The source is surprising but check out this blog post on the 444th anniversary of the French Huguenot colony in Florida which was massacred by the Spanish:

444 Years: The Masacre of the Huguenot Christians in America

Happy Thanksgiving

__________________
Andrew Myers
Husband of Jessica, Father of Jackson, Katie and Samuel
Member, Presbyterian Reformed Church of Northern Virginia
Warrenton, VA USA
Editor, The Matthew Poole Project

"Let your Morning Thoughts, and your last Evening Thoughts, be what shall become of you to all Eternity." -- Matthew Poole

Wow.

I love the history of our people (the people of God). This was something I had never heard before. Stories about men and women being murdered for their faith shows the power of the Almighty as he remains with them in the face of evil.

Praise our God! He never forsakes us.

__________________
Daniel Franzen
Church Creek Presbyterian (PCA)
Charleston, SC

Wow! That was fascinating. I'd no idea about that. Thanks for pointing it out.

__________________
Anne Ivy
Christ Chapel Bible Church
Fort Worth, Texas

Married to Don, mother of six, grandmother to an ever-increasing brood.

The Ivy Vine (my blog)

You're very welcome!

Amen! And being from South Carolina, you may be interested to know that the first Protestant colony in America was that which was settled in South Carolina at Charlesfort by the French Huguenots in 1562 (it preceded the French Huguenot colony of Fort Caroline by 2 years).

For more info, you can read here:

Chasfort

__________________
Andrew Myers
Husband of Jessica, Father of Jackson, Katie and Samuel
Member, Presbyterian Reformed Church of Northern Virginia
Warrenton, VA USA
Editor, The Matthew Poole Project

"Let your Morning Thoughts, and your last Evening Thoughts, be what shall become of you to all Eternity." -- Matthew Poole

"However, when Menéndez then demanded that they give up their Protestant faith and accept Catholicism, they refused."

It was because they were Protestant that they were murdered. They were not murdered because they were French. Therefore, Catholicism did the massacred.

__________________
Gil Garcia
Rehoboth Reformed Church (RCUS)
La Habra, CA


"Indeed, one might say that as far as the doctrine of justification
is concerned, if you are not on the road to Wittenberg or Geneva, then the old proverb is indeed true: all roads lead to Rome." Carl Trueman

Wow, we Americans don't usually associate our history with large scale massacres for religion. Fascinating and sobering.

__________________
Pergamum


"If a commission by an earthly king is considered a honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?"
-- David Livingstone

Yes, Menéndez is famous for having the following words inscribed above the bodies of those hung at Fort Caroline: "Not as Frenchmen, but as Lutherans."

Fort Caroline Massacre

Among the hundreds of people that he executed, the most famous was Jean Ribault, French naval commander. He died with a psalm on his lips as noted here:

Jean Ribault

Among the survivors of the massacre was Jacques Le Moyne, the first European to paint portraits of American Indians:

Jacques Le Moyne - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The first Christian wedding in North America also took place between one of the survivors, Ernst d'Erlach, a French Huguenot nobleman, and the Indian Princess Issena:

First Protestant Baptism in America

__________________
Andrew Myers
Husband of Jessica, Father of Jackson, Katie and Samuel
Member, Presbyterian Reformed Church of Northern Virginia
Warrenton, VA USA
Editor, The Matthew Poole Project

"Let your Morning Thoughts, and your last Evening Thoughts, be what shall become of you to all Eternity." -- Matthew Poole

I've read that the origin of the word "Buccaneer" was for French Protestant pirates, who were often particularly blood thirsty. French Protestants were often given Letters of Mark which allowed them to attack Spanish shipping, and the French Crown's cut of the spoils made the business very lucrative.

The location of the French colony was chosen to facilitate attacks on Spanish shipping, and the Spanish didn't have much choice in the matter of destroying the French threat, and they wouldn't have even if the territory at the time wasn't legally Spanish, which I believe it was.

Still, hanging all those people who didn't bear arms was another blot on Spanish honor.

The only French Protestant colony culture that succeeded, to my knowledge, was in South Africa, where a few hundred were sent by the Dutch to develop agriculture. Afrikaners don't speak French anymore (it died out after a couple generations) but they are still proud of their French heritage, and when the largest tunnel in the Southern hemisphere was build, they naturally named it the Huguenot Tunnel.

__________________
Tim Vaughan, 48 years old, member PCA church but currently attending EV Free church. San Luis Obispo County, California.

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.

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.

__________________
Andrew Myers
Husband of Jessica, Father of Jackson, Katie and Samuel
Member, Presbyterian Reformed Church of Northern Virginia
Warrenton, VA USA
Editor, The Matthew Poole Project

"Let your Morning Thoughts, and your last Evening Thoughts, be what shall become of you to all Eternity." -- Matthew Poole

America's First True "Pilgrims" | History & Archaeology | Smithsonian Magazine (May 23, 2008)

__________________
Andrew Myers
Husband of Jessica, Father of Jackson, Katie and Samuel
Member, Presbyterian Reformed Church of Northern Virginia
Warrenton, VA USA
Editor, The Matthew Poole Project

"Let your Morning Thoughts, and your last Evening Thoughts, be what shall become of you to all Eternity." -- Matthew Poole

I've had an opportunity to read the book referenced in this post now and it is a useful intro to the French Huguenots of Florida along with other historical tidbits, including Puritan New England history, but there is a definite anti-Puritan bias as well.

__________________
Andrew Myers
Husband of Jessica, Father of Jackson, Katie and Samuel
Member, Presbyterian Reformed Church of Northern Virginia
Warrenton, VA USA
Editor, The Matthew Poole Project

"Let your Morning Thoughts, and your last Evening Thoughts, be what shall become of you to all Eternity." -- Matthew Poole