Note 890 — Chapter IV · (continued 2)

Jacques de Sorie, in 1555, at Havana, after pledging his word to spare the lives of the Spaniards who surrendered, put them and his Portuguese prisoners to death; negroes he hung up and shot while still alive (Relacion de Diego de Mazauegos, MS.; Letter of Bishop Sarmiento in Coleccion de documentos inéditos, v. 555). Priests, especially those of religious Orders, met no mercy at the hands of the French cruisers at this period, the most atrocious case being that of the Portuguese Jesuit Father Ignatius Azevedo, captured by the French on his way to Brazil with thirty-nine missionary companions, all of whom were put to death, in 1570. In all my reading, I find no case where the French in Spanish waters then gave quarter to Spaniards, except in hope of large ransom. Two of the vessels found at Caroline were Spanish, loaded with sugar and hides, captured near Yaguana by the French, who threw all the crew overboard; and Gourgues, on reaching Florida, had two barks, evidently captured from the Spaniards, as to the fate of whose occupants his eulogists observe a discreet silence.