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....

Three days were spent in making ready, and then De Gourgues, with a hundred and sixty of his own men and his Indian allies, marched against the enemy.  In spite of the hostility of the Indians the Spaniards seem to have taken no precaution against a sudden attack.  Menendez himself had left the colony.  The Spanish force was divided between three forts, and no proper precautions were taken for keeping up the communications between them.  Each was successively seized, the garrison slain or made prisoners, and as each fort fell those in the next could only make vague guesses as to the extent of the danger.  Even when divided into three the Spanish force outnumbered that of De Gourgues, and savages with bows and arrows would have counted for little against men with firearms and behind walls.  But after the downfall of the first fort a panic seemed to seize the Spaniards, and the French achieved an almost bloodless victory.  After the death of Ribault and his followers nothing could be looked for but merciless retaliation, and De Gourgues copied the severity, though not the perfidy, of his enemies.  The very details of Menendez’s act were imitated, and the trees on which the prisoners were hung bore the inscription:  “Not as Spaniards, but as traitors, robbers, and murderers.”  Five weeks later De Gourgues anchored under the walls of Rochelle, and that noble city, where civil and religious freedom found a home In their darkest hour, received him with the honor he deserved.