Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 by Various

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THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. XII.--NOVEMBER, 1863.--NO. LXXIII.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by TICKNOR AND
FIELDS, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
Massachusetts.

* * * * *

THE SPANIARD AND THE HERETIC.

[In the August number of the "Atlantic," under the title of "The
Fleur-de-Lis in Florida," will be found a narrative of the Huguenot
attempts to occupy that country, which, exciting the jealousy of Spain,
gave rise to the crusade whose history is recorded below.]

The monk, the inquisitor, the Jesuit, these were the lords of
Spain,--sovereigns of her sovereign, for they had formed and fed the
dark and narrow mind of that tyrannical recluse. They had formed and fed
the minds of her people, quenched in blood every spark of rising heresy,
and given over a noble nation to bigotry, dark, blind, inexorable as the
doom of fate. Linked with pride, ambition, avarice, every passion of a
rich, strong nature, potent for good and ill, it made the Spaniard of
that day a scourge as dire as ever fell on man.

Day was breaking on the world. Light, hope, freedom, pierced with
vitalizing ray the clouds and the miasma that hung so thick over the
prostrate Middle Age, once noble and mighty, now a foul image of decay
and death. Kindled with new life, the nations teemed with a progeny of
heroes, and the stormy glories of the sixteenth century rose on awakened
Europe. But Spain was the citadel of darkness,--a monastic cell, an
inquisitorial dungeon, where no ray could pierce. She was the bulwark of
the Church, against whose adamantine front the wrath of innovation beat
in vain. In every country of Europe the party of freedom and reform was
the national party, the party of reaction and absolutism was the Spanish
party, leaning on Spain, looking to her for help. Above all, it was so
in France; and while within her bounds there was a semblance of peace,
the national and religious rage burst forth on a wilder theatre. Thither
it is for us to follow it, where, on the shores of Florida, the Spaniard
and the Frenchman, the bigot and the Huguenot, met in the grapple of
death.

In a corridor of the Escurial, Philip II. was met by a man who had long
stood waiting his approach, and who with proud reverence placed a
petition in the hand of the pale and sombre King. The petitioner was
Pedro Menendez de Aviles, one of the ablest and most distinguished
officers of the Spanish marine. He was born of an ancient Asturian
family. His boyhood had been wayward, ungovernable, and fierce. He ran
off at eight years of age, and when, after a search of six months, he
was found and brought back, he ran off again. This time he was more
successful, escaping on board a fleet bound against the Barbary
corsairs, when his precocious appetite for blood and blows had
reasonable contentment. A few years later, he found means to build a
small vessel in which he cruised against the corsairs and the French,
and, though still little more than a boy, displayed a singular address
and daring. The wonders of the New World now seized his imagination. He
made a voyage thither, and the ships under his charge came back
freighted with wealth. War with France was then at its height. As
captain-general of the fleet, he was sent with troops to Flanders, and
to their prompt arrival was due, it is said, the victory of St. Quentin,
Two years later, he commanded the luckless armada which bore back Philip
to his native shore, and nearly drowned him in a storm off the port of
Laredo. This mischance, or his own violence and insubordination, wrought
to the prejudice of Menendez. He complained that his services were ill
repaid. Philip lent him a favoring ear, and despatched him to the Indies
as general of the fleet and army. Here he found means to amass vast
riches; and, in 1561, returning to Spain, charges were brought against
him of a nature which his too friendly biographer does not explain. The
Council of the Indies arrested him. He was imprisoned and sentenced to a
heavy fine, but, gaining his release, hastened to Madrid to throw
himself on the royal clemency.

His petition was most graciously received. Philip restored his command,
but remitted only half his fine, a strong presumption of his guilt.

Menendez kissed the royal hand; he had still a petition in reserve. His
son had been wrecked near the Bermudas, and he would fain go thither to
find tidings of his fate. The pious King bade him trust in God, and
promised that he should be despatched without delay to the Bermudas and
to Florida with a commission to make an exact survey of those perilous
seas for the profit of future voyagers; but Menendez was ill content
with such an errand. He knew, he said, nothing of greater moment to His
Majesty than the conquest and settlement of Florida. The climate was
healthful, the soil fertile; and, worldly advantages aside, it was
peopled by a race sunk in the thickest shades of infidelity. "Such
grief," he pursued, "seizes me, when I behold this multitude of wretched
Indians, that I should choose the conquest and settling of Florida above
all commands, offices, and dignities which your Majesty might bestow."
Those who think this hypocrisy do not know the Spaniard of the sixteenth
century.

The King was edified by his zeal. An enterprise of such spiritual and
temporal promise was not to be slighted, and Menendez was empowered to
conquer and convert Florida at his own cost. The conquest was to be
effected within three years. Menendez was to take with him five hundred
men, and supply them with five hundred slaves, besides horses, cattle,
sheep, and hogs. Villages were to be built, with forts to defend them;
and sixteen ecclesiastics, of whom four should be Jesuits, were to form
the nucleus of a Floridian church. The King, on his part, granted
Menendez free trade with Hispaniola, Porto Rico, Cuba, and Spain, the
office of Adelantado of Florida for life, joined to the right of naming
his successor, and large emoluments to be drawn from the expected
conquest.

The compact struck, Menendez hastened to his native Asturias to raise
money among his relatives. Scarcely was he gone, when tidings for the
first time reached Madrid that Florida was already occupied by a colony
of French Protestants, and that a reinforcement, under Ribaut, was on
the point of sailing thither. A French historian of high authority
declares that these advices came from the Catholic party at the French
court, in whom all sense of the national interest and honor was
smothered under their hatred of Coligny and the Huguenots. Of this there
can be little doubt, though information also came from the buccaneer
Frenchmen captured in the West Indies.

Foreigners had invaded the territory of Spain. The trespassers, too,
were heretics, foes of God and liegemen of the Devil. Their doom was
fixed. But how would France endure an assault, in time of peace, on
subjects who had gone forth on an enterprise sanctioned by the crown,
undertaken in its name, and under its commission?

The throne of France, where the corruption of the nation seemed gathered
to a head, was trembling between the two parties of the Catholics and
the Huguenots, whose chiefs aimed at royalty. Flattering both, caressing
both, betraying both, playing one against the other, Catherine de
Medicis, by a thousand crafty arts and expedients of the moment, sought
to retain the crown on the heads of her weak and vicious sons. Of late
her crooked policy had drawn her towards the Catholic party, in other
words, the party of Spain; and already she had given ear to the savage
Duke of Alva, urging her to the course which, seven years later, led to
the carnage of St. Bartholomew. In short, the Spanish policy was
ascendant, and no thought of the national interest or honor could
restrain that basest of courts from consigning by hundreds to the
national enemy those whom, itself, it was meditating to immolate by
thousands.

Menendez was summoned back in haste to the court. There was counsel,
deep and ominous, in the chambers of the Escurial. His force must be
strengthened. Three hundred and ninety-four men were added at the royal
charge, and a corresponding number of transport and supply ships. It was
a holy war, a crusade, and as such was preached by priest and monk along
the western coasts of Spain. All the Biscayan ports flamed with zeal,
and adventurers crowded to enroll themselves; since to plunder heretics
is good for the soul as well as the purse, and broil and massacre have
double attraction, when promoted to a means of salvation: a fervor, deep
and hot, but not of celestial kindling; nor yet that buoyant and
inspiring zeal, which, when the Middle Age was in its youth and prime,
glowed in the soul of Tancred, Godfrey, and St. Louis, and which, when
its day was long since past, could still find its home in the great
heart of Columbus. A darker spirit urged the new crusade,--born, not of
hope, but of fear, slavish in its nature, the creature and the tool of
despotism. For the typical Spaniard of the sixteenth century was not in
strictness a fanatic; he was bigotry incarnate.

Heresy was a plague-spot, an ulcer to be eradicated with fire and the
knife, and this foul abomination was infecting the shores which the
Vicegerent of Christ had given to the King of Spain, and which the Most
Catholic King had given to the Adelantado. Thus would countless heathen
tribes be doomed to an eternity of flame, shut out from that saving
communion with Holy Church, to which, by the sword and the whip and the
fagot, dungeons and slavery, they would otherwise have been mercifully
driven, to the salvation of their souls, and the greater glory of God.
And, for the Adelantado himself, should the vast outlays, the vast
debts, of his bold Floridian venture be all in vain? Should his fortunes
be wrecked past redemption through these tools of Satan? As a Catholic,
as a Spaniard, as an adventurer, his course was clear. Woe, then, to the
Huguenot in the gripe of Pedro Menendez!

But what was the scope of this enterprise, and the limits of the
Adelantado's authority? He was invested with power almost absolute, not
merely over the peninsula which now retains the name of Florida, but
over all North America, from Labrador to Mexico,--for this was the
Florida of the old Spanish geographers, and the Florida designated in
the commission of Menendez. It was a continent which he was to conquer
and occupy out of his own purse. The impoverished King contracted with
his daring and ambitious subject to win and hold for him the territory
of the future United States and British Provinces. His plan, as
subsequently developed and exposed at length in his unpublished letters
to Philip II., was, first, to plant a garrison at Port Royal, and next
to fortify strongly on Chesapeake Bay, called by him St. Mary's. He
believed that this bay was an arm of the sea, running northward and
eastward, and communicating with the Gulf of St. Lawrence, thus making
New England, with adjacent districts, an island. His proposed fort on
the Chesapeake, giving access, by this imaginary passage, to the seas of
Newfoundland, would enable the Spaniards to command the fisheries, on
which both the French and the English had long encroached, to the great
prejudice of Spanish rights. Doubtless, too, these inland waters gave
access to the South Sea, and their occupation was necessary to prevent
the French from penetrating thither; for that ambitious people, since
the time of Cartier, had never abandoned their schemes of seizing this
portion of the dominions of the King of Spain. Five hundred soldiers and
one hundred sailors must, he urges, take possession, without delay, of
Port Royal and the Chesapeake.

Preparation for his enterprise was pushed with a furious energy. His
force amounted to two thousand six hundred and forty-six persons, in
thirty-four vessels, one of which, the San Pelayo, bearing Menendez
himself, was of more than nine hundred tons' burden, and is described as
one of the finest ships afloat. There were twelve Franciscans and eight
Jesuits, besides other ecclesiastics; and many knights of Galicia,
Biscay, and the Asturias bore part in the expedition. With a slight
exception, the whole was at the Adelantado's charge. Within the first
fourteen months, according to his admirer, Barcia, the adventure cost
him a million ducats.

Before the close of the year, Sancho de Arciniega was commissioned to
join Menendez with an additional force of fifteen hundred men.

Red-hot with a determined purpose, he would brook no delay. To him, says
the chronicler, every day seemed a year. He was eager to anticipate
Ribaut, of whose designs and whose force he seems to have been informed
to the minutest particular, but whom he hoped to thwart and ruin by
gaining Fort Caroline before him. With eleven ships, then, he sailed
from Cadiz on the 29th of June, 1565, leaving the smaller vessels of his
fleet to follow with what speed they might. He touched first at the
Canaries, and on the eighth of July left them, steering for Dominica. A
minute account of the voyage has come down to us from the pen of
Mendoza, chaplain of the expedition, a somewhat dull and illiterate
person, who busily jots down the incidents of each passing day, and is
constantly betraying, with a certain awkward simplicity, how the cares
of this world and the next jostle each other in his thoughts.

On Friday, the twentieth of July, a storm fell upon them with appalling
fury. The pilots lost head, the sailors gave themselves up to their
terrors. Throughout the night, they beset Mendoza for confession and
absolution, a boon not easily granted, for the seas swept the crowded
decks in cataracts of foam, and the shriekings of the gale in the
rigging drowned the exhortations of the half-drowned priest. Cannon,
cables, spars, water-casks, were thrown overboard, and the chests of the
sailors would have followed, had not the latter, despite their fright,
raised such a howl of remonstrance that the order was revoked. At length
day dawned. At least there was light to die by. Plunging, reeling, half
submerged, quivering under the crashing shock of the seas, whose
mountain ridges rolled down upon her before the gale, the ship lay in
deadly jeopardy from Friday till Monday noon. Then the storm abated; the
sun broke forth; and again she held her course.

They reached Dominica on Sunday, the fifth of August. The chaplain
tells us how he went on shore to refresh himself,--how, while his
Italian servant washed his linen at a brook, he strolled along the beach
and picked up shells,--and how he was scared, first, by a prodigious
turtle, and next by a vision of the cannibal natives, which caused his
prompt retreat to the boats.

On the tenth, they anchored in the harbor of Porto Rico, where they
found two of their companion-ships, from which they had parted in the
storm. One of them was the San Pelayo, with Menendez on board. Mendoza
informs us that in the evening the officers came on board his ship, when
he, the chaplain, regaled them with sweetmeats, and that Menendez
invited him not only to supper that night, but to dinner the next day,
"for the which I thanked him, as reason was," says the gratified
churchman.

Here thirty men deserted, and three priests also ran off, of which
Mendoza bitterly complains, as increasing his own work. The motives of
the clerical truants may perhaps be inferred from a worldly temptation
to which the chaplain himself was subjected. "I was offered the service
of a chapel where I should have got a _peso_ for every mass I said, the
whole year round; but I did not accept it, for fear that what I hear
said of the other three would be said of me. Besides, it is not a place
where one can hope for any great advancement, and I wished to try
whether, in refusing a benefice for the love of the Lord, He will not
repay me with some other stroke of fortune before the end of the voyage;
for it is my aim to serve God and His blessed Mother."

The original design had been to rendezvous at Havana, but, with the
Adelantado, the advantages of despatch outweighed every other
consideration. He resolved to push directly for Florida. Five of his
scattered ships had by this time rejoined company, comprising, exclusive
of officers, a force of about five hundred soldiers, two hundred
sailors, and one hundred colonists. Bearing northward, he advanced by an
unknown and dangerous course along the coast of Hayti and through the
intricate passes of the Bahamas. On the night of the twenty-sixth, the
San Pelayo struck three times on the shoals; "but," says the chaplain,
"inasmuch as our enterprise was undertaken for the sake of Christ and
His blessed Mother, two heavy seas struck her abaft, and set her afloat
again."

At length the ships lay becalmed in the Bahama Channel, slumbering on
the dead and glassy sea, torpid with the heats of a West-Indian August.
Menendez called a council of the commanders. There was doubt and
indecision. Perhaps Ribaut had already reached the French fort, and then
to attack the united force would be a stroke of desperation. Far better
to await their lagging comrades. But the Adelantado was of another mind;
and, even had his enemy arrived, he was resolved that he should have no
time to fortify himself.

"It is God's will," he said, "that our victory should be due, not to our
numbers, but to His all-powerful aid. Therefore has He stricken us with
tempests and scattered our ships." And he gave his voice for instant
advance.

There was much dispute; even the chaplain remonstrated; but nothing
could bend the iron will of Menendez. Nor was a sign of celestial
approval wanting. At nine in the evening, a great meteor burst forth in
mid-heaven, and, blazing like the sun, rolled westward towards the
Floridian coast. The fainting spirits of the crusaders were kindled
anew. Diligent preparation was begun. Prayers and masses were said; and,
that the temporal arm might not be wanting, the men were daily practised
on deck in shooting at marks, in order, says the chronicle, that the
recruits might learn not to be afraid of their guns.

The dead calm continued. "We were all very tired," says the chaplain,
"and I above all, with praying to God for a fair wind. To-day, at about
two in the afternoon, He took pity on us, and sent us a breeze." Before
night they saw land,--the faint line of forest, traced along the watery
horizon, that marked the coast of Florida. But where in all this vast
monotony was the lurking-place of the French? Menendez anchored, and
sent fifty men ashore, who presently found a band of Indians in the
woods, and gained from them the needed information. He stood northward,
till, on the afternoon of Tuesday, the fourth of September, he descried
four ships anchored near the mouth of a river. It was the river St.
John's, and the ships were four of Ribaut's squadron. The prey was in
sight. The Spaniards prepared for battle, and bore down upon the
Lutherans; for, with them, all reformers alike were branded with the
name of the arch-heretic. Slowly, before the faint breeze, the ships
glided on their way; but while, excited and impatient, the fierce crews
watched the decreasing space, and while they were still three leagues
from their prize, the air ceased to stir, the sails flapped against the
mast, a black cloud with thunder rose above the coast, and the warm rain
of the South descended on the breathless sea. It was dark before the
wind moved again, and the ships resumed their course. At half past
eleven they reached the French. The San Pelayo slowly moved to windward
of Ribaut's flag-ship, the Trinity, and anchored very near her. The
other ships took similar stations. While these preparations were making,
a work of two hours, the men labored in silence, and the French,
thronging their gangways, looked on in equal silence. "Never, since I
came into the world," writes the chaplain, "did I know such a
stillness."

It was broken, at length, by a trumpet from the deck of the San Pelayo.
A French trumpet answered. Then Menendez, "with much courtesy," says his
Spanish eulogist, demanded, "Gentlemen, whence does this fleet come?"

"From France," was the reply.

"What are you doing here?" pursued the Adelantado.

"Bringing soldiers and supplies for a fort which the King of France has
in this country, and for many others which he soon will have."

"Are you Catholics or Lutherans?"

Many voices cried together, "Lutherans, of the new religion"; then, in
their turn, they demanded who Menendez was, and whence he came. The
latter answered,--

"I am Pedro Menendez, General of the fleet of the King of Spain, Don
Philip the Second, who have come to this country to hang and behead all
Lutherans whom I shall find by land or sea, according to instructions
from my King, so precise that I have power to pardon none whomsoever;
and these commands I shall fulfil, as you shall know. At daybreak I
shall board your ships, and if I find there any Catholic, he shall be
well treated; but every heretic shall die."

The French with one voice raised a cry of wrath and defiance.

"If you are a brave man, don't wait till day. Come on now, and see what
you will get!"

And they assailed the Adelantado with a shower of scoffs and insults.

Menendez broke into a rage, and gave the order to board. The men slipped
the cables, and the sullen black hulk of the San Pelayo drifted down
upon the Trinity. The French by no means made good their defiance.
Indeed, they were incapable of resistance, Ribaut with his soldiers
being ashore at Fort Caroline. They cut their cables, left their
anchors, made sail, and fled. The Spaniards fired, the French replied.
The other Spanish ships had imitated the movement of the San Pelayo;
"but," writes the chaplain, Mendoza, "these devils run mad are such
adroit sailors, and manoeuvred so well, that we did not catch one of
them." Pursuers and pursued ran out to sea, firing useless volleys at
each other.

In the morning Menendez gave over the chase, turned, and, with the San
Pelayo alone, ran back for the St. John's. But here a welcome was
prepared for him. He saw bands of armed men drawn up on the beach, and
the smaller vessels of Ribaut's squadron, which had crossed the bar
several days before, anchored behind it to oppose his landing. He would
not venture an attack, but, steering southward, skirted the coast till
he came to an inlet which he named St. Augustine.

Here he found three of his ships, already debarking their troops, guns,
and stores. Two officers, Patino and Vicente, had taken possession of
the dwelling of Seloy, an Indian chief, a huge barn-like structure,
strongly framed of entire trunks of trees, and thatched with
palmetto-leaves. Around it they were throwing up intrenchments of
fascines and sand. Gangs of negroes, with pick, shovel, and spade, were
toiling at the work. Such was the birth of St. Augustine, the oldest
town of the United States, and such the introduction of slave-labor upon
their soil.

On the eighth, Menendez took formal possession of his domain. Cannon
were fired, trumpets sounded, and banners displayed, as, at the head of
his officers and nobles, he landed in state. Mendoza, crucifix in hand,
came to meet him, chanting, "_Te Deum laudamus_," while the Adelantado
and all his company, kneeling, kissed the cross, and the congregated
Indians gazed in silent wonder.

Meanwhile the tenants of Fort Caroline were not idle. Two or three
soldiers, strolling along the beach in the afternoon, had first seen the
Spanish ships and hastily summoned Ribaut. He came down to the mouth of
the river, followed by an anxious and excited crowd; but, as they
strained their eyes through the darkness, they could see nothing but the
flashes of the distant guns. The returning light showed them at length,
far out at sea, the Adelantado in hot chase of their flying comrades.
Pursuers and pursued were soon out of sight. The drums beat to arms.
After many hours of suspense, the San Pelayo reappeared, hovering about
the mouth of the river, then bearing away towards the south. More
anxious hours ensued, when three other sail came in sight, and they
recognized three of their own returning ships. Communication was opened,
a boat's crew landed, and they learned from Captain Cosette, that,
confiding in the speed of his ship, he had followed the Spaniards to St.
Augustine, reconnoitred their position, and seen them land their negroes
and intrench themselves.

In his chamber at Fort Caroline, Laudonniere lay sick in bed, when
Ribaut entered, and with him La Grange, Ste. Marie, Ottigny, Yonville,
and other officers. At the bedside of the displaced commandant they held
their council of war. There were three alternatives: first, to remain
where they were and fortify; next, to push overland for St. Augustine,
and attack the invaders in their intrenchments; and, finally, to embark,
and assail them by sea. The first plan would leave their ships a prey to
the Spaniards; and so too, in all likelihood, would the second, besides
the uncertainties of an overland march through an unknown wilderness. By
sea, the distance was short and the route explored. By a sudden blow
they could capture or destroy the Spanish ships, and master the troops
on shore before their reinforcements could arrive, and before they had
time to complete their defences.

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