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

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Such were the views of Ribaut, with which, not unnaturally, Laudonniere
finds fault, and Le Moyne, judging by results, echoes the censures of
his chief. And yet the plan seems as well-conceived as it was bold,
lacking nothing but success. The Spaniards, stricken with terror, owed
their safety to the elements, or, as they affirm, to the special
interposition of the Holy Virgin. Let us be just to Menendez. He was a
leader fit to stand with Cortes and Pizarro; but he was matched with a
man as cool, skilful, prompt, and daring as himself. The traces that
have come down to us indicate, in Ribaut, one far above the common
stamp: "a distinguished man, of many high qualities," as even the
fault-finding Le Moyne calls him, devout after the best spirit of the
Reform, and with a human heart under his steel breastplate.

La Grange and other officers took part with Laudonniere and opposed the
plan of an attack by sea; but Ribaut's conviction was unshaken, and the
order was given. All his own soldiers fit for duty embarked in haste,
and with them went La Caille, Arlac, and, as it seems, Ottigny, with the
best of Laudonniere's men. Even Le Moyne, though wounded in the fight
with Outina's warriors, went on board to bear his part in the fray, and
would have sailed with the rest, had not Ottigny, seeing his disabled
condition, ordered him back to the fort.

On the tenth, the ships, crowded with troops, set sail. Ribaut was gone,
and with him the pith and sinew of the colony. The miserable remnant
watched his receding sails with dreary foreboding, a foreboding which
seemed but too just, when, on the next day, a storm, more violent than
the Indians had ever known, howled through the forest and lashed the
ocean into fury, Most forlorn was the plight of these exiles, left, it
might be, the prey of a band of ferocious bigots more terrible than the
fiercest hordes of the wilderness. And when night closed on the stormy
river and the gloomy waste of pines, what dreams of terror may not have
haunted the helpless women who crouched under the hovels of Fort
Caroline!

The fort was in a ruinous state, the palisade on the water side broken
down, and three breaches in the rampart. In the driving rain, urged by
the sick Laudonniere, the men, bedrenched and disheartened, labored as
they might to strengthen their defences. Their muster-roll shows but a
beggarly array. "Now," says Laudonniere, "let them which have bene bold
to say that I had men ynongh left me, so that I had meanes to defend my
selfe, give care a little now vnto mee, and if they have eyes in their
heads, let them see what men I had." Of Ribaut's followers left at the
fort, only nine or ten had weapons, while only two or three knew how to
use them. Four of them were boys, who kept Ribaut's dogs, and another
was his cook. Besides these, he had left a brewer, an old
crossbow-maker, two shoemakers, a player on the spinet, four valets, a
carpenter of threescore--Challeux, no doubt, who has left us the story
of his woes,--and a crowd of women, children, and eighty-six
camp-followers. To these were added the remnant of Laudonniere's men, of
whom seventeen could bear arms, the rest being sick or disabled by
wounds received in the fight with Outina.

Laudonniere divided his force, such as it was, into two watches, over
which he placed two officers, St. Cler and La Vigne, gave them lanterns
to go the rounds, and an hour-glass to set the time; while he himself,
giddy with weakness and fever, was every night at the guard-room.

It was the night of the nineteenth of September; floods of rain
bedrenched the sentries on the rampart, and as day dawned on the
dripping barracks and deluged parade, the storm increased in violence.
What enemy could have ventured forth on such a night? La Vigne, who had
the watch, took pity on the sentries and on himself, dismissed them, and
went to his quarters. He little knew what mortal energies, urged by
ambition, avarice, bigotry, desperation, will dare and do.

To return to the Spaniards at St. Augustine. On the morning of the
eleventh, the crew of one of their smaller vessels, lying outside the
bar, saw through the twilight of early dawn two of Ribaut's ships close
upon them. Not a breath of air was stirring. There was no escape, and
the Spaniards fell on their knees in supplication to Our Lady of Utrera,
explaining to her that the heretics were upon them, and begging her to
send them a little wind. "Forthwith," says Mendoza, "one would have said
that Our Lady herself came down upon the vessel." A wind sprang up, and
the Spaniards found refuge behind the bar. The returning day showed to
their astonished eyes all the ships of Ribaut, their decks black with
men, hovering off the entrance of the port; but Heaven had them in its
charge, and again they experienced its protecting care. The breeze sent
by Our Lady of Utrera rose to a gale, then to a furious tempest; and the
grateful Adelantado saw through rack and mist the ships of his enemy
tossed wildly among the raging waters as they struggled to gain an
offing. With exultation at his heart the skilful seaman read their
danger, and saw them in his mind's eye dashed to utter wreck among the
sand-bars and breakers of the lee-shore.

A bold thought seized him. He would march overland with five hundred men
and attack Fort Caroline while its defenders were absent. First he
ordered a mass; then he called a council. Doubtless, it was in that
great Indian lodge of Seloy, where he had made his head-quarters; and
here, in this dim and smoky concave, nobles, officers, priests, gathered
at his summons. There were fears and doubts and murmurings, but Menendez
was desperate. Not the mad desperation that strikes wildly and at
random, but the still red heat that melts and burns and seethes with a
steady, unquenchable fierceness. "Comrades," he said, "the time has come
to show our courage and our zeal. This is God's war, and we must not
flinch. It is a war with Lutherans, and we must wage it with blood and
fire."

But his hearers would not respond. They had not a million of ducats at
stake, and were nowise ready for a cast so desperate. A clamor of
remonstrance rose from the circle. Many voices, that of Mendoza among
the rest, urged waiting till their main forces should arrive. The
excitement spread to the men without, and the swarthy, black-bearded
crowd broke into tumults mounting almost to mutiny, while an officer was
heard to say that he would not go on such a hare-brained errand to be
butchered like a beast. But nothing could move the Adelantado. His
appeals or his threats did their work at last; the confusion was
quelled, and preparation was made for the march.

Five hundred arquebusiers and pikemen were drawn up before the camp.

To each was given a sack of bread and a flagon of wine. Two Indians and
a renegade Frenchman, called Francois Jean, were to guide them, and
twenty Biscayan axe-men moved to the front to clear the way. Through
floods of driving rain, a hoarse voice shouted the word of command, and
the sullen march began.

With dire misgiving, Mendoza watched the last files as they vanished in
the tempestuous forest. Two days of suspense ensued, when a messenger
came back with a letter from the Adelantado announcing that he had
nearly reached the French fort, and that on the morrow, September
twentieth, at sunrise, he hoped to assault it. "May the Divine Majesty
deign to protect us, for He knows that we have need of it," writes the
scared chaplain; "the Adelantado's great zeal and courage make us hope
he will succeed, but for the good of His Majesty's service he ought to
be a little less ardent in pursuing his schemes."

Meanwhile the five hundred had pushed their march through forest and
quagmire, through swollen streams and inundated savannas, toiling
knee-deep through mud, rushes, and the rank, tangled grass,--hacking
their way through thickets of the _yucca_ or Spanish bayonet, with its
clumps of dagger-like leaves, or defiling in gloomy procession through
the drenched forest, to the moan, roar, and howl of the storm-racked
pines. As they bent before the tempest, the water trickling from the
rusty headpiece crept clammy and cold betwixt the armor and the skin;
and when they made their wretched bivouac, their bed was the spongy
soil, and the exhaustless clouds their tent.

The night of Wednesday, the nineteenth, found their vanguard in a deep
forest of pines, less than a mile from Fort Caroline, and near the low
hills which extended in its rear, and formed a continuation of St.
John's Bluff. All around was one great morass. In pitchy darkness,
knee-deep in weeds and water, half starved, worn with toil and lack of
sleep, drenched to the skin, their provision spoiled, their ammunition
wet, their spirit chilled out of them, they stood in shivering groups,
cursing the enterprise and the author of it. Menendez heard an ensign
say aloud to his comrades,--

"This Asturian _corito_, who knows no more of war on shore than an ass,
has ruined us all. By ----, if my advice had been followed, he would have
had his deserts the day he set out on this cursed journey!"

The Adelantado pretended not to hear.

Two hours before dawn he called his officers about him. All night, he
said, he had been praying to God and the Virgin.

"Senores, what shall we resolve on? Our ammunition and provisions are
gone. Our case is desperate." And he urged a bold rush on the fort.

But men and officers alike were disheartened and disgusted. They
listened coldly and sullenly; many were for returning at every risk;
none were in a mood for fight. Menendez put forth all his eloquence,
till at length the dashed spirits of his followers were so far rekindled
that they consented to follow him.

All fell on their knees in the marsh; then, rising, they formed their
ranks and began to advance, guided by the renegade Frenchman, whose
hands, to make sure of him, were tied behind his back. Groping and
stumbling in the dark among trees, roots, and underbrush, buffeted by
wind and rain, and slashed in the face by the recoiling boughs which
they could not see, they soon lost their way, fell into confusion, and
came to a stand, in a mood more savagely desponding than before. But
soon a glimmer of returning day came to their aid, and showed them the
dusky sky, and the dark columns of the surrounding pines. Menendez
ordered the men forward on pain of death. They obeyed, and presently,
emerging from the forest, could dimly discern the ridge of a low hill,
behind which, the Frenchman told them, was the fort. Menendez, with a
few officers and men, cautiously mounted to the top. Beneath lay Fort
Caroline, three gunshots distant; but the rain, the imperfect light, and
a cluster of intervening houses prevented his seeing clearly, and he
sent two officers to reconnoitre. Descending, they met a solitary
Frenchman, a straggler from the fort. They knocked him down with a
sheathed sword, took him prisoner, then stabbed him in cold blood. This
done, and their observations made, they returned to the top of the hill,
behind which, clutching their weapons in fierce expectancy, all the gang
stood waiting.

"Santiago!" cried Menendez. "At them! God is with us!"

And, shouting their hoarse war-cries, the Spaniards rushed down the
slope like starved wolves.

Not a sentry was on the rampart. La Vigne, the officer of the guard, had
just gone to his quarters, but a trumpeter, who chanced to remain, saw,
through sheets of rain, the black swarm of assailants sweeping down the
hill. He blew the alarm, and at his shrill summons a few half-naked
soldiers ran wildly out of the barracks. It was too late. Through the
breaches, over the ramparts, the Spaniards came pouring in.

"Santiago! Santiago! Down with the Lutherans!"

Sick men leaped from their beds. Women and children, blind with fright,
darted shrieking from the houses. A fierce gaunt visage, the thrust of a
pike or blow of a rusty halberd,--such was the greeting that met all
alike. Laudonniere snatched his sword and target, and ran towards the
principal breach, calling to his soldiers. A rush of Spaniards met him;
his men were cut down around him; and he, with a soldier named
Bartholomew, was forced back into the courtyard of his house. Here a
tent was pitched, and as the pursuers stumbled among the cords, he
escaped behind Ottigny's house, sprang through the breach in the western
rampart, and fled for the woods.

Le Moyne had been one of the guard. Scarcely had he thrown himself into
a hammock which was slung in his room, when a savage shout, and a wild
uproar of shrieks, outcries, and the clash of weapons, brought him to
his feet. He rushed past two Spaniards in the door-way, ran behind the
guard-house leaped through an embrasure into the ditch, and escaped to
the forest.

Challeux, the carpenter, was going betimes to his work, a chisel in his
hand. He was old, but pike and partisan brandished at his back gave
wings to his flight. In the ecstasy of his terror, he leaped upward at
the top of the palisade, and, clutching it, threw himself over with the
agility of a boy. He ran up the hill, no one pursuing, and as he neared
the edge of the forest, turned and looked back. From the high ground
where he stood he could see the butchery, the fury of the conquerors,
the agonized gestures of the victims. He turned again in horror, and
plunged into the woods. As he tore his way through the briers and
thickets, he met several fugitives, escaped like himself. Others
presently came up, haggard and wild, like men broke loose from the jaws
of fate. They gathered and consulted together. One of them, in great
repute for his knowledge of the Bible, was for returning and
surrendering to the Spaniards. "They are men," he said; "perhaps when
their fury is over they will spare our lives, and even if they kill us,
it will only be a few moments' pain. Better so than to starve here in
the woods or be torn to pieces by wild beasts."

The greater part of the naked and despairing company assented, but
Challeux was of a different mind. The old Huguenot quoted Scripture, and
called up the names of prophets and apostles to witness, that, in direst
extremity, God would not abandon those who rested their faith in Him.
Six of the fugitives, however, still held to their desperate purpose.
Issuing from the woods, they descended towards the fort, and as with
beating hearts their comrades watched the result, a troop of Spaniards
rushed forth, hewed them down with swords and halberds, and dragged
their bodies to the brink of the river, where the victims of the
massacre were already flung in heaps.

Le Moyne, with a soldier named Grandchemin, whom he had met in his
flight, toiled all day through the woods, in the hope of reaching the
small vessels anchored behind the bar. Night found them in a morass. No
vessels could be seen, and the soldier, in despair, broke into angry
upbraidings against his companion,--saying that he would go back and
give himself up. Le Moyne at first opposed him, then yielded. But when
they drew near the fort, and heard the howl of savage revelry that rose
from within, the artist's heart failed him. He embraced his companion,
and the soldier advanced alone. A party of Spaniards came out to meet
him. He kneeled, and begged for his life. He was answered by a
death-blow; and the horrified Le Moyne, from his hiding-place in the
thickets, saw his limbs hacked apart, thrust on pikes, and borne off in
triumph.

Meanwhile, Menendez, mustering his followers, had offered thanks to God
for their victory; and this pious butcher wept with emotion as he
recounted the favors which Heaven had showered upon their enterprise.
His admiring historian gives it in proof of his humanity, that, after
the rage of the assault was spent, he ordered that women, infants, and
boys under fifteen should thenceforth be spared. Of these, by his own
account, there were about fifty. Writing in October to the King, he says
that they cause him great anxiety, since he fears the anger of God,
should he now put them to death, while, on the other hand, he is in
dread lest the venom of their heresy should infect his men.

A hundred and forty-two persons were slain in and around the fort, and
their bodies lay heaped together on the shore. Nearly opposite was
anchored a small vessel, called the Pearl, commanded by James Ribaut,
son of the Admiral. The ferocious soldiery, maddened with victory and
drunk with blood, crowded to the beach, shouting insults to those on
board, mangling the corpses, tearing out their eyes, and throwing them
towards the vessel from the points of their daggers. Thus did the Most
Catholic Philip champion the cause of Heaven in the New World.

It was currently believed in France, and, though no eye-witness attests
it, there is reason to think it true, that among those murdered at Fort
Caroline there were some who died a death of peculiar ignominy.
Menendez, it is affirmed, hanged his prisoners on trees, and placed over
them the inscription, "I do this, not as to Frenchmen, but as to
Lutherans."

The Spaniards gained a great booty: armor, clothing, and provision.
"Nevertheless," says the devout Mendoza, after closing his inventory of
the plunder, "the greatest profit of this victory is the triumph which
our Lord has granted us, whereby His holy gospel will be introduced into
this country, a thing so needful for saving so many souls from
perdition." Again, he writes in his journal,--"We owe to God and His
Mother, more than to human strength, this victory over the adversaries
of the holy Catholic religion."

To whatever influence, celestial or other, the exploit may best be
ascribed, the victors were not yet quite content with their success. Two
small French vessels, besides that of James Ribaut, still lay within
range of the fort. When the storm had a little abated, the cannon were
turned on them. One of them was sunk, but Ribaut, with the others,
escaped down the river, at the mouth of which several light craft,
including that bought from the English, had been anchored since the
arrival of his father's squadron.

While this was passing, the wretched fugitives were flying from the
scene of massacre through a tempest, of whose pertinacious violence all
the narratives speak with wonder. Exhausted, starved, half-clothed,--for
most of them had escaped in their shirts,--they pushed their toilsome
way amid the ceaseless howl of the elements. A few sought refuge in
Indian villages; but these, it is said, were afterwards killed by the
Spaniards. The greater number attempted to reach the vessels at the
mouth of the river. Of the latter was Le Moyne, who, despite his former
failure, was toiling through the maze of tangled forests when he met a
Belgian soldier with the woman described as Laudonniere's maid-servant,
the latter wounded in the breast, and, urging their flight towards the
vessels, they fell in with other fugitives, among them Laudonniere
himself. As they struggled through the salt-marsh, the rank sedge cut
their naked limbs, and the tide rose to their waists. Presently they
descried others, toiling like themselves through the matted vegetation,
and recognized Challeux and his companions, also in quest of the
vessels. The old man still, as he tells us, held fast to his chisel,
which had done good service in cutting poles to aid the party to cross
the deep creeks that channelled the morass. The united band, twenty-six
in all, were relieved at length by the sight of a moving sail. It was
the vessel of Captain Mallard, who, informed of the massacre, was
standing along-shore in the hope of picking up some of the fugitives. He
saw their signals, and sent boats to their rescue; but such was their
exhaustion, that, had not the sailors, wading to their armpits among the
rushes, borne them out on their shoulders, few could have escaped.
Laudonniere was so feeble that nothing but the support of a soldier, who
held him upright in his arms, had saved him from drowning in the marsh.

Gaining the friendly decks, the fugitives counselled together. One and
all, they sickened for the sight of France.

After waiting a few days, and saving a few more stragglers from the
marsh, they prepared to sail. Young Ribaut, though ignorant of his
father's fate, assented with something more than willingness; indeed,
his behavior throughout had been stamped with weakness and poltroonery.
On the twenty-fifth of September, they put to sea in two vessels; and,
after a voyage whose privations were fatal to many of them, they
arrived, one party at Rochelle, the other at Swansea, in Wales.

In suspense and fear, hourly looking seaward for the dreaded fleet of
John Ribaut, the chaplain Mendoza and his brother priests held watch and
ward at St. Augustine, in the Adelantado's absence. Besides the
celestial guardians whom they ceased not to invoke, they had as
protectors Bartholomew Menendez, the brother of the Adelantado, and
about a hundred soldiers. Day and night, the latter toiled to throw up
earthworks and strengthen their position.

A week elapsed, when they saw a man running towards their fort, shouting
as he ran.

Mendoza went out to meet him.

"Victory! Victory!" gasped the breathless messenger. "The French fort is
ours!" And he flung his arms about the chaplain's neck.

"To-day," writes the latter in his journal, "Monday, the twenty-fourth,
came our good general himself, with fifty soldiers, very tired, like all
those who were with him. As soon as they told me he was coming, I ran to
my lodging, took a new cassock, the best I had, put on my surplice, and
went out to meet him with a crucifix in my hand; whereupon he, like a
gentleman and a good Christian, kneeled down with all his followers, and
gave the Lord a thousand thanks for the great favors he had received
from Him."

In solemn procession, four priests in front chanting the _Te Deum_, the
victors entered St. Augustine in triumph.

On the twenty-eighth, when the weary Adelantado was taking his _siesta_
under the sylvan roof of Seloy, a troop of Indians came in with news
that quickly roused him from his slumbers. They had seen a French vessel
wrecked on the coast towards the south. Those who escaped from her were
some four leagues off, on the banks of a river or arm of the sea, which
they could not cross.

Menendez instantly sent forty or fifty men in boats to reconnoitre.
Next, he called the chaplain,--for he would fain have him at his elbow
to countenance the devilish deeds he meditated,--and embarked, with him,
twelve soldiers, and two Indian guides, in another boat. They rowed
along the channel between Anastasia Island and the main shore; then
landed, struck across the country on foot, traversed plains and marshes,
readied the sea towards night, and searched along-shore till ten o'clock
to find their comrades who had gone before. At length, with mutual joy,
the two parties met, and bivouacked together on the sands. Not far
distant they could see lights. They were the camp-fires of the
shipwrecked French.

And now, to relate the fortunes of these unhappy men. To do so with
precision is impossible, for henceforward the French narratives are no
longer the narratives of eye-witnesses.

It has been seen how, when on the point of assailing the Spaniards of
St. Augustine, John Ribaut was thwarted by a gale which the former
hailed as a divine interposition. The gale rose to a tempest of strange
fury. Within a few days, all the French ships were cast on shore, the
greater number near Cape Canaveral. According to the letter of Menendez,
many of those on board were lost, but others affirm that all escaped but
the captain, La Grange, an officer of high merit, who was washed from a
floating mast. One of the ships was wrecked at a point farther northward
than the rest, and it was her company whose camp-fires were seen by the
Spaniards at their bivouac among the sands of Anastasia Island. They
were endeavoring to reach Fort Caroline, of whose fate they knew
nothing, while Ribaut with the remainder was farther southward,
struggling through the wilderness towards the same goal. What befell the
latter will appear hereafter. Of the fate of the former party there is
no French record. What we know of it is due to three Spanish writers,
Mendoza, Doctor Solis de las Meras, and Menendez himself. Solis was a
priest, and brother-in-law to Menendez. Like Mendoza, he minutely
describes what he saw, and, like him, was a red-hot zealot, lavishing
applause on the darkest deeds of his chief. Before me lie the long
despatches, now first brought to light from the archives of Seville,
which Menendez sent from Florida to the King, a cool record of
atrocities never surpassed, and inscribed on the back with the royal
indorsement,--"Say to him that he has done well."

When the Adelantado saw the French fires in the distance, he lay close
in his bivouac, and sent two soldiers to reconnoitre. At two in the
morning they came back and reported that it was impossible to get at the
enemy, since they were on the farther side of an arm of the sea,
probably Matanzas Inlet. Menendez, however, gave orders to march, and
before daybreak reached the hither bank, where he hid his men in a bushy
hollow. Thence, as it grew light, they could discern the enemy, many of
whom were searching along the sands and shallows for shell-fish, for
they were famishing. A thought struck Menendez, an inspiration, says
Mendoza, of the Holy Spirit. He put on the clothes of a sailor, entered
a boat which had been brought to the spot, and rowed towards the
shipwrecked men, the better to learn their condition. A Frenchman swam
out to meet him. Menendez demanded what men they were.

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