[883] [Laudonnière’s account of this relief is translated in the Hawkins Voyages (p. 65), published by the Hakluyt Society. A project of the English for a settlement on the Florida coast (1563), under Stukely, came to nought. Cf. Doyle’s English in America, p. 55.—Ed.]
[884] “En fermant ceste lettre i’ay eu certain aduis, comme dom Petro Melandes se part d’Espagne, pour aller à la coste de la Nouvelle Frāce; vous regarderez n’endurer qu’il n’entrepreine sur nous non plus qu’il veut que nous n’entreprenions sur eux.” As Mr. Parkman remarks, “Ribault interpreted this into a command to attack the Spaniards.”—Pioneers of France in the New World.
[885] Relacion de Mazauegos. Relacion de lo subcedido en la Habana cerca de la entrada de los Franceses. Smith, Coleccion, p. 202. Relacion de los robos que corsarios franceses han hecho 1559-1571. Relacion de los navios quo robaron franceses los años de 1559 y 1560.
[886] One was commanded by Captain Cossette (Basanier, p. 105).
[887] Letter of Menendez to the King, dated Province of Florida, Sept. 11, 1565. Mendoza Grajales, Relacion de la jornada de Po Menendez, 1565.
[888] Letter of Menendez to the King, Oct. 15, 1565; Mendoza Grajales, Relacion in Coleccion de documentos inéditos (edited by Pacheco, etc.), iii. 441-479.
[889] Mendoza Grajales, Relacion.
[890] Jacques de Sorie, in 1555, at Havana, after pledging his word to spare the lives of the Spaniards who surrendered, put them and his Portuguese prisoners to death; negroes he hung up and shot while still alive (Relacion de Diego de Mazauegos, MS.; Letter of Bishop Sarmiento in Coleccion de documentos inéditos, v. 555). Priests, especially those of religious Orders, met no mercy at the hands of the French cruisers at this period, the most atrocious case being that of the Portuguese Jesuit Father Ignatius Azevedo, captured by the French on his way to Brazil with thirty-nine missionary companions, all of whom were put to death, in 1570. In all my reading, I find no case where the French in Spanish waters then gave quarter to Spaniards, except in hope of large ransom. Two of the vessels found at Caroline were Spanish, loaded with sugar and hides, captured near Yaguana by the French, who threw all the crew overboard; and Gourgues, on reaching Florida, had two barks, evidently captured from the Spaniards, as to the fate of whose occupants his eulogists observe a discreet silence.
[891] This is the Spanish account of Solis de Meras. Lemoyne, who escaped from Caroline, gives an account based on the statement of a Dieppe sailor who made his way to the Indians, and though taken by the Spaniards, fell at last into French hands. Challeux, the carpenter of Caroline, and another account derived from Christophe le Breton, one of those spared by Menendez, maintain that Menendez promised La Caille, under oath and in writing to spare their lives if they surrendered. This seems utterly improbable; for Menendez from first to last held to his original declaration, “el que fuere herege morira.” Lemoyne is so incorrect as to make this last slaughter take place at Caroline.
[892] Menendez to the King,—writing from Matanzas, Dec. 5, 1565; and again from Havana, Dec. 12, 1565. Barcia, Ensaio cronológico, p. 91.