Abstract
In February 1566, grisly news reached the Norman port cities of Dieppe and Le Havre. The French Huguenot colonists, who had left those ports for Florida less than two years previously, had been cruelly slaughtered by Spaniards. An open letter to France's king, purportedly written by the widows and orphans of the victims, was quickly published in an attempt to prod the crown into action. "The blood of your poor subjects, thus treacherously spilt, cries out before God for vengeance," it exclaimed.1 When the crown seemed deaf to the public outcry, a private citizen, Dominique de Gourgues, felt driven to personally avenge his countrymen. An anonymous contemporary text titled The Recovery of Florida tells the story of how in 1568 Gourgues convinced a small force of French soldiers and sailors to recapture Florida for France.
Recommended Citation
DeCoster, Jonathan
(2012)
"Entangled Borderlands: Europeans and Timucuans in Sixteenth-Century Florida,"
Florida Historical Quarterly: Vol. 91:
No.
3, Article 6.
Available at:
https://stars.library.ucf.edu/fhq/vol91/iss3/6
