It was not long before exaggerated statements were circulated, based upon the representations made in Une requête au roi (Charles IX.) of the widows and orphans of the victims of Menendez, in which the number of the slain is reported at the impossible figure of nine hundred.[1000]
Respecting the expedition of De Gourgues there are no Spanish accounts whatever, Barcia[1001] merely taking in the main the French narrative,—in which, says Parkman, “it must be admitted there is a savor of romance.”[1002] That Gourgues was merely a slaver is evident from this full French account. Garibay notes his attempt to capture at least one Spanish vessel; and he certainly had on reaching Florida two barks, which he must have captured on his way. Basanier and many who follow him suppress entirely the slaver episode in this voyage. All the De Gourgues narratives ignore entirely the existence of St. Augustine, and make the three pretended forts on the St. John to have been of stone; and Prévost, to heighten the picture, invents the story of the flaying of Ribault, of which there is no trace in the earlier French accounts.
There are two French narratives. One of them, La reprinse de la Floride, exists, according to Gaffarel,[1003] in five different manuscript texts.[1004] The other French narrative is the last paper in the compilation of Basanier, already mentioned. Brinton[1005] is inclined to believe that it is not an epitome of the Reprinse, but that it was written by Basanier himself from the floating accounts of his day, or from some unknown relater. Charlevoix mentions a manuscript in the possession of the De Gourgues family; but it is not clear which of these papers it was.
The story of the Huguenot colony passed naturally into the historical records of the seventeenth century;[1006] but it got more special treatment in the next century, when Charlevoix issued his Nouvelle France.[1007] The most considerable treatments of the present century have been by Jared Sparks in his Life of Ribault,[1008] by Francis Parkman in his Pioneers of France in the New World,[1009] and by Paul Gaffarel in his Histoire de la Floride Française.[1010] The story has also necessarily passed into local and general histories of this period in America, and into the accounts of the Huguenots as a sect.[1011]
CHAPTER V.
LAS CASAS, AND THE RELATIONS OF THE SPANIARDS TO THE INDIANS.
BY GEORGE EDWARD ELLIS,