In the third of seven letters to King Phillip (August 13, 1565 to January 30, 1566), written October 15, 1565, Pedro Menendez reports on the capture of the French Fort Caroline less than two weeks after founding St. Augustine.

In order for them to come and attack me they must bring a larger and better force.... Their fort must have been left weak (so) now was the time to go and attack it.

I conferred with the captains ... and they were of the same opinion. I immediately ordered 500 men to be ready, 300 of them arquebusiers and the remainder armed with pikes and bucklers, and we packed our knapsacks so that every man carried six pounds of biscuit on his back and I myself among the first for example's sake carried this provision and drink on my shoulder.

As we did not know the way we thought that we should arrive in two days and that it was only six or eight leagues distant. ... We found the rivers greatly swollen with the rain that had fallen, so that we advanced but little until the 19th, when we came to sleep a league more or less from the Fort, more than 15 leagues through morasses and desert paths never yet trod.

On the 20th, the eve of the day of the Blessed Apostle and Evangelist St Matthew, in the morning when it began to dawn, (we) determined to attack it openly with twenty scaling ladders that we had brought with us.

Without losing a man killed nor wounded save one ... we gained the fort and all that it contained. One hundred and thirty men were put to death and the next day ten more who were taken in the mountain.

About 50 or 60 persons escaped by swimming to the mountain and also in two boats from the three ships that they had in front of the fort. I immediately sent a trumpet to the ships to demand that they should surrender and give up their arms and their ships, but they refused.

We sent one ship to the bottom with the guns that were in the Fort. The other took in her crew and went down the river where a league distant were two other ships with much provisions, being some of the seven that had come from France and had not yet been unloaded.

As it seemed to me that I ought not to lose this prize, I forthwith left this fort to get ready three barges ... in order to go and seek them, but they were warned by the Indians and ... they took the two best of the three ships that they had and sunk the other and within three days they took to flight.

They wrote to me from the Fort that, after these ships had gone, about twenty Frenchmen in their shirts appeared in the mountain. ... I gave orders that they should use all diligence to take them and execute justice upon them.