obtained the opportunity of a permanent footing in that place.

The leader of these troops was Nicolas Durant de Villegagnon, and his
men comprised a number of Huguenots who were abandoning France.
Villegagnon's own character appears to have been complex and curious in
the extreme. He was apparently a true blade of the old swashbuckling
type; he employed religion for such ends as he might have in view at the
moment, regarding its tenets cynically, tongue in cheek. Thus he came
out in command of the Huguenots, ostensibly himself a Huguenot; but his
convictions appear to have changed on various occasions, and he is seen
now as their abettor, now as their oppressor. In the end he clearly
showed himself antagonistic to the convictions of his followers, and
took to denouncing them as heretics. With the exception of this leader,
the circumstances and motives of the expedition were somewhat similar to
those which caused the first emigration of the English Puritans to North
America.

Once established in Rio de Janeiro, the Huguenots succeeded in making
friends with the Indians of the neighbourhood, who became their firm
allies and proved of great assistance to the French in their struggles
against the Portuguese, who came down in force to evict the intruders.
The Huguenots were defeated in 1560 by Mem de Sa, the third Governor of
Brazil; but, although dispersed for a while, the power of the invaders
was by no means broken. Shortly afterwards they came together again, and
succeeded in establishing themselves more firmly than before in the
place. They were again fiercely attacked by the Portuguese, but the
number of islands in the bay afforded excellent points of defence, and
it was not until 1567 that the Portuguese sea and land forces combined
were able to expel the last Frenchmen from the mountains which lay about
the harbour of Rio de Janeiro. This, as a matter of fact, was merely a