their general. At length the transit was complete. With bloodshot eyes and weapons bared, the fierce Spaniards closed around their victims.
"Are you Catholics or Lutherans? and is there any one among you who will go to confession?"
Ribaut answered,—
"I and all here are of the Reformed Faith."
And he recited the Psalm, "Domine, memento mei."
"We are of earth," he continued, "and to earth we must return; twenty years more or less can matter little"; and, turning to the Adelantado, he bade him do his will.
The stony-hearted bigot gave the signal; and those who will may paint to themselves the horrors of the scene. A few, however, were spared.
"I saved," writes Menendez, "the lives of two young gentlemen of about eighteen years of age, as well as of three others, the fifer, the drummer, and the trumpeter; and I caused Jean Ribaut with all the rest to be passed under the knife, judging this to be expedient for the service of God our Lord, and of your Majesty. And I consider it great good fortune that he (Jean Ribaut) should be dead, for the King of France could effect more with him and five hundred ducats than with other men and five thousand, and he would do more in one year than another in ten, for he was the most experienced sailor and naval commander ever known, and of great skill in this passage to the Indies and the coast of Florida. He was, besides, greatly liked in England, in which kingdom his reputation is such that he was appointed Captain-General of all the British fleet against the French Catholics in the war between England and France some years ago."
Such is the sum of the Spanish accounts,—the self-damning testimony of the author and abettors of the crime. A picture of lurid and awful coloring; and yet there is reason to believe that the truth was more hideous still. Among those spared was one Christophe le Breton, who was carried to Spain, escaped to France, and told his story to Challeux. Among those struck down in the carnage was a sailor of Dieppe, stunned and left for dead under a heap of corpses. In the night he revived, contrived to draw his knife, cut the cords that bound his hands, and make his way to an Indian village. The Indians, though not without reluctance, abandoned him to the Spaniards. The latter sold him as a slave; but on his way in fetters to Portugal, the ship was taken by the Huguenots, the sailor set free, and his story published in the narrative of Le Moyne. When the massacre was known in France, the friends and relatives of the victims sent to the King, Charles IX., a vehement petition for redress; and their memorial recounts many incidents of the tragedy. From these three sources is to be drawn the French version of the story. The following is its substance:—
Famished and desperate, the followers of Ribaut were toiling northward to seek refuge at Fort Caroline, when they found the Spaniards in their path. Some were filled with dismay; others, in their misery, almost hailed them as deliverers. La Caille, the sergeant-major, crossed the river. Menendez met him with a face of friendship, and protested that he would spare the lives of the shipwrecked men, sealing the promise with an oath, a kiss, and many signs of the cross. He even gave it in writing, under seal. Still, there were many among the French who would not place themselves in his power. The most credulous crossed the river in a boat. As each successive party landed, their hands were bound fast at their backs; and thus, except a few who were set apart, they were all driven towards the fort, like cattle to the shambles, with curses and scurrilous abuse. Then, at sound of drums and trumpets, the Spaniards fell upon them, striking them down with swords, pikes, and halberds. Ribaut vainly called on the Adelantado to remember his oath. By the latter's order, a soldier plunged a dagger into his heart; and Ottigny, who stood near, met a similar fate. Ribaut's beard was cut off, and portions of it sent in a letter to Philip II. His head was hewn into four parts, one of which was displayed on the point of a lance at each corner of Fort St. Augustine. Great fires were kindled, and the bodies of the murdered burned to ashes.
Such is the sum of the French accounts. The charge of breach of faith contained in them was believed by Catholics as well as Protestants, and it was as a defence against this charge that the narrative of the Adelantado's brother-in-law was published. That Ribaut, a man whose good sense and bravery were both reputed high, should have submitted himself and his men to Menendez without positive assurance of safety is scarcely credible; nor is it lack of charity to believe that a miscreant so savage in heart and so perverted in conscience would act on the maxim, current among the bigots of the day, that faith ought not to be kept with heretics.
It was night when the Adelantado again entered St. Augustine. Some there were who blamed his cruelty; but many applauded. "Even if the French had been Catholics,"—such was their language,—"he would have done right, for, with the little provision we have, they would all have starved; besides, there were so many of them that they would have cut our throats."
And now Menendez again addressed himself to the despatch, already begun, in which he recounts to the King his labors and his triumphs, a deliberate and business-like document, mingling narratives of butchery with recommendations for promotions, commissary details, and petitions for supplies; enlarging, too, on the vast schemes of encroachment which his successful generalship had brought to nought. The French, he says, had planned a military and naval depot at Los Martires, whence they would make a descent upon Havana, and another at the Bay of Ponce de Leon, whence they could threaten Vera Cruz. They had long been encroaching on Spanish rights at Newfoundland, from which a great arm of the sea—the St. Lawrence—would give them access to the Moluccas and other parts of the East Indies. Moreover, he adds in a later despatch, by this passage they may reach the mines of Zacatecas and St. Martin, as well as every part of the South Sea. And, as already mentioned, he urges immediate occupation of Chesapeake Bay, which, by its supposed water-communication with the St. Lawrence, would enable Spain to vindicate her rights, control the fisheries of Newfoundland, and thwart her rival in her vast designs of commercial and territorial aggrandizement. Thus did France and Spain dispute the possession of North America long before England became a party to the strife.
Some twenty days after Menendez returned to St. Augustine, the Indians, enamored of carnage, and exulting to see their invaders mowed down, came to tell him that on the coast southward, near Cape Canaveral, a great number of Frenchmen were intrenching themselves. They were those of Ribaut's party who had refused to surrender. Retreating to the spot where their ships had been cast ashore, they were endeavoring to build a vessel from the fragments of the wrecks.
In all haste Menendez despatched messengers to Fort Caroline,—named by him San Mateo,—ordering a reinforcement of a hundred and fifty men. In a few days they came. He added some of his own soldiers, and, with a united force of two hundred and fifty, set forth, as he tells us, on the second of November, pushing southward along the shore with such merciless energy that some of his men dropped dead with wading night and day through the loose sands. When, from behind their frail defences, the French saw the Spanish pikes and partisans glittering into view, they fled in a panic, and took refuge among the hills. Menendez sent a trumpet to summon them, pledging his honor for their safety. The commander and several others told the messenger that they would sooner be eaten by the savages than trust themselves to Spaniards; and, escaping, they fled to the Indian towns. The rest surrendered; and Menendez kept his word. The comparative number of his own men made his prisoners no longer dangerous. They were led back to St. Augustine, where, as the Spanish writer affirms, they were well treated. Those of good birth sat at the Adelantado's table, eating the bread of a homicide crimsoned with the slaughter of their comrades. The priests essayed their pious efforts, and, under the gloomy menace of the Inquisition, some of the heretics renounced their errors. The fate of the captives may be gathered from the indorsement, in the handwriting of the King, on the back of the despatch of Menendez of December twelfth.
"Say to him," writes Philip II., "that, as to those he has killed, he has done well, and as for those he has saved, they shall be sent to the galleys."
Thus did Spain make good her claim to North America, and crush the upas of heresy in its germ. Within her bounds the tidings were hailed with acclamation, while in France a cry of horror
