University of Virginia Library

1.—EARLY HISTORY OF GOURGUES.

The tidings of the fearful massacre of the Huguenots in
Florida, as well in Spanish, as in French accounts, at length
reached France. Deep was the feeling of horror and indignation
which they everywhere excited among the people. Catholics, not
less than Protestants, felt how terrible was the cruelty thus inflicted
upon humanity, how insolent the scorn thus put upon the
flag of the country. Wild and bitter was the cry of anguish sent
up by the thousand bereaved widows and orphans of the murdered
men. But this cry, this feeling, this sense of suffering and shame,
awakened no sympathies in the court of France. The king,
Charles IX., heard the “supplication” of the wives and children
of the sufferers, without according any answer to their prayer.
The blood of nearly nine hundred victims cried equally to earth
and heaven for vengeance, and cried in vain to the earthly sovereign.
He had no ear for the sorrows and the wrongs of heresy;
and the plaint of humanity was stifled in the supposed interests of
religion. Charles was most regally indifferent to a crime which
relieved him of so many troublesome subjects; and was at that

very time, meditating the most summary processes for still farther
diminishing their numbers. He was yet to provide an appropriate
finish to such a history of massacre in the bloody tragedy of
St. Bartholomew. The wrong done to the honor of his flag and
nation, by a rival power, was not felt. We have already hinted
the strong conjecture, urged by historians, that the Spanish expedition,
under Melendez, was planned with the full privity and concurrence
of the king of France. His conduct, at this period,
would seem fully to justify the suspicion. His existing relations
with his brother of Spain were not of a sort to be periled now
by the exhibition of his sympathies with a cause, and on behalf of
a sect, which both monarchs had reason to hate and fear, and were
preparing to extirpate.

But, if the Court of France demanded no redress for the
massacre of its people, and that of Spain offered none, either redress
or apology, there was yet a deep and intense passion dwelling
in the heart of the one nation, and yearning for revenge upon
that of the other. There was still a chivalrous feeling in France
which showed itself superior to the exactions of sect or party, and
which brooded with terrible intensity over the bloody fortunes of
the French in Florida. This moody meditation at length found
its fitting exponent. The sentiment that stirs earnestly in the
popular heart will always, sooner or later, obtain a fitting voice;
and where it burns justifiably for vengeance, it will not long be
wanting in a weapon. The avenger arose in due season to satisfy
the demands of justice!

The Chevalier, Dominique de Gourgues, was a Gascon gentleman,
born at Mont de Marsan, in the County of Cominges. His

family was one of considerable distinction. It had always been
devotedly attached to the Catholic religion, nor had he ever for a
moment faltered in the same faith. His career had been a remarkable
one, signalized by great valor, and the most extreme
vicissitudes of fortune. He had served in the armies of France
during the long and capricious struggles in Italy, which had been
the chief arena for conflict in the reigns of Charles the Eighth, of
Louis XII., of Francis the First, and down to the present period.
Here he had associated, under the command of Brissac and others,
with that valiant brother Gascon, Blaize de Montlue, who, in his
commentaries, would probably have told us much about the
prowess of Gourgues, if he had not been so greatly occupied with
the narrative of his own.[1] But the forbearance of Montlue has
not deprived us of all the testimony which belongs to the fame
of the chevalier. Of all the subaltern officers of his time, no one
achieved a more brilliant reputation. Among the Gascons, confessedly
distinguished above all others by their reckless daring,
and headlong eagerness after glory in battle, the courage of
Gourgues was such as raised him to the rank of a hero of romance.
His youthful eyes had opened upon the latest fields of that race of
heroes of whom Bayard was the superior and perhaps the last. He
was one of the Sampsons of that wondrous band, whose wars, according
to Trivulcio—one not the least remarkable among them,
—were those of the giants;—the Swiss, in the fullest vigor of their
martial fame, and at the height of their insolence;—the Spaniards,
with Hernan de Cordova, the great captain, at their head, and
crowning the career of Charles V. with a power and a lustre
which his own merits did not deserve;—the Italians, under the
sway of, and deriving their spirit from, the fierce martial pontiff,
Julius II., and the French, boasting of a cavalry, headed by
Bayard, La Palisse and others, worthy of such associates, and such
as the armies of Europe had never beheld before. Montlue, who
had been trained in part in the same house with Bayard, and
Boiteres, who, as a page of the knight sans peur et sans reproche,
makes a famous figure in the chronicles of le loyal serviteur, being
among the leaders whom the Chevalier de Gourgues followed into
battle. He partook of their spirit, and proved himself worthy to
sustain the declining honors of chivalry. But his fortunes were
as adverse as his merits were distinguished. With thirty men,
near Sienna, in Tuscany, he sustained, for a long time, the shock
of a large division of the Spanish army. He saw, at length, every
man of his command fall around him, and was made a prisoner.
The captive of the Spaniard, in that day, when the emperor of
the country and his favorite generals showed themselves utterly
and equally insensible to good faith and generosity, was to be a
slave. They conducted war with little regard to the rules that
prevailed among civilized nations. The valor that Gorgues displayed,
instead of commending him to their admiration and favor,
only provoked their fury; and they punished, with shameful bonds,
those brave actions which the noble heart prefers to applause and
honor. Gourgues was transferred in chains to the gallies. In this
degrading condition, chained to the oar, he was captured by the
Turks off the coast of Sicily; the Turks then being in alliance, to
the shame of Christendom, with the French monarch, and against
the Spaniards. He was conducted by his new captors to Rhodes
and thence to Constantinople. Sent once more to sea, under his
new master, he was retaken by a Maltese galley, and thus recovered
his liberty. But his latter adventures had given him a
taste for the sea. His progresses brought him to the coast of
Africa, to Brazil, and, according to Lescarbot, though the point is
doubted, to the Pacific Ocean. The details of this career are not
given to us, but the results seem to have been equally creditable
to the fame, and of benefit to the fortunes of our chevalier. He
returned to Mont de Marsan, with the reputation of being one of
the most able and hardy of all the navigators of his time. He
had scarcely established himself fairly in his ancient home, where
he had invested all the fruits of his toils and enterprise, when the
tidings came of the capture of La Caroline, and the massacre of
the French in Florida by Melendez. He felt for the honor of
France, for the grief of the widows and orphans thus cruelly
bereaved, and was keenly reminded of that brutal nature of the
Spaniard, under which he had himself suffered so long, and in a
condition so humiliating to a noble spirit. He had his own wrongs
and those of his country to avenge. He brooded over the necessity
before him, with a passion that acquired new strength
from contemplation, and finally resolved never to give himself rest
till he had exacted full atonement, in the blood of the usurpers in
Florida, for the crime of which they had been guilty to his people
and himself.