CHAPTER 5
 
1564, 1565.  
CONSPIRACY.  

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, and wild expectations had come to naught.  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, bad 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? And 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? 

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 Laudonniere, 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 La Roquette, who gave out that, high up the river, he had discovered by magic a mine of gold and silver, which would give each of them a share of ten thousand crowns, besides fifteen hundred thousand for the King.  But for Laudonniere, he said, their fortunes would all be made.  He found an ally in a gentleman named Genre, one of Laudonniere's confidants, who, while still professing fast adherence to his interests, is charged by him with plotting against his life.  "This Genre," he says, "secretly enfourmed the Souldiers that were already suborned by La Roquette, that I would deprive them of this great game, in that I did set them dayly on worke, not sending them on every side to discover the Countreys; therefore that it were a good deede to dispatch mee out of the way, and to choose another Captaine in my place." The soldiers listened too well.  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, pursues Laudonniere, "these gentle Souldiers did the same for none other ende but to have killed mee and my Lieutenant also, if by chance I had given them any hard speeches." 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 medicine; 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 Laudonniere, 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 malcontents took the opportunity to send home charges against Laudonniere of peculation, favoritism, and tyranny.  

On the fourth of September, Captain Bourdet, apparently a private adventurer, had arrived from France with a small vessel.  When he returned, about the tenth of November, Laudonniere persuaded him to carry home seven or eight of the malcontent 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 Laudonniere'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 give themselves up.  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 thus was forged the thunderbolt soon to be hurled against the wretched little colony.  

On a Sunday morning, Francois de la Caille came to Laudonniere'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, he saw some thirty of his officers, soldiers, and gentlemen volunteers waiting before the building with fixed and sombre countenances.  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 provisions by purchase "or otherwise." In short, the flower of the company wished to turn buccaneers.  

Laudonniere refused, but assured them that, as 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, except Ottigny, Yasseur, and the brave Swiss Arlac, was the only officer who held to his duty.  

A severe illness again seized Laudonniere, and confined him to his bed.  Improving their advantage, the malcontents 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 of the design from a friend; 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 Laudonniere's throat, 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 Laudonniere 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 Laudonniere 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 off, 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.  Laudonniere 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, Landonniere 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 alongside; 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, and on the coast of Cuba they took a brigantine laden with wine and stores.  Embarking in her, they next fell in with a caravel, which also they captured.  Landing at a village in Jamaica, they plundered and caroused for a week, and had hardly re-embarked when they met a small vessel having on board the governor of the island.  She made a 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 "four or six parrots, and as many monkeys of the sort called sanguins, which are very beautiful," and for which his captors had also bargained,—contrived to send instructions to his wife.  Hence 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 also the pilot Trenchant, who, 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 pirates when they saw their dilemma; for, having no provisions, they must either starve or seek succor at the fort.  They chose the latter course, and bore away for the Saint  John's.  A few casks of Spanish wine yet remained, and nobles and soldiers, fraternizing in 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 Laudonniere does not hang us all, I will never call him an honest man." 

They had some hope of getting provisions from the Indians at the month of the river, and then putting 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 Laudonniere, "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.