ers.
He arrived in Florida in the spring of 1568, and was joined by the natives in an attack upon two forts on the St. John occupied by the Spaniards below Fort Carolina.
The strong places were captured, and the whole of the Spaniards were slaughtered, excepting a few whom De Gourges hanged upon trees, under the words, Not as Spaniards and mariners, but as traitors, robbers, and murderers.
Menendez firmly planted a colony at St. Augustine.
In 1598 Henry IV., of France, issued an edict at Nantes (see Edict of Nantes) that secured full toleration, civil and religious, for the Huguenots, and there was comparative rest for the Protestants until the death of Cardinal Mazarin, in 1661.
Then the Huguenots began to be perse-
Indians decorating Ribault's pillar (from an old print). cuted, and in 1685 Louis XIV.
revoked the Edict.
The fires of intolerance were kindled, and burned so furiously that at least 500,000 Protestants took refuge in foreign lands.
In 1705 there was not a singl
Lee, William 1737-1795
Diplomatist; born in Stratford, Va., in 1737: brother of Richard Henry and Arthur; was agent for Virginia in London, and became a merchant there.
The city of London being overwhelmingly Whig in politics, William Lee was elected sheriff of that city and Middlesex county in 1773.
In 1775 he was chosen alderman, but on the breaking out of the war in America retired to France.
Congress appointed him commercial agent at Nantes at the beginning of 1777, and he was afterwards American minister at The Hague. Mr. Lee was also agent in Berlin and Vienna, but was recalled in 1779.
In 1778 Jan de Neufville, an Amsterdam merchant, procured a loan to the Americans from Holland, through his house, and, to negotiate for it, gained permission of the burgomasters of Amsterdam to meet Lee at Aix-la-Chapelle.
There they arranged terms for a commercial convention proper to be entered into between the two republics.
When Lee communicated this project to the American commis
Reprisal, the
The ship that carried Franklin to France, having replenished in the port of Nantes, cruised off the French coast and captured several prizes from the English.
The American privateers were permitted to enter French ports in cases of extreme emergency, and there to receive supplies only sufficient for a voyage to their own ports; but the Reprisal continued to cruise off the French coast after leaving port, and captured the English royal packet between Falmouth and Lisbon.
With this and five other prizes, she entered the harbor of L'Orient, the captain saying he intended to send them to America.
Stormont, the English ambassador to Paris, hurried to Vergennes to demand that the captain, with his crews, cargoes, and ships, should be given up. You have come too late, said the minister; orders have already been sent that the American ship and her prizes must immediately put to sea.
the Reprisal continued to cruise in European waters until captured in the summer of 1777.
Vilmot, Charles Stanislas 1749-1794
Author; born in St. Nazaire, France, in 1749; served in Count Rochambeau's army in 1780-82; remained in the United States till 1786.
He was the author of Observations on the administrative services of the United States of North America; Journal of the campaign, with notes during the War for American Independence; and Notes and sketches of the United States of North America.
He died in Nantes, France, in 1794.
a.
Instigated by Father Thury, a Jesuit, an Indian war-party fell (Aug. 12) upon the English stockade at Pemmaquid, built by Andros, and captured the garrison.
A
The death of Major Waldron. respective colonies in America.
When the declaration of war between the two nations reached America, the eastern Indians were easily excited to make war by the Baron de Castine, seated at the mouth of the Penobscot, and the Jesuit missionaries among the Indians.
The recent revocation of the Edict of Nantes had kindled fiercely the fires of persecution in France (see Edict of Nantes), and the heat was felt in America.
Through these Jesuits, the Indians were made allies of the French and the two races were frequently found on the war-path few months later Frontenac, governor of Canada, sent a party of 300 French and Indian warriors from Montreal to penetrate the country towards Albany.
On a gloomy night in the winter (Feb. 18, 1690), when the snow lay 20 inches deep in the Mohawk Valley, they
ther, the barometer settling to 29.80, and the wind blowing half a gale, most of the time.
Sometimes the wind would go all around the compass, and the weather would change half a dozen times, in twenty-four hours. On the last-mentioned day, the weather became again settled, and being now in latitude 14°, we had passed out of the calm belt, and began to receive the first breathings of the north-east trade-wind.
On the 24th, we chased and hove to a French brig, called La Mouche Noire, from Nantes, bound for Martinique.
She had been out forty-two days, had no newspapers on board, and had no news to communicate.
We boarded her under the United States flag, and when the boarding-officer apologized to the master for the trouble we had given him, in heaving him to, in the exercise of our belligerent right of search, he said, with an admirable naivete, he had heard the United States were at war, but he did not recollect with whom!
Admirable Frenchman!
wonderful simplicity, to care noth
presently] in the manner that has been mentioned, they were not idle in other quarters.
A small frigate was building at Nantes, on their account, and there will be occasion to speak of her hereafter, under the name of the Queen of France.
Some tamong the rest a King's packet, that plied between Falmouth and Lisbon.
When the cruise was up, Captain Wickes went into Nantes, taking his prizes with him. The complaints of the English now became louder, and the American Ministers were secretly adntleman who subsequently died at the head of the service.
Captain Wickes, in command of this light squadron, sailed from Nantes, about the commencement of June, going first into the Bay of Biscay, and afterward entirely around Ireland, sweeping the h ships Serapis and Countess of Scarborough.
Mr. Cooper thus describes the crew of Jones' ship, picked up at Dunkirk, or Nantes, or some of the other French ports:—
To manage a vessel of this singular armament and doubtful construction, Commodo
, bound to Antwerp, with a cargo of guano, laden on account of the Peruvian government, and consigned to its agent at Antwerp, for sale.
Being unable to destroy the ship, because of the neutral ownership of her cargo, I released her on ransom-bond, sent my prisoners on board of her to be landed, and permitted her to depart.
This capture was made on the 27th of February.
On the 28th we overhauled two English ships, from the East Indies, homeward bound, and a French ship, from Batavia, for Nantes.
The weather continued very fine, and we had had a uniformly high barometer, ever since we had reached the crossing.
The morning of the 1st of March dawned charmingly, with a very light breeze.
The night had been rather dark, and we had been lying — to under topsails.
In the darkness of the night, an enemy's ship had approached us unawares.
She had been following the blazes, without seeing the toll-gate, and the revelations made by the morning's light, must have startled her; for she
between us, we are accustomed to remember as our mother-land.
Mingled with our Dutch and Huguenot ancestry, a very large proportion of the older families of America trace their descent from England, and many who do not are yet connected with her by no common ties.
For myself, I may say that I have always entertained for her people an hereditary feeling of attachment, from the fact that my Huguenot ancestors, when they fled from Rochelle, after the revocation by Louis XIV.
of the edict of Nantes, found upon her soil a welcome and a home; and that one of them, volunteering for King William against James II., shed his blood for English freedom at the battle of the Boyne, that great era in English history, ending, as we hope, forever her civil wars, from which dates the establishment on a firm basis, of the unity, the strength, and the world-wide dominion of the British empire.
Such memories, and doubtless, my countrymen, you have many such, descend from father to son undimmed by nati
