The Lily and the Totem; or, The Huguenots in Florida

by William Gilmore Simms

But the sacrifice of Guernache brought no peace to the colony. Our Huguenots were scarcely Christians. They were of a rude, wild temper, to which the constant civil wars prevailing in France had brought a prejudicial training. Our chronicler tells us nothing of their devotions. We hear sometimes that they prayed, but rather for the benefit of the savages than their own. Their public religious services were ostentatious ceremonials, designed to impress the red-men with an idea of their superior faith and worship. Laudonniere, who writes for them, and was one of their number, seldom deals in a religious phraseology, which he might reasonably be expected to have done as one of a people leaving their homes for the sake of conscience. But there is good reason to suppose that, with our Huguenots, as in the case of the New England Puritans, the idea of religion was more properly the idea of party. It was a struggle for political power that moved the Dissenters, as well in France as England, quite as much as any feeling of denial or privation on the score of their religion. This pretext was made to justify a cause which might have well found its sanction in its intrinsic merits; but which it was deemed politic to urge on the higher grounds of conscience and duty to God. Certain it is that we do not anywhere see, in the history of the colony established by Coligny, any proofs of that strong devotional sentiment which has been urged as the motive to its establishment. Doubtless, this was a prevailing motive, along with others, for Coligny himself; but the adventurers chosen to begin the settlement for the reception of the persecuted sect in Florida, were evidently not very deeply imbued with religion of any kind. They were a wild and reckless body of men, whose deeds were wholly in conflict with the pure and lovely profession of sentiment which has been made in their behalf. How far their deeds are to be justified by the provocations which they received, and the tyrannies which they endured, may be a question; but there can be no question with regard to the general temper which they exhibited—the tone of their minds—the feelings of their hearts—by all of which they are shown as stubborn, insubordinate and selfish. It is not denied that they had great provocation to violence; but Laudonniere himself admits that they were, in all probability, “not so obedient to their captain as they should have been.” “Misfortune,” he adds, “or rather the just judgment of God would have it that those which could not bee overcome by fire nor water, should be undone by their ownselves. This is the common fashion of men, which cannot continue in one state, and had rather to overthrow themselves, than not to attempt some new thing dayly.”

Not only was no peace in the colony after the execution of Guernache, but the evil spirit, in the mood of Captain Albert, was very far from being laid. “His madness,” in the language of the chronicler, “seemed to increase from day to day.” He was not content to punish Guernache; he determined to extend his severities to the friends and associates of the unhappy victim. Some of these he only frowned upon and threatened; but his threats were apt to be fulfilled. Others he brought up for punishment;—sympathy with his enemy, being a prime offence against the dignity and safety of our petty sovereign. Among those who had thus rendered themselves obnoxious, Lachane was necessarily a conspicuous object. In the same unwise and violent spirit in which he had pursued Guernache, Captain Albert was determined to proceed against this man, who was really equally inoffensive with Guernache, and quite as much beloved among the people. But the aspect of the two cases was not precisely the same. The friends of Lachane, warned by the fate of Guernache, were somewhat more upon their guard,—more watchful and suspicious,—and inclined to make the support and maintenance of the one, a tribute to the manes of the other. Besides, Pierre Renaud, who had some how been the deadly enemy of Guernache, had no hostility to Lachane. The latter, too, had not so singularly offended the amour propre of Captain Albert, by his successful rivalry among the damsels of Audusta. They had not so decidedly shown the preference for him as they had for the fiddler, over his superior. No doubt he was preferred, for he, too, like Guernache, was a person very superior in form and physiognomy to Albert. But, if they felt any preference for the former, they had not so offensively declared it, as the indiscreet Monaletta had done; and, with these qualifying circumstances, in his favor, Lachane was brought up for judgment. His offence, such as it was, did not admit of denial. Some palliation was attempted by a reference to the claims of Guernache, the excellence of his character, his usefulness, and the general favor he had found equally among the red-men and his own people. These suggestions were unwisely made. They censured equally the justice and the policy of the tyrant, and thus irritated anew his self-esteem. He thought himself exceedingly merciful, accordingly, in banishing the offender, whom it was just as easy and quite as agreeable to him, to hang. Lachane was accordingly sentenced to perpetual exile to a desert island along the sea. To this point he was conducted in melancholy state, by the trusted creatures of the despot.

It is not known to us at the present day, though the matter is still, probably, within the province of the antiquarian, to which of the numerous sea islands of the neighborhood the unhappy man was banished. It was one divided from the colony, and from the main, by an arm of the sea of such breadth, and so open to the most violent action of the waves, that any return of the exile by swimming, or without assistance from his comrades, was not apprehended or hoped for. His little desolate domain is described as about three leagues from Fort Charles, as almost entirely barren, a mere realm of sand, treeless and herbless, without foliage sufficient to shelter from sun and storm, or to provide against famine by its fruits. Should this island ever be identified with that of Lachane’s place of exile, it should receive his name to the exclusion of every other.

Here, then, hopeless and companionless, was the unhappy victim destined to remain, until death should bring him that escape which the mercy of his fellows had denied. Yet he was not to be abandoned wholly; a certain pittance of provisions was allowed him that he might not absolutely die of famine. This allowance was calculated nicely against his merest necessities. It was to be brought him on the return of every eighth day, and this period was that, accordingly, on which, alone, could he be permitted to gaze upon the face of a fellow being and a countryman.

Certainly, a more cruel punishment, adopted in a mere wanton exercise of despotic power, could not have been devised for any victim by the ingenuity of any superior. Death, even the death by which Guernache had perished, had been a doom more merciful; for if, as was the case, the colonists at Fort Charles themselves had already begun to find their condition of solitude almost beyond endurance—if they, living as they did together, cheered by the exercise of old sports and homely converse, the ties and assurances of support and friendship, the consciousness of strength—duties which were necessary and not irksome, and the interchange of thoughts which enliven the desponding temper;—if, with all these resources in their favor, they had sunk into gloomy discontent, eager for change, and anxious for the returning vessels of Ribault, that they might abandon for their old, the new home which they found so desolate; what must have been the sufferings and agonies of him whom they had thus banished, even from such solace as they themselves possessed—uncheered even by the familiar faces and the well-known voices of his fellows, and deprived of all the resources whereby ingenuity might devise some methods of relief, and totally unblessed by any of those exercises which might furnish a substitute for habitual employments. No sentence, more than this, could have shown to our Frenchmen so completely the utter absence of sympathy between themselves and their commander; could have shown how slight was the value which he put upon their lives, and with what utter contempt he regarded their feelings and affections. Albert little dreamed how actively he was at work, while thus feeding his morbid passions, in arousing the avenging spirit by which they were to be scourged and punished.

These rash and cruel proceedings of their chief produced a great and active sensation among the colonists—a sensation not the less deep and active, because a sense of their own danger kept them from its open expression. Had Albert pardoned Lachane, or let him off with some slight punishment, it is not improbable that the matter would have ended there; and the cruel proceedings against Guernache might have been forgiven if not forgotten. But these were kept alive by those which followed against their other favorite; and some of the boldest, feeling how desperate their condition threatened to become, now ventured to expostulate with their superior upon his wanton and unwise severities. But they were confounded to find that they themselves incurred the danger of Lachane, in the attempt to plead against it. It was one of the miserable weaknesses in the character of Captain Albert, to suppose his authority in danger whenever he was approached with the language of expostulation. To question his justice seemed to him to defy his power—to entreat for mercy, such a showing of hostility as to demand punishment also. He resented, as an impertinence to himself, all such approaches; and his answer to the prayers of his people was couched in the language of contumely and threat. They retired from his presence accordingly, with feelings of increased dislike and disgust, and with a discontent which was the more dangerous as they succeeded most effectually in controlling its exhibition.

But if such was the state of the relations between Albert and his people, how much worse did they become, when, at the close of the first eighth day after the banishment of Lachane, it was discovered that the orders for providing him with the allowance of food had been suspended, or countermanded. The captain was silent; and no one, unless at his bidding, could venture to carry the poor exile his allotted pittance. The eighth day passed. The men murmured among themselves, and their murmurs soon encouraged the utterance of a bolder voice. Nicholas Barré, a man of great firmness and intelligence, one of their number, at length presented himself before the captain. He boldly reminded him of the condition of Lachane, and urged him to hasten his supplies of food before he perished. But the self-esteem and consequence of Albert, under provocation, became a sort of madness. He answered the suggestion with indignity and insult.

“Begone!” he exclaimed, “and trouble me no more with your complaints. What is it to me if the scoundrel does perish? I mean that he shall perish! He deserves his fate! I shall be glad when ye can tell me that he no longer needs his allowance. Away! you deserve a like punishment. Let me hear another word on this subject, and the offender shall share his fate!”

The insulting answer was accompanied by all the tokens of brute anger and severity. The most furious oaths sufficed equally to show his insanity and earnestness. His, indeed, was now an insanity such as seizes usually upon those whom God is preparing for destruction. Barré deemed it only prudent to retire from the presence of a rage which it was no longer politic to provoke; but, in his soul, the purpose was already taking form and strength, which contemplated resistance to a tyranny so wild and reckless. He was not alone in this purpose. The sentiment of resistance and disaffection was growing all around him, and it only needed one who should embody it for successful exercise. But, for this, time was requisite. To decide for action, on the part of a conspiracy, it is first required that what is the common sentiment shall become the common necessity.