An account drawn from The History of St. Augustine, by William W. Dewhurst, 1885

April 25, 1568, two and a half years since Spain's Admiral Pedro Menendez routed French forces in Florida and executed survivors of Jean Ribault's sea force, Chevalier Dominique de Gourges' force of 180 "picked men, many of whom were gentlemen adventurers," storm and overrun two forts Menendez had constructed at the mouth of the St. Johns River near Mayport.

The prize is yet ahead - Fort Mateo, the former French Fort Caroline, of which "Most inflammatory and exaggerated accounts of the massacre had been published throughout France."

De Gourges, a nobleman/adventurer, had vowed to act, even at the risk of punishment by his king, who had refused to listen to the appeals of relatives and friends of the Florida victims.

The garrison of the two forts was near a hundred and forty men, all but fifteen of whom were either killed in the attacks or slain as they attempted to reach the mainland.

Now, as De Gourges prepared for an attack on the main fort, his forces were discovered by a Spanish force of sixty arquebusiers. He succeeded in cutting them off from the fort and totally destroying them.

Seeing the fate of so large a portion of their garrison, the remaining Spaniards left the fort in hopes of reaching St. Augustine. Entering the woods they were everywhere met by the Indians. Few were taken alive.

Entering the fort, the Frenchmen were now upon the scene of the massacre of their countrymen, and the taunting irony of the tablet erected by Menendez was before their eyes. The spirit of vengeance was aroused.

Ordering all the Spaniards who had been taken alive to be led to the place where they had hanged the Frenchmen, De Gourges rebuked them in scathing terms. He declared they could never undergo the punishment which they deserved, but it was necessary to make an example of them.

They were tied up to the same trees where they had hanged the Frenchmen, and in the place of the inscription which Menendez had put over them containing these words in the Spanish language: "I do this not as to Frenchmen, but as to Lutherans;" De Gourges caused to be graven on a pine tablet with a hot iron: "I do this not as to Spaniards or mariners, but as to traitors, robbers, and murderers."

The next day while frying fish, an Indian set fire to a train of powder laid by the Spaniards which had not been discovered, and the whole interior of the fort was destroyed.

The head of De Gourges was demanded and a price set upon it by the King of Spain but, though his acts were repudiated by the French king, he was protected and concealed until, after a time, he was the recipient of marked honors at the French court and died in 1582, "to the great grief of such as knew him."

Image: Retaking of Fort Caroline, from Theodor De Bry's Grand Voyages to the New World