abuse.  Then, at sound of drums and trumpets, the Spaniards fell upon them, striking them down with swords, pikes, and halberds.  Ribaut vainly called on the Adelantado to remember his oath.  By the latter’s order, a soldier plunged a dagger into his heart; and Ottigny, who stood near, met a similar fate.  Ribaut’s beard was cut off, and portions of it sent in a letter to Philip II.  His head was hewn into four parts, one of which was displayed on the point of a lance at each corner of Fort St. Augustine.  Great fires were kindled, and the bodies of the murdered burned to ashes.

Such is the sum of the French accounts.  The charge of breach of faith contained in them was believed by Catholics as well as Protestants, and it was as a defence against this charge that the narrative of the Adelantado’s brother-in-law was published.  That Ribaut, a man whose good sense and bravery were both reputed high, should have submitted himself and his men to Menendez without positive assurance of safety is scarcely credible; nor is it lack of charity to believe that a miscreant so savage in heart and so perverted in conscience would act on the maxim, current among the bigots of the day, that faith ought not to be kept with heretics.

It was night when the Adelantado again entered St. Augustine.  Some there were who blamed his cruelty; but many applauded.  “Even if the French had been Catholics,”—­such was their language,—­“he would have done right, for, with the little provision we have, they would all have starved; besides, there were so many of them that they would have cut our throats.”

And now Menendez again addressed himself to the despatch, already begun, in which he recounts to the King his labors and his triumphs, a deliberate and business-like document, mingling narratives of butchery with recommendations for promotions, commissary details, and petitions for supplies; enlarging, too, on the vast schemes of encroachment which his successful generalship had brought to nought.  The French, he says, had planned a military and naval depot at Los Martires, whence they would make a descent upon Havana, and another at the Bay of Ponce de Leon, whence they could threaten Vera Cruz.  They had long been encroaching on Spanish rights at Newfoundland, from which a great arm of the sea—­the St. Lawrence—­would give them access to the Moluccas and other parts of the East Indies.  Moreover, he adds in a later despatch, by this passage they may reach the mines of Zacatecas and St. Martin, as well as every part of the South Sea.  And, as already mentioned, he urges immediate occupation of Chesapeake Bay, which, by its supposed water-communication with the St. Lawrence, would enable Spain to vindicate her rights, control the fisheries of Newfoundland, and thwart her rival in her vast designs of commercial and territorial aggrandizement.  Thus did France and Spain dispute the possession of North America long before England became a party to the strife.