The men, supposing that the officers were in advance with part of the force, rushed on till they came up with the returning officers, who, taking in the situation, despatched the sentry and led the men to the attack. Two Frenchmen, who rushed out in their shirts, were cut down. Others outside the fort seeing the danger, gave the alarm; and a man at the principal gate threw it open to ascertain what the trouble was. Valdes, ready to scale the fort, saw the advantage, sprang on the man and cut him down, then rushed into the fort, followed by the fleetest of the Spanish detachment. In a moment two captains had simultaneously planted their colors on the walls, and the trumpets sounded for victory. The French, taken utterly by surprise, made no defence; about fifty, dashing over the walls of the fort, took to the woods, almost naked, and unarmed, or endeavored in boats and by swimming to reach the vessels in the stream. When Menendez came up with the main body, his men were slaughtering the French as they ran shrieking through the fort, or came forward declaring that they surrendered. The women, and children under the age of fifteen, were, by orders of the commander, spared. Laudonnière, the younger Ribault, Lemoyne, and the carpenter Le Challeux, whose accounts have reached us, were among those who escaped. Menendez had carried the fort without one of his men being killed or wounded. The number of the French thus unsparingly put to the sword is stated by Menendez himself as one hundred and thirty-two, with ten of the fugitives who were butchered the next day. Mendoza Grajales corroborates this estimate. Fifty were spared, and about as many escaped to the vessels; and some, doubtless, perished in the woods. The slaughter was too terrible to need depicting in darker colors; but in time it was declared that Menendez hung many, with an insulting label: “I do not this to Frenchmen, but to Heretics.” The Spanish accounts, written with too strong a conviction of the propriety of their course to seek any subterfuge, make no allusion to any such act; and the earliest French accounts are silent in regard to it. The charge first occurs in a statement written with an evident design to rouse public indignation in France, and not, therefore, to be deemed absolutely accurate. No quarter was given, for the French were regarded as pirates; and as the French cruisers gave none, these, who were considered as of the same class, received none.