Jean Ribault - Disaster

Disaster

A few days after Ribault's arrival off the Florida coast, a Spanish fleet commanded by Pedro Menéndez de Avilés came over the horizon and attempted to grapple and board the Frenchmen. Rough sea conditions denied a decisive outcome to both sides. The Spanish admiral ordered his ships south, where some 800 troops and settlers from Spain disembarked on August 28, 1565. They hastily threw up palm-log and earthworks around an existing Timucua Indian village at what is today St. Augustine, Florida expecting an attack from Ribault. Jean Ribault took his fleet south to pursue Menéndez on September 10. Learning that the majority of the French men at arms were gone from Fort Caroline, Menéndez ordered his infantrymen to march 40 miles north to Fort Caroline, during a hurricane. On 20 September, the Spanish captured the now lightly defended French settlement; 140 men were immediately put to death. In the eyes of the king of Spain, the acts of piracy committed by former residents of Fort Caroline made the entire settlement a dangerous nest of pirates and heretics. Only about 60 women and children were spared. René Laudonnière and about 40 others escaped the wrath of the Spaniards, and eventually returned to Europe to tell their tales.

The same hurricane that masked the approach of Menéndez's troops on Fort Caroline, utterly destroyed all of Ribault's fleet, driving them up on the beach many miles south of their intended target. Several hundred soldiers and sailors made it ashore barely alive and then walked from near present-day Daytona Beach to Matanzas Inlet, 14 miles south of St. Augustine. The marooned sailors were soon tracked down by Menéndez and a patrol force of Spanish troops, probably under a hundred men. Ribault, believing his hungry men would be fed and decently treated, allowed himself to be bluffed into surrender. In batches of ten, the Frenchmen were rowed across to the mainland, hands tied behind their backs. Following the explicit orders of King Philip II of Spain, the prisoners were asked if they were professing Catholics. Those who were not were marched behind a dune and put to the knife by Menéndez's Spanish soldiers. Only a handful of Catholics, young musicians and ship's boys were spared their lives. A similar surrender and mass execution of a smaller group of Frenchmen followed a few days later. This time, a few Frenchmen, suspicious of their enemies, preferred to take their chances with the native Americans. Altogether, Ribault and about 350 of his officers and men lost their lives in the two massacres. The location of this event still carries today the name Matanzas, which is Spanish for "massacres." Menéndez had brilliantly but horrifically carried out his orders to wipe out the French incursion.

In 1568 French pirate Dominique de Gourgues avenged Ribault. He attacked Spanish-held Fort Caroline, secured the garrison's surrender and then put all his prisoners to death.