Chapter 2 No.2

In the little world of Fort Caroline, a miniature France, cliques and parties, conspiracy and sedition, were fast stirring into life. Hopes had been dashed; wild expectations had come to nought. The adventurers had found, not conquest and gold, but a dull exile in a petty fort by a hot and sickly river, with hard labor, ill fare, prospective famine, and nothing to break the weary sameness but some passing canoe or floating alligator. Gathered in knots, they nursed each other's wrath, and inveighed against the commandant.

Why are we put on half-rations, when he told us that provision should be made for a full year? Where are the reinforcements and supplies that he said should follow us from France? Why is he always closeted with Ottigny, Arlac, and this and that favorite, when we, men of blood as good as theirs, cannot gain his ear for a moment? And why has he sent La Roche Ferrière to make his fortune among the Indians, while we are kept here, digging at the works?

Of La Roche Ferrière and his adventures, more hereafter. The young nobles, of whom there were many, were volunteers, who had paid their own expenses, in expectation of a golden harvest, and they chafed in impatience and disgust. The religious element in the colony-unlike the former Huguenot emigration to Brazil-was evidently subordinate. The adventurers thought more of their fortunes than of their faith; yet there were not a few earnest enough in the doctrine of Geneva to complain loudly and bitterly that no ministers had been sent with them. The burden of all grievances was thrown upon Laudonnière, whose greatest errors seem to have arisen from weakness and a lack of judgment,-fatal defects in his position.

The growing discontent was brought to a partial head by one Roquette, who gave out that by magic he had discovered a mine of gold and silver, high up the river, which would give each of them a share of ten thousand crowns, besides fifteen hundred thousand for the king. But for Laudonnière, he said, their fortunes would all be made. He found an ally in a gentleman named Genre, one of Laudonnière's confidants, who, still professing fast adherence to the interests of the latter, is charged by him with plotting against his life. Many of the soldiers were in the conspiracy. They made a flag of an old shirt, which they carried with them to the rampart when they went to their work, at the same time wearing their arms, and watching an opportunity to kill the commandant. About this time, overheating himself, he fell ill, and was confined to his quarters. On this, Genre made advances to the apothecary, urging him to put arsenic into his medicines; but the apothecary shrugged his shoulders. They next devised a scheme to blow him up, by hiding a keg of gunpowder under his bed; but here, too, they failed. Hints of Genre's machinations reaching the ears of Laudonnière, the culprit fled to the woods, whence he wrote repentant letters, with full confession, to his commander.

Two of the ships meanwhile returned to France,-the third, the Breton, remaining at anchor opposite the fort. The malecontents took the opportunity to send home charges against Laudonnière of peculation, favoritism, and tyranny.

Early in September, Captain Bourdet, apparently a private adventurer, had arrived from France with a small vessel. When he returned, about the tenth of November, Laudonnière persuaded him to carry home seven or eight of the malecontent soldiers. Bourdet left some of his sailors in their place. The exchange proved most disastrous. These pirates joined with others whom they had won over, stole Laudonnière's two pinnaces, and set forth on a plundering excursion to the West Indies. They took a small Spanish vessel off the coast of Cuba, but were soon compelled by famine to put into Havana and surrender themselves. Here, to make their peace with the authorities, they told all they knew of the position and purposes of their countrymen at Fort Caroline, and hence was forged the thunderbolt soon to be hurled against the wretched little colony.

On a Sunday morning, Francis de la Caille came to Laudonnière's quarters, and, in the name of the whole company, requested him to come to the parade-ground. He complied, and, issuing forth, his inseparable Ottigny at his side, saw some thirty of his officers, soldiers, and gentlemen-volunteers waiting before the building with fixed and sombre countenance. La Caille, advancing, begged leave to read, in behalf of the rest, a paper which he held in his hand. It opened with protestations of duty and obedience; next came complaints of hard work, starvation, and broken promises, and a request that the petitioners should be allowed to embark in the vessel lying in the river, and cruise along the Spanish main in order to procure provision by purchase "or otherwise." In short, the flower of the company wished to turn buccaneers.

Laudonnière refused, but assured them, that, so soon as the defences of the fort should be completed, a search should be begun in earnest for the Appalachian gold-mine, and that meanwhile two small vessels then building on the river should be sent along the coast to barter for provisions with the Indians. With this answer they were forced to content themselves; but the fermentation continued, and the plot thickened. Their spokesman, La Caille, however, seeing whither the affair tended, broke with them, and, beside Ottigny, Vasseur, and the brave Swiss, Arlac, was the only officer who held to his duty.

A severe illness again seized Laudonnière and confined him to his bed. Improving their advantage, the malecontents gained over nearly all the best soldiers in the fort. The ringleader was one Fourneaux, a man of good birth, but whom Le Moyne calls an avaricious hypocrite. He drew up a paper to which sixty-six names were signed. La Caille boldly opposed the conspirators, and they resolved to kill him. His room-mate, Le Moyne, who had also refused to sign, received a hint from a friend that he had better change his quarters; upon which he warned La Caille, who escaped to the woods. It was late in the night. Fourneaux, with twenty men armed to the teeth, knocked fiercely at the commandant's door. Forcing an entrance, they wounded a gentleman who opposed them, and crowded around the sick man's bed. Fourneaux, armed with steel cap and cuirass, held his arquebuse to Laudonnière's breast, and demanded leave to go on a cruise among the Spanish islands. The latter kept his presence of mind, and remonstrated with some firmness; on which, with oaths and menaces, they dragged him from his bed, put him in fetters, carried him out to the gate of the fort, placed him in a boat, and rowed him to the ship anchored in the river.

Two other gangs at the same time visited Ottigny and Arlac, whom they disarmed, and ordered to keep their rooms till the night following, on pain of death. Smaller parties were busied, meanwhile, in disarming all the loyal soldiers. The fort was completely in the hands of the conspirators. Fourneaux drew up a commission for his meditated West-India cruise, which he required Laudonnière to sign. The sick commandant, imprisoned in the ship, with one attendant, at first refused; but, receiving a message from the mutineers, that, if he did not comply, they would come on board and cut his throat, he at length yielded.

The buccaneers now bestirred themselves to finish the two small vessels on which the carpenters had been for some time at work. In a fortnight they were ready for sea, armed and provided with the king's cannon, munitions, and stores. Trenchant, an excellent pilot, was forced to join the party. Their favorite object was the plunder of a certain church, on one of the Spanish islands, which they proposed to assail during the midnight mass of Christmas, whereby a triple end would be achieved: first, a rich booty; secondly, the punishment of idolatry; thirdly, vengeance on the arch-enemies of their party and their faith. They set sail on the eighth of December, taunting those who remained, calling them greenhorns, and threatening condign punishment, if, on their triumphant return, they should be refused free entrance to the fort.

They were no sooner gone than the unfortunate Laudonnière was gladdened in his solitude by the approach of his fast friends, Ottigny and Arlac, who conveyed him to the fort, and reinstated him. The entire command was reorganized and new officers appointed. The colony was wofully depleted; but the bad blood had been drawn, and thenceforth all internal danger was at an end. In finishing the fort, in building two new vessels to replace those of which they had been robbed, and in various intercourse with the tribes far and near, the weeks passed until the twenty-fifth of March, when an Indian came in with the tidings that a vessel was hovering off the coast. Laudonnière sent to reconnoitre. The stranger lay anchored at the mouth of the river. She was a Spanish brigantine, manned by the returning mutineers, starving, downcast, and anxious to make terms. Yet, as their posture seemed not wholly pacific, Laudonnière sent down La Caille with thirty soldiers, concealed at the bottom of his little vessel. Seeing only two or three on deck, the pirates allowed her to come along-side; when, to their amazement, they were boarded and taken before they could snatch their arms. Discomfited, woebegone, and drunk, they were landed under a guard. Their story was soon told. Fortune had flattered them at the outset. On the coast of Cuba, they took a brigantine, with wine and stores. Embarking in her, they next fell in with a caravel, which they also captured. Landing at a village of Jamaica, they plundered and caroused for a week, and had hardly re?mbarked when they fell in with a small vessel having on board the governor of the island. She made desperate fight, but was taken at last, and with her a rich booty. They thought to put the governor to ransom; but the astute official deceived them, and, on pretence of negotiating for the sum demanded, together with certain apes and parrots, for which his captors had also bargained, contrived to send instructions to his wife. Whence it happened that at daybreak three armed vessels fell upon them, retook the prize, and captured or killed all the pirates but twenty-six, who, cutting the moorings of their brigantine, fled out to sea. Among these was the ringleader, Fourneaux, and, happily, the pilot, Trenchant. The latter, eager to return to Fort Caroline, whence he had been forcibly taken, succeeded during the night in bringing the vessel to the coast of Florida. Great were the wrath and consternation of the discomfited pirates, when they saw their dilemma; for, having no provision, they must either starve or seek succor at the fort. They chose the latter alternative, and bore away for the St. John's. A few casks of Spanish wine yet remained, and nobles and soldiers, fraternized by the common peril of a halter, joined in a last carouse. As the wine mounted to their heads, in the mirth of drink and desperation, they enacted their own trial. One personated the judge, another the commandant; witnesses were called, with arguments and speeches on either side.

"Say what you like," said one of them, after hearing the counsel for the defence, "but if Laudonnière does not hang us all, I will never call him an honest man."

They had some hope of gaining provision from the Indians at the mouth of the river, and then patting to sea again; but this was frustrated by La Caille's sudden attack. A court-martial was called near Fort Caroline, and all were found guilty. Fourneaux and three others were sentenced to be hanged.

"Comrades," said one of the condemned, appealing to the soldiers, "will you stand by and see us butchered?"

"These," retorted Laudonnière, "are no comrades of mutineers and rebels."

At the request of his followers, however, he commuted the sentence to shooting.

A file of men; a rattling volley; and the debt of justice was paid. The bodies were hanged on gibbets at the river's mouth, and order reigned at Fort Caroline.