There were indeed French Huguenot pirates (and privateers, ie., those credentialed with letters of marque), as there were Dutch and English Protestant pirates and privateers (John Hawkins was one English privateer who played an important role in the French Huguenot colony of Fort Caroline, and later Francis Drake at St. Augustine), and Spanish and Portuguese Roman Catholic pirates and privateers. In our era, we have Ulster Protestant and Roman Catholic terrorists and others who fly the flag of religion for baser purposes, as well as those who genuinely fight for religious principles. The European conflict of the 16th and 17th centuries was certainly transferred to Latin America and elsewhere as a proxy war, and the conflict continues in some places.
http://members.tripod.com/skull2k/tortuga.htm
There was no honor in what the Spanish did at Fort Caroline. Those who have read the accounts of Menéndez, René Goulaine de Laudonnière and others (chronicled ably by
Charles Bennett) can only conclude that the *primary* motive of Menéndez was to exterminate Protestantism in La Florida. The actual financial threat to Spanish treasure fleets of Latin America from Fort Caroline was minimal. Those Frenchmen from Fort Caroline who attempted to attack the Spanish were treasure-seeking renegades who had mutinied against Laudonnière and were later executed by him when they returned to the colony. Laudonnière's goal was to create a self-sustaining colony, not a pirate haven, that would promote the welfare of French Protestants and the claims of the French crown in the New World. The legality of the settlement was very much up for grabs in that Spanish claims to Florida were premised on Juan Ponce de León's discovery and Tristán de Luna y Arellano's abandoned colony; whereas, Laudonnière's colony, while brief, was never abandoned (unlike Charlesfort) but rather terminated by Spanish violence. The French and Indians did experience conflict when food supplies ran low, but mostly worked together well and it was a tremendous grief to the Indians when the Spanish gained the upper hand. They assisted the revenge attack in 1568 by Domingue de Gourgues upon San Mateo (the renamed Fort Caroline) (which was a stain upon the French honor he aimed to uphold) who hung the Spanish troops stationed there and placed an inscription over their bodies: "Not as Spaniards but as murderers." One Indian princess married a French Huguenot, as before mentioned, and it is
said that the Indians sang French psalms long after the French were no longer seen on Florida shores.
Quote:
In the ensuing battle Ribaut was killed and most of the French colony slaughtered. Laudonnière was one of the few who escaped to get back to France. The hoped-for "promised land" turned out to be yet another desert. Even though the colony had been destroyed, the memory of the French, especially their songs, lingered for a long time. "Europeans, cruising along the coast or landing upon the shore, would be saluted (by the Indians) with some snatch of French Psalm uncouthly rendered by Indian voices."
Nicholas Le Challeux (1579) writes that the Indians "yet retain such happy memories that when someone lands on their shore the most endearing greeting that they know how to offer is 'Du fond de ma pensée' (Ps. 130), or 'Bienheureux est qui conqués' (Ps. 138), which they say as if to ask the watchword, 'Are you French or not?' "
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This is because of the horrible atrocities carried out by the Spanish not only against the French, but also against Indians and anyone else in their way.
Here is a previous thread on Huguenot South Africa:
Huguenot South Africa
As I have argued
previously, French Huguenot refugees typically (if not massacred by the Spanish in Florida or the Portuguese in Brazil) assimilated into the prevailing culture, which was both a strength and a weakness (ensuring survival of the people and their contributions while sacrificing their particular French Huguenot identity). But it would be a mistake to assume that only the French Huguenots of South Africa kept their identity long term. One of the oldest, if not the oldest, continuous European colonial hegemonies in America is the French Huguenot settlement of New Paltz, New York, which claims the title of the "oldest continuously inhabited street in America":
Huguenot Street. There remain several French Huguenot churches still in use today in the United States and Germany, and while the colonies built around them have clearly been assimilated, French Huguenots have kept their religious institutions as standing witnesses to their legacy, and their contributions to the Dutch Reformed legacy in America and the Netherlands are quite significant. They left a fingerprint all around the world that is still evident for those who know where to look.