[XXV.]
DOMINIQUE DE GOURGUES.
I
.—EARLY HISTORY OF GOURGUES.
The tidings of the fearful massacre of the Huguenots in Florida, as well in Spanish, as in French accounts, at length reached France. Deep was the feeling of horror and indignation which they everywhere excited among the people. Catholics, not less than Protestants, felt how terrible was the cruelty thus inflicted upon humanity, how insolent the scorn thus put upon the flag of the country. Wild and bitter was the cry of anguish sent up by the thousand bereaved widows and orphans of the murdered men. But this cry, this feeling, this sense of suffering and shame, awakened no sympathies in the court of France. The king, Charles IX., heard the “supplication” of the wives and children of the sufferers, without according any answer to their prayer. The blood of nearly nine hundred victims cried equally to earth and heaven for vengeance, and cried in vain to the earthly sovereign. He had no ear for the sorrows and the wrongs of heresy; and the plaint of humanity was stifled in the supposed interests of religion. Charles was most regally indifferent to a crime which relieved him of so many troublesome subjects; and was at that very time, meditating the most summary processes for still farther diminishing their numbers. He was yet to provide an appropriate finish to such a history of massacre in the bloody tragedy of St. Bartholomew. The wrong done to the honor of his flag and nation, by a rival power, was not felt. We have already hinted the strong conjecture, urged by historians, that the Spanish expedition, under Melendez, was planned with the full privity and concurrence of the king of France. His conduct, at this period, would seem fully to justify the suspicion. His existing relations with his brother of Spain were not of a sort to be periled now by the exhibition of his sympathies with a cause, and on behalf of a sect, which both monarchs had reason to hate and fear, and were preparing to extirpate.
But, if the Court of France demanded no redress for the massacre of its people, and that of Spain offered none, either redress or apology, there was yet a deep and intense passion dwelling in the heart of the one nation, and yearning for revenge upon that of the other. There was still a chivalrous feeling in France which showed itself superior to the exactions of sect or party, and which brooded with terrible intensity over the bloody fortunes of the French in Florida. This moody meditation at length found its fitting exponent. The sentiment that stirs earnestly in the popular heart will always, sooner or later, obtain a fitting voice; and where it burns justifiably for vengeance, it will not long be wanting in a weapon. The avenger arose in due season to satisfy the demands of justice!
The Chevalier, Dominique de Gourgues, was a Gascon gentleman, born at Mont de Marsan, in the County of Cominges. His family was one of considerable distinction. It had always been devotedly attached to the Catholic religion, nor had he ever for a moment faltered in the same faith. His career had been a remarkable one, signalized by great valor, and the most extreme vicissitudes of fortune. He had served in the armies of France during the long and capricious struggles in Italy, which had been the chief arena for conflict in the reigns of Charles the Eighth, of Louis XII., of Francis the First, and down to the present period. Here he had associated, under the command of Brissac and others, with that valiant brother Gascon, Blaize de Montluc, who, in his commentaries, would probably have told us much about the prowess of Gourgues, if he had not been so greatly occupied with the narrative of his own.[24] But the forbearance of Montluc has not deprived us of all the testimony which belongs to the fame of the chevalier. Of all the subaltern officers of his time, no one achieved a more brilliant reputation. Among the Gascons, confessedly distinguished above all others by their reckless daring, and headlong eagerness after glory in battle, the courage of Gourgues was such as raised him to the rank of a hero of romance. His youthful eyes had opened upon the latest fields of that race of heroes of whom Bayard was the superior and perhaps the last. He was one of the Sampsons of that wondrous band, whose wars, according to Trivulcio—one not the least remarkable among them,—were those of the giants;—the Swiss, in the fullest vigor of their martial fame, and at the height of their insolence;—the Spaniards, with Hernan de Cordova, the great captain, at their head, and crowning the career of Charles V. with a power and a lustre which his own merits did not deserve;—the Italians, under the sway of, and deriving their spirit from, the fierce martial pontiff, Julius II., and the French, boasting of a cavalry, headed by Bayard, La Palisse and others, worthy of such associates, and such as the armies of Europe had never beheld before. Montluc, who had been trained in part in the same house with Bayard, and Boiteres, who, as a page of the knight sans peur et sans reproche, makes a famous figure in the chronicles of le loyal serviteur, being among the leaders whom the Chevalier de Gourgues followed into battle. He partook of their spirit, and proved himself worthy to sustain the declining honors of chivalry. But his fortunes were as adverse as his merits were distinguished. With thirty men, near Sienna, in Tuscany, he sustained, for a long time, the shock of a large division of the Spanish army. He saw, at length, every man of his command fall around him, and was made a prisoner. The captive of the Spaniard, in that day, when the emperor of the country and his favorite generals showed themselves utterly and equally insensible to good faith and generosity, was to be a slave. They conducted war with little regard to the rules that prevailed among civilized nations. The valor that Gourgues
displayed, instead of commending him to their admiration and favor, only provoked their fury; and they punished, with shameful bonds, those brave actions which the noble heart prefers to applause and honor. Gourgues was transferred in chains to the gallies. In this degrading condition, chained to the oar, he was captured by the links off the coast of Sicily; the Turks then being in alliance, to the shame of Christendom, with the French monarch, and against the Spaniards. He was conducted by his new captors to Rhodes and thence to Constantinople. Sent once more to sea, under his new master, he was retaken by a Maltese galley, and thus recovered his liberty. But his latter adventures had given him a taste for the sea. His progresses brought him to the coast of Africa, to Brazil, and, according to Lescarbot, though the point is doubted, to the Pacific Ocean. The details of this career are not given to us, but the results seem to have been equally creditable to the fame, and of benefit to the fortunes of our chevalier. He returned to Mont de Marsan, with the reputation of being one of the most able and hardy of all the navigators of his time. He had scarcely established himself fairly in his ancient home, where he had invested all the fruits of his toils and enterprise, when the tidings came of the capture of La Caroline, and the massacre of the French in Florida by Melendez. He felt for the honor of France, for the grief of the widows and orphans thus cruelly bereaved, and was keenly reminded of that brutal nature of the Spaniard, under which he had himself suffered so long, and in a condition so humiliating to a noble spirit. He had his own wrongs and those of his country to avenge. He brooded over the necessity before him, with a passion that acquired new strength from contemplation, and finally resolved never to give himself rest till he had exacted full atonement, in the blood of the usurpers in Florida, for the crime of which they had been guilty to his people and himself.