The appearance of the Spanish fleet foreboded evil. The circumstances excited the fears of the Protestant colonists. They inquired the name and objects of the Spanish commander. To the deputation he answered: “I am Melendez of Spain, sent with orders from my king to gibbet and behead all the Protestants in this region. Frenchmen who are Catholics I will spare--every heretic shall die!” Thus did he announce his mission to be one of blood with unblushing boldness. Melendez now returned to this place, to prepare for, and put it effectually into execution. Here his forces were collected, his plans laid: and from the newly laid foundations of this--the first town within the United States of America--even while they were wet in the holy water of the Mother Church--armed with the blessing of her priesthood, Melendez led a chosen band to the execution of his bloody mission. He marched through the wilderness with eight days’ provisions, and reached the forests and hammocks on the banks of the St. John’s near to Fort Caroline, where the Protestant colony reposed, unconscious of the evil impending. He now prepared himself and his followers for their work of human butchery, “by kneeling and praying for success.”[4] All was silence, save the calm voice of nature, whose soft whispers were wafted through the branches of the gray old trees and sturdy oaks, that stood round about and cast their protecting shade over the heads of a peaceful colony. These, perhaps, sighed at what they saw, and against which they could not warn. From prayers Melendez rose up to the slaughter. The blood of the mother and of her innocent babe mingled in the same pool! Helpless woman and decrepit age bowed together in death and violence! The citizen and the soldier met the same fate! A scene of carnage and of cruelty was enacted, unparalleled in the annals of human butchery! Some eighty-six persons, whose only crime was their Calvinism, fell victims to the barbarity of a savage Popish bigot. But few escaped. Of these, such as were afterwards taken were hung on the limbs of the next tree, where their bodies became food to hungry birds of prey; and to mark the spot, Melendez erected a monument of stone, on which he engraved, in extenuation of his crime, “Not as Frenchmen, but as heretics.”[5] Having executed his avowed mission of death to Protestantism in Florida, he retraced his steps to the place where he had laid out his new town, the work of the erection of which he was prepared to complete on the foundations he had now consecrated with hands reeking in Protestant blood, as well as with holy water. Here “Melendez was hailed as a conqueror by a procession of priests and people who went out to meet him.” “Te Deum was solemnly chanted!”[6]