Читать книгу The Spaniards in Florida - Fairbanks George Rainsford - Страница 5

The settlement of Florida had its origin in the religious troubles experienced by the Huguenots under Charles IX. in France.

Their distinguished leader, Admiral Coligny, as early as 1555 projected colonies in America, and sent an expedition to Brazil, which proved unsuccessful. Having procured permission from Charles IX. to found a colony in Florida – a designation which embraced in rather an indefinite manner the whole country from the Chesapeake to the Tortugas – he sent an expedition in 1562 from France, under command of Jean Ribault, composed of many young men of good family. They first landed at the St. John's River, where they erected a monument, but finally established a settlement at Port Royal, South Carolina, and erected a fort. After some months, however, in consequence of dissensions among the officers of the garrison, and difficulties with the Indians, this settlement was abandoned.

In 1564 another expedition came out under the command of René de Laudonnière, and made their first landing at the River of Dolphins, being the present harbor of St. Augustine, and so named by them in consequence of the great number of Dolphins (Porpoises) seen by them at its mouth. They afterwards coasted to the north, and entered the River St. Johns, called by them the River May.

Upon an examination of this river, Laudonnière concluded to establish his colony on its banks; and proceeding about two leagues above its mouth, built a fort upon a pleasant hill of "mean height," which, in honor of his sovereign, he named Fort Caroline.

The colonists after a few months were reduced to great distress, and were about taking measures to abandon the country a second time, when Ribault arrived with reinforcements.

It is supposed that intelligence of these expeditions was communicated by the enemies of Coligny to the court of Spain.

Jealousy of the aggrandizement of the French in the New World, mortification for their own unsuccessful efforts in that quarter, and a still stronger motive of hatred to the faith of the Huguenot, induced the bigoted Philip II. of Spain, to dispatch Pedro Menendez de Aviles, a brave, bigoted and remorseless soldier, to drive out the French colony, and take possession of the country for himself.

The compact made between the King and Menendez was, that he should furnish one galleon completely equipped, and provisions for a force of six hundred men; that he should conquer and settle the country. He obligated himself to carry one hundred horses, two hundred horned cattle, four hundred hogs, four hundred sheep and some goats, and five hundred slaves, (for which he had a permission free of duties), the third part of which should be men, for his own service and that of those who went with him, to aid in cultivating the land and building. That he should take twelve priests, and four fathers of the Jesuit order. He was to build two or three towns of one hundred families, and in each town should build a fort according to the nature of the country. He was to have the title of Adelantado of the country, as also to be entitled a Marquis, and his heirs after him, to have a tract of land, receive a salary of 2,000 ducats, a percentage of the royal duties, and have the freedom of all the other ports of New Spain.2

His force consisted, at starting, of eleven sail of vessels, with two thousand and six hundred men; but, owing to storms and accidents, not more than one half arrived. He came upon the coast on the 28th August, 1565, shortly after the arrival of the fleet of Ribault. On the 7th day of September, Menendez cast anchor in the River of Dolphins, the harbor of St. Augustine. He had previously discovered and given chase to some of the vessels of Ribault, off the mouth of the River May. The Indian village of Selooe then stood upon the site of St. Augustine, and the landing of Menendez was upon the spot where the city of St. Augustine now stands.

Fray Francisco Lopez de Mendoza, the Chaplain of the Expedition, thus chronicles the disembarkation and attendant ceremonies: —

"On Saturday the 8th day of September, the day of the nativity of our Lady, the General disembarked, with numerous banners displayed, trumpets and other martial music resounding, and amid salvos of artillery.

"Carrying a cross, I proceeded at the head, chanting the hymn Te Deum Laudamus. The General marched straight up to the cross, together with all those who accompanied him; and, kneeling, they all kissed the cross. A great number of Indians looked upon these ceremonies, and imitated whatever they saw done. Thereupon the General took possession of the country in the name of his Majesty. All the officers then took an oath of allegiance to him, as their general, and as adelantado of the whole country."

The name of St. Augustine was given, in the usual manner of the early voyagers, because they had arrived upon the coast on the day dedicated in their calendar to that eminent saint of the primitive church, revered alike by the good of all ages for his learning and piety.

The first troops who landed, says Mendoza, were well received by the Indians, who gave them a large mansion belonging to the chief, situated near the banks of the river. The engineer officers immediately erected an entrenchment of earth, and a ditch around this house, with a slope made of earth and fascines, these being the only means of defense which the country presents; for, says the father with surprise, "there is not a stone to be found in the whole country." They landed eighty cannon from the ships, of which the lightest weighed two thousand five hundred pounds.

But in the meantime Menendez had by no means forgotten the errand upon which he principally came; and by inquiries of the Indians he soon learned the position of the French fort and the condition of its defenders. Impelled by necessity, Laudonnière had been forced to seize from the Indians food to supply his famished garrison, and had thus incurred their enmity, which was soon to produce its sad results.

The Spaniards numbered about six hundred combatants, and the French about the same; but arrangements had been made for further accessions to the Spanish force, to be drawn from St. Domingo and Havana, and these were daily expected.

It was the habit of those days to devolve almost every event upon the ordering of a special providence; and each nation had come to look upon itself almost in the light of a peculiar people, led like the Israelites of old by signs and wonders; and as in their own view all their actions were directed by the design of advancing God's glory as well as their own purposes, so the blessing of Heaven would surely accompany them in all their undertakings.

So believed the Crusaders on the plains of Palestine; so believed the conquerors of Mexico and Peru; so believed the Puritan settlers of New England (alike in their Indian wars and their oppressive social polity); and so believed, also, the followers of Menendez and of Ribault; and in this simple and trusting faith, the worthy chaplain gives us the following account of the miraculous escape and deliverance of a portion of the Spanish fleet: —

"God and his Holy Mother have performed another great miracle in our favor. The day following the landing of the General in the fort, he said to us that he was very uneasy because his galley and another vessel were at anchor, isolated and a league at sea, being unable to enter the port on account of the shallowness of the water; and that he feared that the French might come and capture or maltreat them. As soon as this idea came to him he departed, with fifty men, to go on board of his galleon. He gave orders to three shallops which were moored in the river to go out and take on board the provisions and troops which were on board the galleon. The next day, a shallop having gone out thither, they took on board as much of the provisions as they could, and more than a hundred men who were in the vessel, and returned towards the shore; but half a league before arriving at the bar they were overtaken by so complete a calm that they were unable to proceed further, and thereupon cast anchor and passed the night in that place. The day following at break of day they raised anchor as ordered by the pilot, as the rising of the tide began to be felt. When it was fully light they saw astern of them at the poop of the vessel, two French ships which during the night had been in search of them. The enemy arrived with the intention of making an attack upon us. The French made all haste in their movements, for we had no arms on board, and had only embarked the provisions. When day appeared, and our people discovered the French, they addressed their prayers to our Lady of Bon Secours d'Utrera, and supplicated her to grant them a little wind, for the French were already close up to them. They say that Our Lady descended, herself, upon the vessel; for the wind freshened and blew fair for the bar, so that the shallop could enter it. The French followed it; but, as the bar has but little depth and their vessels were large, they were not able to go over it, so that our men and the provisions made a safe harbor. When it became still clearer they perceived besides the two vessels of the enemy, four others at a distance, being the same which we had seen in port the evening of our arrival. They were well furnished with both troops and artillery, and had directed themselves for our galleon and the other ship, which were alone at sea. In this circumstance God accorded us two favors. The first was, that the same evening after they had discharged the provisions and the troops I have spoken of, at midnight the galleon and other vessel put to sea without being perceived by the enemy; the one for Spain, and the other for Havana, for the purpose of seeking the fleet which was there; and in this way neither was taken.

"The second favor, by which God rendered us a still greater service, was that on the day following the one I have described there arose a storm, and so great a tempest that certainly the greater part of the French vessels must have been lost at sea; for they were overtaken upon the most dangerous coast I have ever seen, and were very close to the shore; and if our vessels, that is the galleon and its consort, are not shipwrecked, it is because they were already more than twelve leagues off the coast, which gave them the facility of running before the wind, and maneuvering as well as they could, relying upon the aid of God to preserve them."3

Menendez had ascertained from the Indians that a large number of the French troops had embarked on board of the vessels which he had seen off the harbor, and he had good ground for believing that these vessels would either be cast helpless upon the shore, or be driven off by the tempest to such a distance as would render their return for some days impossible. He at once conceived the project of attacking the French fort upon the river May, by land.

A council of war was held, and after some discussion, for the most part adverse to the plan proposed by him, Menendez spoke as follows:

"Gentlemen and Brothers! we have before us now an opportunity which if improved by us will have a happy result. I am satisfied that the French fleet which four days since fled from me, and has now come to seek me, has been reinforced with the larger part of the garrison of their fort, to which, nor to port, will they be able to return for many days according to appearances; and since they are all Lutherans, as we learned before we sailed from Spain, by the edicts which Jean Ribault published before embarking, in order that no Catholic at the peril of his life should go in his fleet, nor any Catholic books be taken; and this they themselves declared to us the night they fled from us, and hence our war must be to blood and fire, not only on account of the orders we are under, but because they have sought us in order to destroy us, that we should not plant our holy religion in these regions, and to establish their own abominable and crazy sect among the Indians; so that the more promptly we shall punish them, we shall the more speedily do a service to our God and our king, and comply with our conscience and our duty.

"To accomplish this, we must choose five hundred arquebuse men and pikemen, and carry provisions in our knapsacks for eight days, divided into ten companies, each one with its standard and its captain, and go with this force by land to examine the settlements and fort of our enemies; and as no one knows the road, I will guide you within two points by a mariner's compass; and where we cannot get along, we will open a way with our axes; and moreover, I have with me a Frenchman who has been more than a year at their fort, and who says he knows the ground for two leagues around the fort.

"If we shall arrive without discovery, it may be that falling upon it at daylight we may take it, by planting upon it twenty scaling ladders, at the cost of fifty lives. If we are discovered, we can form in the shelter of the wood, which I am assured is not more than a quarter of a league distant, and planting there ten standards, send forward a trumpeter requiring them to leave the fort and the country, and return to their own country, offering them ships and provisions for the voyage. They will imagine that we have a much greater army with us, and they may surrender; and if they do not, we shall at least accomplish that they will leave us undisturbed in this our own settlement, and we shall know the way, so that we may return to destroy them the succeeding spring."

After some discussion it was concluded that after hearing mass they should undertake the expedition on the third day. Considerable opposition was manifested on the part of the officers; but, with a consummate knowledge of human nature, the Adelantado got up the most splendid dinner in his power, and invited his recreant officers to the repast, and dexterously appealed to their fears, as well as their pride, and overcame their reluctance to undertake the unknown dangers of a first march through Florida at a wet season, an actual acquaintance with which would still more have dampened their ardor.

The troops assembled promptly upon the day appointed, at the sound of the trumpet, the fife and the drum, and they all went to hear mass, except Juan de Vicente, who said he had a disorder of the stomach, and in his leg; and when some friends wished to urge his coming, he replied: "I vow to God, that I will wait until the news comes that our force is entirely cut off, when we who remain will embark in our three vessels, and go to the Indies, where there will be no necessity of our all perishing like beasts."

This Juan Vicente seems to have been an apt specimen of a class of croakers not peculiar to any age or country. Of his future history the chronicle gives other instances of a similar spirit; and his sole claim to immortality, like that of many an other, is founded upon his impudence.