LAUDONNIERE RTSis GOULATN DE, a French navigator of the 16th century. When the French admiral Cagily had secured a patent from Charles IX. to enable him to colonize the Protestants of France in America, he sent Laudonniere in 1562 to select a location and make a settlement. This was two years after Jean Ribault had built a fort and planted a small French colony at Beaufort in Port Royal bay, a remnant of which had returned to France. Laudonniere built a fort on the St. John's river named fort Caroline, where tie established a colony. Difficulties with the Indians ensued; affairs were generally mismanaued; a band of the colonists were permitted to make a voyage of depredation against the Spaniards on• the coast of Cuba. With the remnant of the colony he was about setting sail for France when Ribault, who had been appointed to supersedaLaudonmere in the government of the colony, appeared Sept.4, 1565, with a fleet of seven vessels. Almost simultaneously a Spanish fleet of five vessels, under Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles, appeared. In answer to the French challenge as to his purpose there, the Spaniard responded that he cane with orders from his king to gibbet and behead all the Protestants in those regions. "'file Frenchman who is a Catholic," he added, "I will spare. Every heretic shall die]" The French fleet, unpre pared for battle, fled. The Spaniards, failing to overtake them, returned to the harbor of St. Augustine. The French fleet seems to have run to cover up the St. Johns under the walls of fort Caroline. Ribault, against the advice Landonniere, decided to return with his fleet to attack the Spaniards at• St. Augustine. He had reached the open sea
when a storm arose and his squadron was wrecked near cape Canaveral, but the men, to the number of 500, were saved. Menendez then marched over land to the unprotected fort Caroline. Laudonniere, with but a handful of men, took refuge in the fort. It was quickly taken, The Spaniards executed Menendez's threat with their usual cruelty, murdering nearly the entire colony of 200 men, women, and children. Laudonniere, with a few men, escaped into the swamps near the fort and finally reached the coast. Meantime Ribault, ignorant of the tragedy at fort Caroline, conducted his men through swamps and everglades back to the settlement. The first body of 200 men, on reaching the fort, surrendered to Menendez and were slain. Ribault, with the second division of the force, fell into his hands soon after and they were also massacred; " not as Frenchmen, but as Lutherans," observes the discriminating murderer. Laudonniere, with the few others who had escaped, succeeded in reaching one of the vessels on the coast which was saved from the wreck of the fleet; and, returning to France, was driven on the English coast, where he remained till 1566. He seems to have been man of little force, and made historical only by the colonial tragedy with which lie was connected. In 1586 lie published E Histoire Xotable de la Florida, Vontenant ley trois Voyages faites en ieelle par des Capitaines et des Pilotes Francais.