page_title: Dominique de Gourgues
section_title: Revenge
hierarchical_section_title: Dominique de Gourgues / Revenge
caption_attribution_description: English: Floride_francaise_Pierre_du_Val.
context_page_description: Dominique de Gourgues was a French nobleman and soldier. He is best known for leading an attack against Spanish Florida in 1568, in response to the destruction of the French Fort Caroline. He was a captain in King Charles IX's army.
context_section_description: Embittered by the cruelty and indignity that he had suffered from the Spaniards, de Gourgue determined to avenge the murder of his Protestant compatriots, though he was himself a Catholic. He sold everything he had and borrowed money from his brother Antoine to recruit a crew and charter three ships. He sailed to Cuba with two hundred men, never telling them the goal of their trip. Once in Cuba he made his intentions clear, and his crew approved his choice of revenge. Gourgue then moved to attack Spanish-held Fort Caroline, which they had renamed as Fort San Mateo, enlisting the aid of Fort Caroline's old allies, the Saturiwa and Tacatacuru clans of the Timucua Indians. The fort soon surrendered to de Gourgue's forces. The French and Indians killed the Spanish prisoners in retribution for Fort Caroline and other massacres of Protestants. They hanged the prisoners with the inscription, "Not as Spaniards but as murderers."
caption: Floride française ("French Florida"), by Pierre du Val, 17th century.
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