Murder, mayhem, and a bit of piracy to boot; it’s amazing what can happen when you’re on vacation for a couple weeks. But wait, that’s just the story about St. Augustine’s founding, and doesn’t concern modern politics, block-buster criminal assaults, or Mitt Romney’s tax returns. It has nothing to do with George Allen, Richmond’s ultra-hot summer, or storms that rambled through Henrico County and up into West Virginia.
Nope, it’s not about them one bit. And, by today’s standard, some of these were indeed heinous affairs. Take for instance the Matanzas River. It is the main water access to St. Augustine, and the site of a massacre for which the river earned its name. Matanzas means massacre in Spanish.
According to a tour guide at St. Augustine, Spanish forces led by Pedro Menendez de Aviles was told by the Spanish King Phillip II, to pay a visit to Florida, and while there to roust out the French Huguenot upstarts who were trying to establish a colony near Jacksonville, which was on land claimed by the Spanish.
The French tried to attack St. Augustine but was thwarted by a violent squall that destroyed the French naval forces. Menendez took advantage of this and marched his troops overland to Fort Caroline, near where Jacksonville is today. The Spanish easily overwhelmed the lightly defended French garrison, which had only a skeleton crew of 20 soldiers and about 100 others. They killed most of the men and spared about 60 women and children.
They renamed the fort San Mateo, and Menendez marched back to St. Augustine, where he discovered survivors from the French shipwrecks had come ashore to the south. He sent a patrol to gather up the remnants of the French force, and took them prisoner. Menendez accepted their surrender, but then executed all of them except a few who professing Catholics and some Protestant workers with useful skills. The site of the massacre is near the national monument Fort Matanzas, built in 1740-1742 by the Spanish.
Realizing the need to protect the colony from potential sea-borne attacks, the Spanish opted to build a fort called Castillo de San Marco. Construction started in 1672, and the fort was severely tested over the ensuing decades. But due to its construction techniques, it was never defeated and has served the country in a variety of different ways over the years. Twice the British attempted to lay siege on the fort, once in 1702 and again in 1739. Neither attempt to take the fort was successful.
The British eventually were able to acquire the fort, but not through battle. It was ceded in the Treaty of Paris following the Seven Years War in 1783. Spanish troops returned to St. Augustine in 1784.
The US first gained control of St. Augustine in 1819, when Spain signed the Adams-Onís Treaty, ceding Florida to the United States. Florida seceded from the US in 1861 and was under Confederate control for some time. St. Augustine was taken back by US forces in 1862.
From that point on, the fort was used primarily as a prison. Its notable prisoners included numerous Native American prisoners who were held at the fort in the aftermath of the Indian Wars in the west. Many would die at the fort; among the captives were: Kiowa Chief White Horse and Cheyenne Chief Grey Beard. In 1898, more than 200 Spanish-American War deserters were imprisoned at the fort. This marked one of the last uses of the fort as an operational base. In 1900, the fort was taken off the active duty rolls after 205 years of service under five different flags.
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