by Alec Waugh
On his return to St Augustine, Menéndez learned that 140 refugees from two French ships were in the neighbourhood. Two hundred of their fellows had been drowned or killed by savages, and they themselves were helpless without supplies. They begged him to spare their lives, but he retorted that he was ‘waging a war of fire and blood against all who came to settle these parts and plant in them their evil Lutheran sect’. That is the Spanish account of the incident.
According to one French record, Menéndez promised the castaways that if they surrendered their arms and ammunition he would spare their lives. Both accounts are agreed on what subsequently transpired. The men surrendered; the ten Catholics among them were set apart; the remainder were fed and wined, then told that because they were so numerous they must march to St Augustine with their hands bound behind them. Menéndez gave instructions to his officers, then went ahead. A certain distance away, behind a hillock, he drew a line with his spearhead in the sand. When the procession reached the spearline, the Spaniards set upon and decapitated their prisoners. The spot is still known as Las Matanzas (The Massacre).
A little later, Menéndez learned that Ribaut and two hundred Frenchmen had been cut off by an inlet, as their compatriots had been, in an attempt to reach Fort Caroline by land. The Spaniard followed a similar procedure. Ribaut and his men were promised their lives if they surrendered. Their hands were bound and they were led to the spearline that was now littered with the decaying corpses of their friends. Seventeen Catholics were set aside; then the Lutherans were slaughtered. Menéndez wrote in his report:
‘I put Jean Ribaut and all the rest of them to the knife, judging it to be necessary to the service of the Lord our God and of Your Majesty, and I think it a very great fortune that this man be dead ... he could do more harm in one year than another in ten; for he was the most experienced sailor and corsair known, very skilful in the navigation of the Indies and the Florida coast’
Philip noted on the back of this dispatch:
‘As to those he has killed he has done well, and as to those he has saved, they shall be sent to the galleys,’ and to Menéndez he wrote:
‘We hold that we have been well served.’
Barrientos, a contemporary historian, considered that Menéndez was merciful to his prisoners, since he was legally entitled to have them burned alive. ‘He killed them, I think, rather by divine inspiration.’
According to French reports, a certain number of the prisoners were hanged and an inscription was set above them: ‘I do this not as to Frenchmen but as to Lutherans.’ There is no reference to this hanging in Spanish reports, but the story was believed in France, and two years later, revenge was taken by Dominique de Gourgues who, in the late summer, crossed the Atlantic with a body of 150 men. After a winter’s trading, he sailed north to Florida, made friends with an Indian chief, and with Indian allies and guides effected a raid upon the encampment at San Mateo. Menéndez was away, and it is reported that the guards in the first blockhouse were contentedly picking their teeth after dinner when they were startled by Gourgues’ cry: ‘Yonder are the thieves who have stolen this land from our King. Yonder are the murderers who have massacred our French. On! On! Let us avenge our King! Let us show that we are Frenchmen.’
Most of the soldiers in the first two blockhouses were killed, but as many as possible were taken prisoner. The French then attacked the fort itself, their wrath having been increased by the discovery of French cannon in the blockhouses. The Spaniards made a sortie, but they had not seen the Indian allies who were hidden behind trees, and were caught between two fires. Again, as many of them as possible were taken alive so that they should receive the same fate as the French. Above the branches of the same trees from which his friends had swung, Gourgues inscribed on a pine tablet with a hot iron: ‘I do this not as to Spaniards, not as to Marranos (secret Jews), but as to traitors, robbers and murderers.’
On his way back he captured three Spanish treasure ships and tossed their crews overboard. He was welcomed home as a hero.
Menéndez is chiefly remembered by American; French and English historians as the butcher of Las Matanzas, but in Spanish history he is honoured as one of her greatest colonial administrators. Much of his work survived for many years, and that part of it that survived is significant in the story of the West Indian Islands. He was a man of vision. His fortification of the Peninsula was intended to protect the Bahama Channel. He would then drive the French out of Santa Elena and out of the Bay of Santa Maria (Chesapeake Bay), which might contain, who knew, the Northwest Passage in which all believed. Florida might be the gateway to Cathay. Spain would, through Florida, have a direct link with the Philippines. He had dreams of a Florida rich in silk and pearls, in sugar, in wheat, in rice, in timber. He saw the New World as a whole. He said, with what Herbert E. Bolton has called ‘a twentieth-century contempt for distance and a Spanish disregard of time’:
‘Florida is but a suburb of Spain, for it does not take more than forty days’ sailing to come here, and usually as many more to return.’
During the nine years he spent there, he established a line of posts between Tampa and Santa Elena, established three permanent settlements at St Augustine, San Mateo and Santa Elena, and garrison posts in northern Georgia, at Tampa and Charlotte Bays on the west coast, at Biscayne Bay and the St Lucie River on the east. For two and a half centuries these posts were to play an important role in Caribbean strategy.
Eventually Menéndez was recalled to Spain to assist in the preparation of Philip’s great Armada. He did not live, however, to see it sail. He was a great seaman. Had he lived longer its fate might have been different. It is also possible that if he had never had to cross the Atlantic, if Hawkins had been able to persuade Laudonnière to abandon his French settlement, English and Spanish relations would not have been forced to deteriorate and Philip might have been able to follow for a little longer his father’s instructions to stay friends with England.
Hawkins’ second voyage had not realized all his hopes for it. He had failed to collect hides from Hispaniola, and he had not evacuated the French colony, but he brought his ships home safe, and the syndicate received a sixty per cent, dividend on its investment. He had again proved that triangular trade with the Guinea coast was a profitable enterprise.
Back in England, he informed the Queen that he had always been a help to all Spaniards and Portuguese that had come his way, ‘without any harm or prejudice by me offered to any of them, although many times in this tract they have been under my power’. In honour of his achievement Elizabeth granted him a coat of arms. But in Madrid the news of his return was received with anything but satisfaction. Philip took a long time to make up his mind, but once he had done so he was inflexible, and he had now decided that the monopoly of the Caribbean had to be preserved. Of the two Spanish governors who had had dealings with Hawkins, one was brought back to Spain as a prisoner, and the treasurer of another colony was subjected to a cross-examination that left him in no doubt that on a future occasion he would have to show greater resolution.
On an official level, the traditional cordiality between the two countries was maintained, and it was on courtly terms that the Spanish ambassador, da Silva, presented to Elizabeth his interest in Hawkins. Da Silva was, indeed, sufficiently accommodating to invite Hawkins to dinner, an occasion which proved that Hawkins was regarded as an honest man. Hawkins was careful to impress on the Spaniard the legality of the transactions and, producing his licences, spoke of the cargo of hides that had been confiscated after his first voyage. Hawkins was still unable to believe that Spain would continue to oppose a trade that was so obviously in her interest. He imagined that these inquiries had been instigated merely ‘for the form’, and he gave da Silva his assurance that he would never again visit the King’s West Indian possessions without the King’s permission.
He had no intention of keeping this promise, and da Silva was aware of this. What could be expected of a Plymouth seaman when the Queen
of England was equally ready to prevaricate?
Within a few weeks of Hawkins’ return, preparations were under way for a third voyage; Elizabeth knew that its main object was trade between Africa and the Caribbean; indeed, through her contribution of two ships of the navy, she became a shareholder in the expedition. Yet she and Cecil gave da Silva their assurance that the fleet was bound for the Guinea coast, to exact reparation for a ship sunk in the previous year. To complete the ‘make-believe’, she made the other members of the syndicate swear that Hawkins was not bound for the Spanish west. She too could not believe that Philip would remain insensible to the dictates of common sense. His colonists were short of labour and supplies, his convoys were harassed by French and Turkish privateers. Surely he could not be blind to the advantages of Anglo-Spanish amity. Indeed, Hawkins went so far as to offer da Silva his own assistance in clearing the Mediterranean of Turkish pirates. But the English reckoned without Philip’s obstinacy and sense of mission as a Christian prince. In Philip’s eyes, the old pattern of European diplomacy had changed; the main issue was ceasing to be the rivalry between Spain and France, between the Habsburgs and the Valois, but the conflict between the true faith and heresy. And England had now become a country of heretics.
Hawkins had not realized this when he set out on his third voyage in October 1567, the voyage that was to be labelled ‘troublesome’ and was to determine the course of West Indian history for half a century.
This third fleet was considerably his largest; six ships with a tonnage of 1,333, manned by four hundred seamen, including the Jesus, now far from seaworthy, and whose leaking seams were to be responsible for the final calamity of the voyage. In this expedition was sailing Hawkins’ cousin, Francis Drake.
From the start, difficulties were encountered. Four days out of Plymouth, they were attacked by so fierce a gale that Hawkins expected the Jesus to sink. The Portuguese on the Guinea coast were resolved to protect their trading rights. The Africans resisted their invaders with poisoned arrows, which resulted in several deaths. At one point so few slaves had been acquired that Hawkins wondered whether it was worthwhile crossing the Atlantic with so negligible a cargo; and he had finally, in Sierra Leone, to fight a pitched battle and sack a town before he had his holds well stocked.
This action set a pattern for one of the most deplorable aspects of the future slave trade, the encouragement and instigation of tribal wars that would produce prisoners. On his arrival at the Gold Coast, Hawkins found that the King of Sierra Leone and one of the chiefs were besieging a town of eight thousand inhabitants. The King and chief promised Hawkins prisoners in return for his assistance; Hawkins accepted the proposition, and after two days’ hard fighting, captured and destroyed the town. The victors organized a cannibal banquet in the ruins, and there were very few survivors except for the prisoners that Hawkins took on board.
On this third voyage, Hawkins was in the position of a first-class golfer playing a round when the putts ‘won’t drop’. On his second voyage he had crossed the Atlantic in five and a half weeks; the ‘troublesome voyage’ took seven weeks. When he arrived at Borburata, the governor was up-country. The letter which he sent to the governor is indicative of Hawkins’ attitude. ‘I know,’ he wrote, ‘that the King of Spain, your master, unto whom also I have been a servant and am commanded by the Queen, my mistress, to serve with my navy as need requireth, hath forbidden that you should give licence for any stranger to traffic. I will not therefore request any such thing at your hand, but that you will license me to sell sixty Negroes only and a parcel of my wares, which in all is but little, for the payment of the soldiers I have in my ships. In this you shall not break the commandment of your Prince, but do him good service and avoid divers inconveniences which happen oftentimes through being too precise in observing precepts without consideration.’
No letter could be more diplomatic or more definite. It is polite, yet it is a threat. It recognizes the other man’s point of view, and offers him an alibi. Hawkins knew that the colonists wished to trade with him, and while he awaited the governor’s answer he set up booths on shore. Trade proceeded briskly, and by the time the governor’s letter of refusal arrived, the immediate needs of the colonists had been satisfied. Hawkins proceeded confidently along the coast.
In Borburata, the civilities of evasion had been observed, but at his next port of call, Rio de la Hacha, the opposition was definite; there was no ‘sham fighting’, there were actual casualties, but eventually the demands of self-interest prevailed; a fraudulent letter was written to Madrid, and Hawkins, with his store of Negroes lessened and his supply of bullion increased, proceeded to Santa Marta, where the governor asked him to go through the drill of capturing the town by force, so that he could explain to his sovereign that against his will he had been forced to do business with the heretic. Cartagena, however, was so strongly fortified that subterfuge was impossible. The strength of the city prevented its governor from pleading force majeure, so Hawkins turned the corner and made for the Gulf Stream.
Up to this point, the trip, though hazardous, though it had involved more casualties than had been expected, had not been unsuccessful. Hawkins had sold much of his merchandise and he had taken on a satisfactory cargo of pearls and gold. Had he now encountered favourable winds, and made his journey straight home to England, the syndicate would have declared a handsome dividend; but from this point luck turned against him. In terms of weather, August and September are the worst months in the Caribbean. Hawkins did not strike a hurricane, but he met seas stronger than the Jesus of Lubeck could surmount. She was forced to turn her back upon the wind, and by the time the winds had dropped she was no longer fit to cross the Atlantic until she had been repaired. Hawkins would have been wise to accept her as a liability. As far as his voyage was concerned, she had served her purpose. She had, with her height and weight, impressed and intimidated his adversaries, and she had been invaluable for the transportation of his merchandise, but most of the slaves were sold, and the cargo with which he was returning was of small bulk. He did not expect to go into action again. It was unlikely, even if he got her back to England, that the Jesus could be refitted for a major voyage; but she was the Queen’s ship, and he was resolved that ‘she should not perish under his hand’. He decided to take her into port.
The nearest harbour was San Juan de Ulúa, the port for Mexico City. The captain of a Spanish ship, who was carrying cargo thither from Santo Domingo, offered to guide him there, at the same time warning him that the Spanish convoy was due at the end of September to collect the annual store of treasure. There was nothing that Hawkins was less anxious to encounter, but he believed he could repair the Jesus in twelve days, so with the royal standard on the topmast of the Jesus he sailed into San Juan.
For the moment the Englishman’s luck held good. The colours of the Queen’s arms had been so dimmed by bad weather that the Spaniards who were expecting the arrival of the convoy did not recognize the lions and fleur-de-lis and sailed out to welcome Hawkins in the belief that he was the convoy. San Juan de Ulúa was a ramshackle port, practically uninhabited except during the weeks when the silver fleet was stationed there, the residents of the area living for the greater part fifteen miles up the coast at Vera Cruz, which had no harbour, but from which a road ran inland direct to Mexico City. The shipping of San Juan was protected by the shore guns of a small island. When the residents of the port realized their mistake, the panic was so uncontrolled that Hawkins was able to capture this island without firing a shot. He was thus able to dictate terms. He must, he insisted, have opportunities for repair, and he must replenish his larder, for which he would pay the appropriate price. He prepared with the officials a report to the authorities in Mexico, explaining that his capture of the island was not an act of war. A number of Spanish merchantmen which he presumed to be laden with treasure were in port, but he respected their neutrality. As at all other points, he scrupulously obeyed his Queen’s commands. If only he could get h
er ship repaired before the arrival of the convoy, all might still be well. But the gales that had hampered his own journey eastward had favoured the convoy on its westward passage; the Spanish fleet arrived on the following day. Eleven large merchantmen were accompanied by two men-of-war, and on board was the Viceroy of New Spain, Don Martin Enriquez, son of the Marquis of Alcanizes.
Hawkins was now in a most difficult position. As an honourable and peaceful trader, he could scarcely deny a Spanish port to a Spanish fleet, yet if he allowed the fleet to enter, he would be at its mercy. He opened negotiations. Don Martin was furious and indignant. He, a grandee of Spain, to discuss terms with a Plymouth sailor! At first he vowed that he would force an entry, but his military and naval advisers assured him that this was impossible. He decided therefore to come to terms, with the mental reservation that he would break those terms as soon as might prove convenient.
Don Martin’s subsequent behaviour was to blacken his country’s reputation in the eyes of Englishmen for many years, and was to convince Englishmen that they could do no business with the Spaniards, yet Don Martin did not regard himself as having behaved dishonourably. As long as he was serving his God and his King, he was convinced of his own virtue; any act was justified that advanced the glory of his King and the interests of the faith. Don Martin regarded Hawkins’ insistence on the legality of his transactions as contemptible hypocrisy, an attempt to find a different name for piracy.
The terms suggested by Hawkins were reasonable. The English were to complete their work upon their ships and were to occupy the island until their departure. No armed Spaniard was to land upon the island. Each side was to hand over ten gentlemen as hostages. Don Martin accepted the proposal, assuming that as long as his men went on to the island without arms they would be allowed free passage. ‘And I am very confident,’ he concluded, ‘that when we meet, friendship will increase between these fleets, since both are so well disciplined.’