inscription pinned to their breasts: "Not as to Frenchmen, but as to
Lutherans."

The fate of Ribault's party was equally wretched. All were
shipwrecked, but most apparently succeeded in landing alive. Then
began a scene of deliberate butchery, aggravated, if the French
accounts may be believed, by the most shameless treachery. As the
scattered bands of shipwrecked men wandered through the forest,
seeking to return to Fort Caroline, they were mercilessly entrapped by
friendly words, if not by explicit promises of safety. Some escaped to
the Indians, a few were at last spared by the contemptuous mercy of
the foes. Those of the survivors who profest themselves converts were
pardoned, the rest were sent to the galleys. Ribault himself was among
the murdered. If we may believe the story current in France, his head,
sawn in four parts, was set up over the corners of the fort of St.
Augustine, while a piece of his beard was sent as a trophy to the king
of Spain....

Dominic de Gourgues had already known as a prisoner of war the horrors
of the Spanish galleys. Whether he was a Huguenot is uncertain.
Happily in France, as the history of that and all later ages proved,
the religion of the Catholic did not necessarily deaden the feelings
of the patriot. Seldom has there been a deed of more reckless daring
than that which Dominic de Gourgues now undertook. With the proceeds
of his patrimony he bought three small ships, manned by eighty sailors
and a hundred men-at-arms. He then obtained a commission as a slaver
on the coast of Guinea, and in the summer of 1567 set sail. With these
paltry resources he aimed at overthrowing a settlement which had
already destroyed a force of twenty times his number, and which might
have been strengthened in the interval....