semicircle around him. He placed De Gourges on another log, and then opened the conference with bitter complaints against the Spaniards, because of their cruelties. They had driven the Indians from their homes, murdered their children, and desolated their fields because they had treated the Frenchmen kindly. The Chevalier was pleased with this discourse, but was cautious. He told the cacique that the Spaniards should be punished for their crimes. "Do you intend to make war upon them?" quickly asked the cacique. "I do," as quickly answered De Gourges. "We will join you!" said the cacique with vehemence as he sprang to his feet; and the same words came from the lips of the other chiefs with equal vehemence as they seized their arms which they had laid upon the grass, and brandished their javelins in great excitement. An alliance against the Spaniards was made on the spot between the French and Indians, and steps were immediately taken to attack the common enemy. Other alliances were made between the French and Indians, many generations afterward, which were instruments of dire distress to the English settlers in America, as we shall observe as our story goes on. The allies met at an appointed place not far from the St. Johns, on which the Spaniards had built two forts below Fort Carolina, on opposite banks of the river. Moving cautiously, they crossed a little stream behind a wood, arm-pit deep, the soldiers carrying their powder flasks on their helmets, an arquebuse in one hand and a sword in the other. Gathering in battle array near the little fort, the allies rushed forward with shouts and yells, and took it by surprise. The entire garrison, sixty in number, were slain, excepting a few who were reserved for another fate. De Gourges now hastened across the river, with eighty men in boats, to attack the fort on the opposite side, followed by the Indians, who were so eager for the fray that they could not wait for the return of the little vessels. They plunged into the water, each holding a bow, javelin and quiver of arrows in one hand, and swimming with the other. Appalled by the number of pale and dusky enemies that threatened them, the garrison of sixty men fled in the direction of Fort Carolina (or Matheo), three miles above. They were overtaken by the French and Indians in the woods, and the whole company were slain, excepting a few who were held as prisoners. From these prisoners and from a spy who was discovered in the camp, the French commander learned that Fort Carolina was not very strong; that its garrison consisted of two hundred and sixty men, and that they were greatly alarmed by a report that the allies were two thousand in number. Encouraged by this information, De Gourges, after two days' preparation, marched with his whole force against the doomed fortress. After some severe fighting, the . RETALIATION. 133 fort was captured. The flower of the garrison had already been slain in a sortie or sallying out to attack the assailants, and many of the remainder had fled to the woods, where they were met by the Indians and slaughtered. There was an indiscriminate massacre as before, a few only being reserved as prisoners. Now these, with others who had been so reserved, were placed in a row under the very trees whereon the Huguenots had been hung, not as Frenchmen, but as Lutherans. De Gourges addressed them, and then suspended them all by their necks. Over them he placed the inscription, burned into wood with a hot iron: NOT AS SPANIARDS AND MARINERS, BUT AS TRAITORS, ROBBERS, AND Murderers. So was concluded the savage and unchristian work of retaliating upon the innocent the crimes of the guilty. Could the blow have fallen upon King Philip of Spain, or Menendez his executioner, or Mendoza his apologist and coadjutor, and not upon the mere machines of government—the common soldiers-retributive justice would have been more divinely vindicated. But we must judge Philip, and Menendez, Mendoza and De Gourges, leniently, in the light of the spirit of the age in which they lived. No Spanish monarch now; no military chief, no truly Christian minister in any Christian country, to-day, would do such horrid work for such a cause. The seminal idea of the protest at Spires has worked beneficent wonders in making men less savage and more divine, since it was projected into human society. Too weak to brave the wrath of Menendez, who was at St. Augustine, De Gourges, with the assistance of the Indians, utterly destroyed the forts on the St. John's, and then sailed for France, where he arrived just in time to avoid vessels which Philip had sent out to intercept him. He was received with coldness at court. Philip had demanded of the weak Charles the head of De Gourges, and the Queen-mother, Catharine, had espoused the cause of the opponents of the Huguenots. In poverty De Gourges concealed himself for some years, declining an invitation of the Queen of England (Elizabeth) to enter her service. At length he died, whilst on his way to a seaport to take command of a fleet that was about to wage war on Philip. Menendez firmly planted a colony at St. Augustine, and sent an expedition, with Jesuit missionaries, to explore the waters of Chesapeake Bay, plant a settlement there, and scatter the seeds of Christianity among the pagans. But his death in 1574, when he was High Admiral of the Spanish navy, arrested this enterprise, and no further attempts seem to have been made by the Spaniards to plant settlements within the domain of our Republic. Coligni was deserted by his sovereign and his inhuman mother, and became a martyr. Catharine, with a strange perversion of a mother's natural instincts, after she became regent, plunged all of her children, in the flower of their youth, into a whirl of sensual pleasure, that soon weakened their minds and bodies beyond recovery, as she intended they should be. Her royal son, when he reached his majority, seemed incapable of resisting any temptation put in his way by his mother, and he was easily persuaded by her to order the destruction of the Protestants throughout France, on the eve of St. Bartholomew, in August, 1572. She had failed in a plot to bring the Duke of Guise to the scaffold, and now she had joined the league against the Huguenots, of which he was a leader. Coligni was selected as one of the first victims for sacrifice on that fatal night. Behme, a German assassin in the employ of the Duke of Guise, led a band of murderers to the room of Coligni, with concealed weapons excepting a boar-spear which he held in his hand. When he entered, the majestic presence of the Admiral and the serenity and dignity of his deportment so abashed the leader, that he was about to retire, when one of his followers whispered in his ear, "Coward!" Behme instantly recovered his self-possession and plunged the spear into the heart of Coligni, who fell dead at the feet of his murderers. His body was thrown out of the window into a court, where the Duke of Guise was waiting for the consummation of the crime. The Admiral's head was severed from his body and carried to Catharine, who had it embalmed and sent as a present to Pope Gregory the Thirteenth, at Rome. The Admiral's body was dragged through the streets of Paris amidst the execration of an infuriated mob, and then was hanged on a gibbet where Charles the Ninth and his courtiers viewed it. We have observed that a remnant of Ribault's company who abandoned Port Royal were picked up at sea by an English vessel, and taken to the presence of Queen Elizabeth. She was the daughter of Henry the Eighth and the beautiful Anne Boleyn, and had succeeded her half-sister Mary as sovereign of Great Britain in 1558, when she was twenty-five years of age. She had not been long on the throne when these Huguenots were brought into her audience-chamber. They were treated kindly, for Elizabeth was in theological sympathy with them. She had always been a Protestant at heart, but to avoid many personal perils and even death during the reign of her half-sister, who was wife of Philip of Spain, she had so deported herself with singularly adroit hypocrisy, that she was only suspected of heresy. So completely did she deceive everybody, that only the day before she ascended |