nd set up by Rodrigo Troche and Pedro Valdes Herrera, with
two cavaliers, at the same moment. These being hoisted, the trumpets
proclaimed the victory, and the band of soldiers who had entered opened
the gates and sought the quarters, leaving no Frenchman alive.

The Adelantado, hearing the cries, left Castaneda in his place to
collect the people who had not come up, who were at least half the
force, and went himself to see if they were in any danger. He arrived at
the fort running; and as he perceived that the soldiers gave no quarter
to any of the French, he shouted "that, at the penalty of their lives,
they should neither wound nor kill any woman, cripple, or child under
fifteen years of age." By which seventy persons were saved, the rest
were all killed.

Renato de Laudonniere, the commander of the fort, escaped, with his
servant and some twenty or thirty others, to a vessel lying in the
river.

Such is the Spanish chronicle, contained in Barcia, of the capture of
Fort Caroline. Its details in the main correspond with the account of
Laudonniere, and of Nicolas Challeux, the author of the letter printed
at Lyons, in France, under date of August, 1566, by Jean Saugrain. In
some important particulars, however, the historians disagree. It has
been already seen that Menendez is represented as having given orders to
spare all the women, maimed persons, and all children under fifteen
years of age. The French relations of the event, on the contrary, allege
that an indiscriminate slaughter took place, and that all were
massacred, without respect to age, sex, or condition; but as this
statement is principally made upon the authority of a terrified and
flying soldier, it is alike due to the probabilities of the case, and
more agreeable to the hopes of humanity, to lessen somewhat the horrors
of a scene which has need of all the palliation which can be drawn from
the slightest evidences of compassion on the part of the stern and
bigoted leader.

Some of the fugitives from the fort fled to the Indians; and ten of
these were given up to the Spaniards, to be butchered in cold blood,
says the French account--to be sent back to France, says the Spanish
chronicle.

September 24th being the day of St. Matthew, the name of the fort was
changed to San Matteo, by which name it was always subsequently called
by the Spaniards; and the name of St. Matthew was also given by them to
the river, now called St. John's, on which it was situ