The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864

The chief asked three days for preparation. Gourgues cautioned him to secrecy, lest the Spaniards should take alarm.

"Never fear," was the answer; "we hate them more than you do."

Then came a distribution of gifts,—knives, hatchets, mirrors, bells, and beads,—while the warrior-rabble crowded to receive them, with eager faces, and tawny arms outstretched. The distribution over, Gourgues asked the chiefs if there was any other matter in which he could serve them. On this, pointing at his shirt, they expressed a peculiar admiration for that garment, and begged each to have one, to be worn at feasts and councils during life, and in their graves after death. Gourgues complied; and his grateful confederates were soon stalking about him, fluttering in the spoils of his ravished wardrobe.

To learn the strength and position of the Spaniards, Gourgues now sent out three scouts; and with them went Olotoraca, Satouriona's nephew, a young brave of great renown.

The chief, eager to prove his good faith, gave as hostages his only son and his favorite wife. They were sent on board the ships, while the savage concourse dispersed to their encampments, with leaping, stamping, dancing, and whoops of jubilation.

The day appointed came, and with it the savage army, hideous in war-paint and plumed for battle. Their ceremonies began. The woods rang back their songs and yells, as with frantic gesticulations they brandished their war-clubs and vaunted their deeds of prowess. Then they drank the black drink, endowed with mystic virtues to steel them against hardship and danger; and Gourgues himself pretended to swallow the nauseous decoction.

These ceremonies consumed the day. It was evening before the allies filed off into their forests, and took the path for the Spanish forts. The French, on their part, were to repair by sea to the rendezvous. Gourgues mustered and addressed his men. It was needless: their ardor was at fever-height. They broke in upon his words, and demanded to be led at once against the enemy. Francis Bourdelois, with twenty sailors, was left with the ships. Gourgues affectionately bade him farewell.

"If I am slain in this most just enterprise," he said, "I leave all in your charge, and pray you to carry back my soldiers to France."

There were many embracings among the excited Frenchmen,—many sympathetic tears from those who were to stay behind,—many messages left with them for wives, children, friends, and mistresses; and then this valiant handful pushed their boats from shore. It was a hare-brained venture, for, as young Debré had assured them, the Spaniards on the River of May were four hundred in number, secure behind their ramparts.

Hour after hour the sailors pulled at the oar. They glided slowly past the sombre shores by the shimmering moonlight, the sound of the murmuring surf and the moaning pine-trees. In the gray of the morning, they came to the mouth of a river, probably the Nassau; and here a northeast wind set in with a violence that almost wrecked their boats. Their Indian allies were waiting on the bank, but for a while the gale delayed their crossing. The bolder French would lose no time, rowed through the tossing waves, and, landing safely, left their boats, and pushed into the forest. Gourgues took the lead, in breastplate and back-piece. At his side marched the young chief Olotoraca, a French pike in his hand; and the files of arquebuse-men and armed sailors followed close behind. They plunged through swamps, hewed their way through brambly thickets and the matted intricacies of the forests, and, at five in the afternoon, wellnigh spent with fatigue and hunger, came to a river or inlet of the sea, not far from the first Spanish fort. Here they found three hundred Indians waiting for them.

Tired as he was, Gourgues would not rest. He would fain attack at daybreak, and with ten arquebusiers and his Indian guide he set forth to reconnoitre. Night closed upon him. It was a vain task to struggle on, in pitchy darkness, among trunks of trees, fallen logs, tangled vines, and swollen streams. Gourgues returned, anxious and gloomy. An Indian chief approached him, read through the darkness his perturbed look, and offered to lead him by a better path along the margin of the sea. Gourgues joyfully assented, and ordered all his men to march. The Indians, better skilled in woodcraft, chose the shorter course through the forest.

The French forgot their weariness, and pressed on at speed. At dawn they and their allies met on the bank of a stream, beyond which, and very near, was the fort. But the tide was in. They essayed to cross in vain. Greatly vexed,—for he had hoped to take the enemy asleep,—Gourgues withdrew his soldiers into the forest, where they were no sooner ensconced than a drenching rain fell, and they had much ado to keep their gun-matches burning. The light grew apace. Gourgues plainly saw the fort, whose defences seemed slight and unfinished. He even saw the Spaniards at work within. A feverish interval elapsed. At length the tide was out,—so far, at least, that the stream was fordable. A little higher up, a clump of woods lay between it and the fort. Behind this friendly screen the passage was begun. Each man tied his powder-flask to his steel cap, held his arquebuse above his head with one hand and grasped his sword with the other. The channel was a bed of oysters. The sharp shells cut their feet as they waded through. But the farther bank was gained. They emerged from the water, drenched, lacerated, bleeding, but with unabated mettle. Under cover of the trees Gourgues set them in array. They stood with kindling eyes, and hearts throbbing, but not with fear. Gourgues pointed to the Spanish fort, seen by glimpses between the bushes and brown trunks. "Look!" he said, "there are the robbers who have stolen this land from our King; there are the murderers who have butchered our countrymen!" With voices eager, fierce, but half suppressed, they demanded to be led on.

Gourgues gave the word. Cazenove, his lieutenant, with thirty men, pushed for the fort-gate; himself, with the main body, for the glacis. It was near noon; the Spaniards had just risen from table, and, says the narrative, "were still picking their teeth," when a startled cry rang in their ears,—

"To arms! to arms! The French are coming! the French are coming!"

It was the voice of a cannoneer who had that moment mounted the rampart and seen the assailants advancing in unbroken ranks, with heads lowered and weapons at the charge. He fired his cannon among them. He even had time to load and fire again, when the light-limbed Olotoraca bounded forward, ran up the glacis, leaped the unfinished ditch, and drove his pike through the Spaniard from breast to back. Gourgues was now on the glacis, when he heard Cazenove shouting from the gate that the Spaniards were escaping on that side. He turned and led his men thither at a run. In a moment, the fugitives, sixty in all, were inclosed between his party and that of his lieutenant. The Indians, too, came leaping to the spot. Not a Spaniard escaped. All were cut down but a few, reserved by Gourgues for a more inglorious end.

Meanwhile the Spaniards in the other fort, on the opposite shore, cannonaded the victors without ceasing. The latter turned four captured guns against them. One of Gourgues's boats, a very large one, had been brought along-shore. He entered it, with eighty soldiers, and pushed for the farther bank. With loud yells, the Indians leaped into the water. From shore to shore, the St. John's was alive with them. Each held his bow and arrows aloft in one hand, while he swam with the other. A panic seized the garrison as they saw the savage multitude. They broke out of the fort and fled into the forest. But the French had already landed; and throwing themselves in the path of the fugitives, they greeted them with a storm of lead. The terrified wretches recoiled; but flight was vain. The Indian whoop rang behind them; war-clubs and arrows finished the work. Gourgues's utmost efforts saved but fifteen,—saved them, not out of mercy, but from a refinement of vengeance.

The next day was Quasimodo Sunday, or the Sunday after Easter. Gourgues and his men remained quiet, making ladders for the assault on Fort San Mateo. Meanwhile the whole forest was in arms, and, far and near, the Indians were wild with excitement. They beset the Spanish fort till not a soldier could venture out. The garrison, conscious of their danger, though ignorant of its extent, devised an expedient to gain information, and one of them, painted and feathered like an Indian, ventured within Gourgues's outposts. He himself chanced to be at hand, and by his side walked his constant attendant, Olotoraca. The keen-eyed young savage pierced the cheat at a glance. The spy was seized, and, being examined, declared that there were two hundred and sixty Spaniards in San Mateo, that they believed the French to be two thousand, and were so frightened that they did not know what they did.

Gourgues, well pleased, pushed on to attack them. On Monday evening he sent forward the Indians to ambush themselves on both sides of the fort. In the morning he followed with his Frenchmen; and as the glittering ranks came into view, defiling between the forest and the river, the Spaniards opened on them with culverins from a projecting bastion. The French took cover in the forest with which the hills below and behind the fort were densely overgrown. Here, ensconced in the edge of the woods, where, himself unseen, he could survey the whole extent of the defences, Gourgues presently descried a strong party of Spaniards issuing from their works, crossing the ditch, and advancing to reconnoitre. On this, returning to his men, he sent Cazenove, with a detachment, to station himself at a point well hidden by trees on the flank of the Spaniards. The latter, with strange infatuation, continued their advance. Gourgues and his followers pushed on through the thickets to meet them. As the Spaniards reached the edge of the clearing, a deadly fire blazed in their faces, and before the smoke cleared, the French were among them, sword in hand. The survivors would have fled; but Cazenove's detachment fell upon their rear, and all were killed or taken.

When their comrades in the fort beheld their fate, a panic seized them. Conscious of their own deeds, perpetrated on this very spot, they could hope no mercy. Their terror multiplied immeasurably the numbers of their enemy. They deserted the fort in a body, and fled into the woods most remote from the French. But here a deadlier foe awaited them; for a host of Indians leaped up from ambush. Then rose those hideous war-cries which have curdled the boldest blood and blanched the manliest cheek. Then the forest-warriors, with savage ecstasy, wreaked their long arrears of vengeance. The French, too, hastened to the spot, and lent their swords to the slaughter. A few prisoners were saved alive; the rest were slain; and thus did the Spaniards make bloody atonement for the butchery of Fort Caroline.

But Gourgues's vengeance was not yet appeased. Hard by the fort, the trees were pointed out to him on which Menendez had hanged his captives, and placed over them the inscription,—"Not as Frenchmen, but as Lutherans."

Gourgues ordered the Spanish prisoners to be led thither.

"Did you think," he sternly said, as the pallid wretches stood ranged before him, "that so vile a treachery, so detestable a cruelty, against a King so potent and a nation so generous, would go unpunished? I, one of the humblest gentlemen among my King's subjects, have charged myself with avenging it. Even if the Most Christian and the Most Catholic Kings had been enemies, at deadly war, such perfidy and extreme cruelty would still have been unpardonable. Now that they are friends and close allies, there is no name vile enough to brand your deeds, no punishment sharp enough to requite them. But though you cannot suffer as you deserve, you shall suffer all that an enemy can honorably inflict, that your example may teach others to observe the peace and alliance which you have so perfidiously violated."

They were hanged where the French had hung before them; and over them was nailed the inscription, burned with a hot iron on a tablet of pine,—"Not as Spaniards, but as Traitors, Robbers, and Murderers."

Gourgues's mission was fulfilled. To occupy the country had never been his intention; nor was it possible, for the Spaniards were still in force at St. Augustine. His was a whirlwind-visitation,—to ravage, ruin, and vanish. He harangued the Indians, and exhorted them to demolish the fort. They fell to the work with a keen alacrity, and in less than a day not one stone was left on another.

Gourgues returned to the forts at the mouth of the river, destroyed them also, and took up his march for his ships. It was a triumphal procession. The Indians thronged around the victors with gifts of fish and game; and an old woman declared that she was now ready to die, since she had seen the French once more.

The ships were ready for sea. Gourgues bade his disconsolate allies farewell, and nothing would content them but a promise to return soon. Before embarking, he addressed his own men:—

"My friends, let us give thanks to God for the success He has granted us. It is He who saved us from tempests; it is He who inclined the hearts of the Indians towards us; it is He who blinded the understanding of the Spaniards. They were four to one in forts well armed and provisioned. We had nothing but our right; and yet we have conquered. Not to our own strength, but to God only, we owe our victory. Then let us thank Him, my friends; let us never forget His favors; and let us pray that He may continue them, saving us from dangers, and guiding us safely home. Let us pray, too, that He may so dispose the hearts of men that our perils and toils may find favor in the eyes of our King and of all France, since all we have done was done for the King's service and for the honor of our country."

Thus Spaniards and Frenchmen alike laid their reeking swords on God's altar.

Gourgues sailed on the third of May, and, gazing back along their foaming wake, the adventurers looked their last on the scene of their exploits. Their success had had its price. A few of their number had fallen, and hardships still awaited the survivors. Gourgues, however, reached Rochelle on the day of Pentecost, and the Huguenot citizens greeted him with all honor. At court it fared worse with him. The King, still obsequious to Spain, looked on him coldly and askance. The Spanish minister demanded his head. It was hinted to him that he was not safe, and he withdrew to Rouen, where he found asylum among his friends. His fortune was gone; debts contracted for his expedition weighed heavily on him; and for years he lived in obscurity, almost in misery. At length a dawn brightened for him. Elizabeth of England learned his merits and his misfortunes, and invited him to enter her service. The King, who, says the Jesuit historian, had always at heart been delighted with his achievement, openly restored him to favor; while, some years later, Don Antonio tendered him command of his fleet to defend his right to the crown of Portugal against Philip II. Gourgues, happy once more to cross swords with the Spaniards, gladly embraced this offer; but, on his way to join the Portuguese prince, he died at Tours of a sudden illness. The French mourned the loss of the man who had wiped a blot from the national scutcheon, and respected his memory as that of one of the best captains of his time. And, in truth, if a zealous patriotism, a fiery valor, and skilful leadership are worthy of honor, then is such tribute due to Dominic de Gourgues, despite the shadowing vices which even the spirit of that wild age can only palliate, the personal hate that aided the impulse of his patriotism, and the implacable cruelty that sullied his courage.

Romantic as his exploit was, it lacked the fulness of poetic justice, since the chief offender escaped him. While Gourgues was sailing towards Florida, Menendez was in Spain, high in favor at court, where he told to approving ears how he had butchered the heretics. Borgia, the sainted General of the Jesuits, was his fast friend; and two years later, when he returned to America, the Pope, Paul V., regarding him as an instrument for the conversion of the Indians, wrote him a letter with his benediction. He reëstablished his power in Florida, rebuilt Fort San Mateo, and taught the Indians that death or flight was the only refuge from Spanish tyranny. They murdered his missionaries and spurned their doctrine. "The Devil is the best thing in the world," they cried; "we adore him; he makes men brave." Even the Jesuits despaired, and abandoned Florida in disgust.

Menendez was summoned home, where fresh honors awaited him from the crown, though, according to the somewhat doubtful assertion of the heretical Grotius, his deeds had left a stain upon his name among the people. He was given command of the armada of three hundred sail and twenty thousand men, which, in 1574, was gathered at Santander against England and Flanders. But now, at the climax of his fortunes, his career was abruptly closed. He died suddenly, at the age of fifty-five. What caused his death? Grotius affirms that he killed himself; but, in his eagerness to point the moral of his story, he seems to have overstepped the bounds of historic truth. The Spanish bigot was rarely a suicide, for the rights of Christian burial and repose in consecrated ground were denied to the remains of the self-murderer. There is positive evidence, too, in a codicil to the will of Menendez, dated at Santander on the fifteenth of September, 1574, that he was on that day seriously ill, though, as the instrument declares, "sound of mind." There is reason, then, to believe that this pious cut-throat died a natural death, crowned with honors, and compassed by the consolations of his religion.

It was he who crushed French Protestantism in America. To plant religious freedom on this Western soil was not the mission of France. It was for her to rear in Northern forests the banner of Absolutism and of Rome; while, among the rocks of Massachusetts, England and Calvin fronted her in dogged and deadly opposition.

Civilization in North America found its pioneer, its forlorn hope, less in England than in France. For, long before the ice-crusted pines of Plymouth had listened to the rugged psalmody of the Puritan, the solitudes of Western New York and the shadowy wilderness of Lake Huron were trodden by the iron heel of the soldier and the sandalled foot of the Franciscan friar. They who bore the fleur-de-lis were always in the van, patient, daring, indomitable. And foremost on this bright roll of forest-chivalry stands the half-forgotten name of Samuel de Champlain.

LINA

The evenings were always dull and long to those of us who were too far from home to make it worth while to leave the school for the eight weeks of holiday. It was dreary indeed sitting in the great school-room, with its long rows of empty desks, with nothing before one to break the monotony of the four walls but the great map of France and the big dusty cross with its dingy wreath of immortelles. It is true, we did not bewail the absence of our companions. In fact, it was with a tranquil sense of security that I began my work every morning in vacation, knowing that I should find all my books in my desk, and my pens and pencils undisturbed; for among the pensionnaires there existed a strong tendency to communistic principles. Still, when all the noisy crew had departed, the house seemed lonely, the dining-room with its three bare tables looked desolate, and an unnatural stillness reigned in the shady pathways of the garden. You might wander from room to room, and up and down the stairs, and to and fro in the long passages, and meet no one. Fräulein Christine was with her "Liebes Mütterchen" in Strasburg, and Mademoiselle had left her weary post in the middle of the school-room for her quiet village-home in Normandy. Madame herself remained almost entirely invisible, shut up in the sanctity of her own rooms; and so the whole house had a sense of stillness that seemed only heightened by the glory of the autumn sunshine, and the hum of bees and rustle of leaves that filled the air outside.

The house was old; it had been a grand mansion once, before the days of the Revolution, and had probably been the residence of some of the stiff old worthies whose portraits hung in dreary dignity in the disused dusty galleries of the château, which now, turned into a citadelle, stood upon a high point of the cliffs commanding the town. The term rambling might well be applied to this house, for in its eccentric construction it seemed to have wandered at will half-way up the hill-side on which it was built. It had wings and abutments, and flights of stone steps leading from one part to another. There was "la grande maison de Madame," "la maison du jardin," and "la maison de Monsieur." This last, half hidden in trees, was terra incognita to the girls; but often in an evening, after we had seen him wending his way across the garden with his lantern from la grande maison, where he had been spending the evening with Madame, did we hear Monsieur playing on his organ glorious "bits" of Cherubini and Bach.

We were conscious that this odd little man carried on a system of espionage through the half-closed slats of his shutters, the effects of which we were continually made to feel; this, and the mystery that enveloped his small abode, where he worked all day among his bottles and retorts, made Monsieur appear somewhat of an ogre in our eyes. There was always a sense of freedom in the upper garden, which was out of the range of his windows, and where he never came. That pleasant upper garden, what a paradise it was, with its long sunny walks within the shelter of high walls! The trim stateliness of the ancient splendor had run to luxuriant disorder, and thick tangles of rare roses swung abroad their boughs above great beds of lilies-of-the-valley and periwinkle which had overrun their borders and crept into the walks.

During the vacation, we who stayed had the privilege of going into the upper garden. Obtaining the key from Justine, we would wander first along the shady pathways of the lower garden, past the flower-beds where the girls during recess-times worked and gossiped and quarrelled,—their quick French tongues reminding one of a colony of sparrows,—then, turning the stubborn lock of the heavy door that opened on the flight of mossy steps, we came into that region of stillness and delight, the upper garden.

Oh, the pleasant autumn afternoons spent sitting together on the mossy walk between the box-hedges, the hum of bees and the scent of roses filling the air, and the sweet monotonous murmur of the sea on the shingly beach in our ears! For, mounting still higher by terraces and another flight of steps through a tumble-down gateway, you came upon the open cliffs; and the long blue line of the sea and the fresh sea-breeze greeted you with a thousand thoughts of home. For England lay beyond the trembling blue line.

I remember it was one of these autumn afternoons, that, coming down from practising, with my music-books under my arm, I met Justine, the genius of the ménage, cook and housekeeper in one, a shrewd woman, who had three objects in life,—to manage les bêtes, as she condescendingly termed the other servants, to please Madame, whom she adored, and to go to church every Sunday and grande fête. Justine was coming in from the garden, with a basket on her arm, in which lay two pigeons that she had just killed. On her fingers she twirled the gory scissors with which she had performed the deed.

"Good day, Justine! How is Madame?"

"Madame is well, thank you, Mademoiselle,—a little headache, that is all,—that comes of so much learning and writing at night. Mais voilà une femme superbe! I go to make her a little dinner of these," pointing to the pigeons.

"Justine, ma bonne, won't you give us the key this afternoon?"

Justine stops suddenly and clasps her fat hands emphatically over the lid of her basket.

"I had almost forgotten, Mademoiselle. Madame desired me to tell the demoiselles that she comes down this evening to sit in the cabinet de musique."

I was delighted with this piece of intelligence, and ran to tell the others. It was not often that Madame deigned to come down-stairs of an evening, and were always glad when she did. In the first place, it was a pleasant break in the monotony of the general routine to sit and work and draw, instead of studying in the empty school-room; and secondly, it was delightful to be with Madame, when she threw off the character of preceptress,—for at such times she was infinitely agreeable, entertaining us in her bright French manner as if we had been her guests.

Madame had a way of charming all who approached her, from Adelaide Sloper's rich, vulgar father, who, when he came to see his daughter, was entertained by Madame au salon, and who was overheard to declare, as he got into his grand carriage, that "that Frenchwoman was the finest woman, by Jove, he'd ever seen!" to the tiny witch Élise, whom nobody could manage, but who, at the first rustle of Madame's gown, would cease from her mischief, fold her small hands, and, sinking her bead-like black eyes, look as demure as such a sprite could. We all adored Madame,—not that she herself was very good, though she was pious in her way, too. She fasted and went regularly to confession and to all the offices, and sometimes at the passing of the Host I have seen her kneeling in the dusty street in a new dress, and I don't know what more you could expect from a Frenchwoman.

Then she was so pretty, and there was a nameless grace in her attitude. She seemed to me so beautiful, as she stood at her desk, with one hand resting on her open book, tall, with something almost imperious in her figure, her head bent, but her deep, lovely gray eyes looking quietly before her and seeming to take in at once the whole school-room with an expression of keen intelligence. She was highly cultivated, and had read widely in many languages; but she wore her learning as gracefully as a bird does its lovely plumage.

There was a latent desire for sway in her character. She delighted in the homage of those about her, and seldom failed to win it from any one with whom she came in contact. Mademoiselle, who did all the hard work of the teaching, and was only half paid for it, wore out her strength and energy and youth day by day at her desk in the middle of the school-room, and thought Madame the perfection of women; and her sallow, thin face would flush with pleasure, if Madame gave her a look or one of her soft smiles in passing.

At half-past seven that evening we were seated round the table with our work, awaiting the entrance of Madame. Presently she glided in, holding in her arms a bureau-drawer filled with piles of letters.