This catastrophe has been quoted with unlimited admiration, and the martyrs have received all due posthumous honour; but if we look at the circumstances from any point of view save that of a fanatic, our admiration must be considerably qualified. Azevedo and his companions were doubtless brave men; but they had been educated and sent out from their country with the express purpose of converting the heathen; and it was surely not their duty in any sense wantonly and recklessly to go out of their way to seek premature death. If the crown of martyrdom was so dear to them--if, in the language of certain writers, they were swallowed up by other-worldliness--the prize might surely have been gained more honourably amongst the savages of _Brazil_ than at the hands of French corsairs. Of the eight-and-thirty foolhardy men whose blood so uselessly stained the waters of _Palma_, one might have proved a second Nobrega. To an unprejudiced person it seems that, so far from acting for “_the greater glory of God_” by provoking wholesale massacre, they were deliberately doing the contrary, since they were thus cutting themselves off from a sphere of vast usefulness. Nor can we greatly blame the commander of the French squadron for his conduct on the occasion. It was but one scene in a fierce religious war, in which the priests, not the Huguenots, were the aggressors. Vasconcellos set sail with the remainder of his fleet. When, after a long and miserable voyage, he sighted the coast of _Brazil_, his vessels were driven far to the north and were dispersed. At length his followers were so reduced in numbers that one vessel might contain them all; yet not even this one vessel was destined to reach its destination in safety. It was attacked by a French squadron, and, after a hopeless resistance, the governor fell; whilst fourteen remaining Jesuits shared the fate of the martyrs of _Palma_. Of sixty-nine Jesuit missionaries who had set out with Azevedo, one alone reached _Brazil_. CHAPTER X. _PERU; SUPREMACY OF GONZALO PIZARRO._ 1542-1545. [Sidenote: 1541.]