Page:The Red Man and the White Man in North America.djvu/290

270 early converts. Monarchs and courtiers were to hesitate for an interval as to the side which was to win, and therefore to be espoused. Intense and deadly was the suspended issue, which at last found its diabolical solution amid the horrors of St. Bartholomew.

The spirit of reform in Central Europe had reached Spain only to raise to white heat the rage of bigotry. The part which Spain played in the wars of the League might well give forewarning as to how she would deal with heretic trespassers on her American shores. Here, then, near the sea-coast of Florida, on the banks of its majestic river, which, running parallel with the ocean, almost severs the length of the land, was to be the battle-field between Catholics and heretics, — the natives by no means being quiet lookers-on or umpires.

Gaspar de Coligny, Admiral of France, the peer of the mightiest and noblest of the realm, was by dignity, constancy, and fervor of conviction the most signal representative of the Huguenots. Bigotry, malice, and all other spiteful passions might frown and rage against him, but they could not reach him. He prompted Charles IX. of France to give his royal sanction to a colonial enterprise of the Huguenots in America, in 1562. The English reader may best and most easily acquaint himself with the deplorable venture on the pages of Parkman's “Pioneers of France” and in the admirable biography of Jean Ribault, by Sparks. With this royal commission, and while France and Spain were at amity, Ribault first, and then Laudonnière, sought to lay a foundation of French empire in the New World. Entering what they called the River May, now the St. John, in Florida, they raised a pillar of hewn stone, inscribed with the King's arms, which was afterwards wreathed by the natives with flowers and surrounded with donative offerings, as if it had been an altar. The gushings and overflowings of sentiment, and all the wealth of admiring phrases and