Matanzas, the Inlet of Slaughters

Fourteen miles south of Saint Augustine, a narrow inlet carries a grim name: Matanzas, Spanish for slaughters. In the autumn of fifteen sixty-five it earned that name in blood. Pedro Menendez de Aviles had just founded Saint Augustine when the French commander Jean Ribault sailed to attack him.

A hurricane wrecked Ribault's fleet and scattered the survivors on the beaches to the south, stranded without food or boats. They came to the inlet in two groups, hungry and helpless, and surrendered to the Spanish. Menendez showed almost no mercy.

On the twenty-ninth of September he spared a handful of Catholics and musicians, then put roughly one hundred and eleven Frenchmen to the sword at the water's edge. On the twelfth of October a larger group, including Ribault himself, surrendered, and about one hundred and thirty-four more were killed. Ribault was stabbed and then beheaded.

In all, close to two hundred and forty-five men died here. Menendez wrote to King Philip the Second that he had executed them not as Frenchmen but as heretics, spreading what he called the wicked Lutheran doctrine. Some historians add that he simply could not feed or guard so many prisoners in a barely-born colony.

Sources differ on the exact toll, and higher counts likely fold in those who drowned in the storm. Fort Matanzas, built later, still stands watch over the place where mercy failed.