Rene de Goulaine de Laudonnière

Rene Goulaine de Laudonnière , born towards 1529 and died in 1574, is a French explorer Huguenot originating in the Poitou, founder of the city of Strong Caroline, close to current the Jacksonville, in Florida.

First voyage

Jean Ribault and Rene de Goulaine de Laudonnière leaves Le Havre with 150 men on board two vessels of the king the February 18th 1562 and approaches America with the borders of Florida and the current Georgia after two months of navigation (May 1st). They baptize the country Caroline in the honor of Charles IX of France, establish a peaceful contact with the natives of the “country of Chicora” and raise a fort, Charlesfort. Their colony installed, they return to Dieppe to ask reinforcements (July 20th). They find France in full civil war. Ribault prefers to wait in England until the situation is calmed.

The colony which is satisfied to live by holding to ransom the natives, falls to court from vivres. The reinforcements delaying, of the dissensions burst. The commander de Charlesfort is killed during a mutiny. Finally, the colonists leave Florida on board a boat of fortune. They are reduced by it to eat one their companions, Lachère, indicated by the fate. The survivors are collected by an English vessel.

Second voyage

Laudonnière organizes the one second forwarding in 1564. He finds Charlesfort shaven following the raid of the Spanish captain of Roja. Laudonnière then makes rebuild a work of greater dimensions, baptized the Caroline (June 22nd 1564). He returns two ships out of four to France and decides to remain on the spot. Its management is disastrous: it is involved awkwardly in the quarrels of rival tribes, divided between the partisans of king Saturiwa and his Utina rival, and cannot prevent its men, for the majority of the recalcitrant gentlemen to manual work, to scatter in nature in the search of hypothetical treasures.

An arrived vessel of France to supply the colony enables him to get rid of the disturbing elements at the same time as it accommodates carpenters able to reinforce defenses of the fort. But those discharge a dozen sailors, seize the two boats in roads and leave to hold to ransom the Spanish galleons. Laudonnière then makes build two large boats, which fall to the hands from an about sixty contaminated mutineers in their turn by the virus piracy. The Spaniards seize, kill the majority of French, but leave of it the safe life to a handle of men who unload in Caroline and testify to the fate reserved to the Pirates. After judgment, Laudonnière makes carry out the majority of the survivors.

Having exchanged their equipment with the autochtones against food, the French of the Caroline, to court of elements of barter, launch out in the plunder and the murder. In reaction, the July 27th 1565, the natives attack the colony, and the French are saved only by the intervention of English slave traders ordered by John Hawkins. This one proposes in Laudonnière to repatriate it, but in front of its refusal, agrees to yield to him one of its ships and food. After the departure of the English, the aggressive natives being, Laudonnière fixes the departure of the colony at the August 28th 1565.

The return of Ribault and end of the colony

In France, Gaspard de Coligny sends Jean Ribault to replace Laudonnière in Florida. It embarks in six ships more than six hundred sailors, soldiers, craftsmen and peasants (Dieppe, May 22nd 1565). It touches America the August 14th, explores the coasts and presents to broad Colony the August 28th, at the same time as Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, sent by Philippe II of Spain to drive out the French huguenots. Laudonnière receives Ribault then is locked up in the Caroline with his garrison and the women and children coldly made. The September 4th, the Spanish vessels infiltrate between the French vessels, which dismantled their men, weigh the anchor and eclipse in the night. The Spaniards try to continue them, then will build a extremely with the mouth of Rio San Augustin. The French squadron regains the Caroline (September 6th), informs Ribault which decides to attack strong Spanish. The September 10th, taken in the storm, it makes shipwreck. Menédez ignores the 500 survivors disarmed, walk by overland route on the Caroline, takes it and massacres of them the garrison, saver women and children (September 12th). Laudonnière, the painter Jacques Moyne de Morgues, the Nicolas carpenter Chailleux and some civilians succeed in escaping by sea. Jean Ribaut and his companions are made prisoners (September 24th) then massacred like Lutherans.

Returned to France probably in December 1565 by Bristol-board and London, Laudonnière settles with La Rochelle as trader. He escapes the Saint Barthelemy and dies in Saint-Germain-in-Bush hammer in 1574. Its memories the notable history of Florida, containing the three voyages made into icelles by captains and pilot French , are published in 1586.

Internal bonds

History of Florida

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