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Source: These images were taken by WTL at Fort Caroline National Memorial in Jacksonville,
Florida in June, 2007.
Comments: In this brief photographic journey we travel to the site of a reproduction of the original Ribault monument, and we visit a reproduction of the French Fort La Caroline. Under the guidance and financing of René Laudonnière, Jean Ribaut (or Ribault) in 1562 to 1564 explored the region along the coast of present-day South Caroline down to just north of San Agustín, in Spanish La Florida (Saint Augustine, in English). Several hundred French Huguenots (Calvinist Protestants), who were fighting againt Roman Catholics in France at the beginning of the French Wars of Religion (1562-1598), made a settlement at La Caroline, on the Saint John's River. The settlement and fort were named for the French king, Charles IX (Lat. Carolus). In 1565, Menéndez de Avilés led several hundred Spanish soldiers from San Agustín to destroy the French settlement and to kill the settlers (except women and children). LeMoyne, Laudonnière, and some French luckily returned by ship to France. Other French survivors of the attack on their settlement escaped by sea and were blown down the coast to the Matanzas River. There Menéndez de Avilés's soldiers massacred the surviving French. ("Matanzas" = massacre or killings.)