terror which haunted the future of every Huguenot in France now
menaced the New World.
Ribault gave his counsel for an immediate attack by sea, before Menendez
completed his defense or received reinforcements. Laudonnière was ill in
bed. The fleet sailed as soon as it could be made ready, and with it
nearly every able fighting man in the settlement. Pierre, nearly crying
with wrath and disappointment, was left among the non-combatants at the
fort. In vain did old Challeux the carpenter try to console him. It
might be, as Challeux said, that there would be plenty of chances to
fight after his beard was grown, but now he was missing everything.
That night a terrible storm arose and continued for days. The marshes
became a boundless sea; the forests were whipped like weeds in the wind.
Where had the fleet found refuge? or had it been hurled to destruction
by the rage of wind and sea? Laudonnière, in the driving rain, came from
his sick-bed to direct the work on the defenses, which were broken down
in three or four places. Besides the four dog-boys, the cook, the
brewer, an old cross-bow maker, and the old carpenter, there were two
shoemakers, a musician, four valets, fourscore camp-followers who did
not know the use of arms, and the crowd of women and children. The sole
consolation that could be found in their plight was that in such a storm
no enemy would be likely to attack them by sea or land. Nevertheless
Laudonnière divided his force into two watches with an officer for each,
gave them lanterns and an hour glass for going the rounds, and himself,
weak with fever, spent each night in the guard-room.
On the night of the nineteenth the tempest became a deluge. The officer
of the night took pity on the drenched and gasping sentries and
dismissed them. But on that night five hundred Spaniards were coming
from San Augustin through almost impassable swamps, their provisions
spoiled and their powder soaked, under the leadership of the pitiless
Menendez. The storm had caught Ribault's fleet just as it was about to
attack on the eleventh, and Menendez had determined to take a force of
Spaniards overland and attack the fort while its defenders were away.
With twenty Vizcayan axemen to clear the way and two Indians and a
renegade Frenchman, François Jean, for a guide, he had bullied,
threatened and exhorted them through eight days of wading through mud
waist-deep, creeping around quagmires and pushing by main force through
palmetto jungles, until two hours before daylight the panting,
shivering, sullen men stood cursing the country and their commander,
under their breath, in a pine wood less than a mile from Fort Caroline.
It was all that Menendez could do to get them to go a rod further. All
night, he said, he had prayed for help; their provisions and ammunition
were gone; there was nothing to do but to go on and take the fort. They
went on.
In the faint light of early morning a trumpeter saw them racing down the
slope toward the fort and blew the alarm. "Santiago! Santiago!" sounded
in the ears of the half-awakened French as the Spaniards came through
the gaps in the defenses and over the ramparts. Fierce faces and
stabbing pikes were everywhere. Laudonnière snatched sword and buckler,
rallied his men to the point of greatest danger, fought desperately
until there was no more hope, and with a single soldier of his guard
escaped into the woods. Challeux, chisel in hand, on his way to his
work, swung himself over the palisade and ran like a boy. In the edge of
the forest he and a few other fugitives paused and looked down upon the
enclosure of the fort. It was a butchery. Some of the Huguenots in the
woods decided to return and surrender rather than risk the terrors of
the wilderness. The Spaniards, they said, were at least men. Six of them
did return, and were cut down as they came. Pierre Debré side by side
with a few desperate men who had one of the two light cannon the fort
possessed, was fighting like a tiger in defense of a corner where a
group of women and children were crouching.
When Menendez could secure the attention of his maddened men he gave an
order that women, children and boys under fifteen should be spared. This
order and the instant's pause it gave came just as the last of the men
in Pierre's corner went down before the halberds of the Spaniards.
Pierre leaped the palisade and ran for the forest. Looking back, he saw
the trembling women and children herded into shelter, but not killed.
Fifteen of the captured Huguenots were presently hanged; a hundred and
forty-two had been cut down and lay heaped together on the river bank.
Pierre plunged into the forest and after days of wandering reached a
friendly Indian village. The carpenter and the other fugitives who
escaped were taken to France in the two small ships of Ribault's fleet
which had not gone to attack the Spanish settlement. Menendez returned
at leisure to San Augustin, where he knelt and thanked the Lord.
The fate of the men of Ribault's fleet became known through the letters
which the Spaniards themselves wrote in course of time to their friends
at home, but chiefly through Menendez's own report to the King. Dominic
de Gourgues heard of it from Coligny, and his eyes burned with the still
anger of a naturally impetuous man who has learned in stern schools how
to keep his temper.
"As I understand it," he said grimly and quietly, "Menendez, in the
disguise of a sailor, found Ribault and his men shipwrecked and
starving, some in one place, some in another. He promised them food and
safety on condition that they should surrender and give up their arms
and armor. He separated them into lots of ten, each guarded by twenty
Spaniards. When each lot had been led out of sight of the rest he
explained that on account of their great numbers and the fewness of his
own followers he should be compelled to tie their hands before taking
them into camp, for fear they might capture the camp. At the end of the
day, when all had reached a certain line which Menendez marked out with
his cane in the sand, he gave the word to his murderers to butcher
them."
Coligny bowed his noble gray head.
"And he offered them life if they would renounce their religion,
whereupon Ribault repeating in French the psalm, 'Lord, remember thou
me,' they died without other supplication to God or man. On this account
did Menendez write above the heads of those whom he hanged, 'I do this
not as to Frenchmen but as to Lutherans.' And no demand for redress has
as yet been made?"
"One," said the Admiral coolly. "A demand was made by Philip of Spain.
He has required his brother of France to punish one Gaspé Coligny,
sometimes known as Admiral, for sending out a Huguenot colony to settle
in Florida."
The Gascon sprang to his feet muttering something between his teeth. "I
crave your pardon, my lord," he added with a courteous bow. "I am but a
plain rough soldier unused to the ways of courts, but it seems to me
that things being as they are, my duty is quite simple." He bowed
himself out and left Coligny wondering.
During the following months it was noted that in choosing the men for
his coming expedition Gourgues appeared to be unusually select. He sold
his inheritance, borrowed some money of his brother, and fitted out
three small ships carrying both sails and oars. He enlisted, one by one,
about a hundred arquebusiers and eighty sailors who could fight either
by land or sea if necessary. He secured a commission from the King to
go slave-raiding in Benin, on the coast of Africa. On August 22, 1567,
he set sail from the mouth of the Charente.
"I should like to know," said one of the trumpeters, Lucas Moreau,
"whether we are really going slave-catching, or not."
"Why do you think we are not?" asked the pilot, to whom he spoke.
"Because I have seen nothing on board that looks like it. Moreover, he
was very particular to ask me if I had been in the Spanish Indies, and
when he heard that I had been in Florida he took me on at once. I was
out there, you know, when you were, two years ago."
"And you would like to go back?" asked the other, gruffly.
"If there were a chance of killing Menendez, yes," answered Moreau with
a fierce flash of white teeth.
The trumpeter's guess was a shrewd one. When the tiny fleet reached the
West Indies, the commander took his men into his confidence and revealed
the true object of his voyage--to avenge the massacre at Fort Caroline.
The result proved that he had not misjudged them. Fired by his spirit
they became so eager that they wanted to push on at once instead of
waiting for moonlight to pass the dangerous Bahama Channel. They came
through it without mishap, and at daybreak were anchored at the mouth of
a river about fifteen leagues north of Fort Caroline. In the growing
light an Indian army in war paint and feathers, bristling with weapons,
could be seen waiting on the shore.
"They may think we are Spaniards," said Dominic de Gourgues. "Moreau,
if you think they will understand you, it might be well for you to speak
to them."
No sooner had the trumpeter come near enough in a small boat for the
Indians to recognize him, than yells of joy were heard, for the war
party was headed by Satouriona himself, who well remembered him. When
Moreau explained that the French had returned with presents for their
good friends there was great rejoicing. A council was appointed for the
next day.
In the morning Satouriona's runners had scoured the country, and the
woods were full of Indians. The white men landed in military order, and
in token of friendliness laid aside their arquebuses, and the Indians
came in without their bows and arrows. Satouriona met Gourgues with
every sign of friendliness, and seated him at his side upon a wooden
stool covered with the gray "Spanish moss" that curtained all the trees.
In the clearing the chiefs and warriors stood or sat around them, ring
within ring of plumed crests fierce faces and watchful eyes. Satouriona
described the cruelty of the Spaniards, their abuse of the Indians and
the miseries of their rule, saying finally,
"A French boy fled to us after the fort was taken, and we adopted him.
The Spaniards wished to get him to kill him, but we would not give him
up, for we love the French." He waved his hand, and from the woods at
one side came, in full Indian costume, bronzed and athletic, Pierre
Debré.
Greatly as he was surprised and delighted, Gourgues dared not show it
too plainly, and Pierre had grown almost as self-contained as a veteran
of twice his years. When the French commander suggested fighting the
Spaniards Satouriona leaped for joy. He and his warriors asked only to
be allowed to join in that foray.
"How soon?" asked Gourgues. Satouriona could have his people ready in
three days.
"Be secret," the Gascon cautioned, "for the enemy must not feel the wind
of the blow." Satouriona assured him that there was no need of that
warning, for the Indians hated the Spaniards worse than the French did.
"Pierre," said Gourgues, when he had the lad safe on board ship, "they
said you were killed."
"I stayed alive to fight Spaniards," said the boy with a flash of the
eye. "'Sieur Dominic, there are four hundred of them behind their walls,
where they rebuilt our fort. I have hidden in the trees and counted. But
you can trust Satouriona. The Spaniards have stolen women, enslaved and
tortured men, and killed children, and the tribe is mad with hate."
Twenty sailors were left to guard the ships, Gourgues with a hundred and
sixty Frenchmen took up their march along the seashore; their Indian
allies slipped around through the forest. With the French went
Olotoraca, the nephew of the chief, a young brave of distinguished
reputation, a French pike in his hand. The French met their allies not
far from the fort, and pounced upon the garrison just as it finished
dinner, Olotoraca being the first man up the glacis and over the
unfinished moat. The fort across the river began to cannonade the
attacking party, who turned four captured guns upon them, and then
crossed, the French in a large boat which had been brought up the river,
the Indians swimming. Not one Spaniard escaped. Fifteen were kept alive,
to be hanged on the very trees from which Menendez had hanged his French
captives, and over them was set an inscription burned with a hot poker
on a pine board:
"Not as to Spaniards, but as to Traitors, Robbers, and Murderers."
When not one stone was left upon another in either fort, Dominic de
Gourgues bade farewell to his Indian allies, and taking with him the lad
so strangely saved from death and exile, went back to France.