Laudonnière’s account deserves to stand alone. It towers above the work of Ribault, La Challuex, and Le Moyne. It earned for him a great place as a historian and geographer.
-Bennett, Three Voyages, xix
“What pleasure it would give us to find any indication of Charles’s Fort on the Carolina coast, where a French Protestant colony attempted a settlement, a full century before the English; or the stone pillar with the arms of France , erected, on that occasion, on the river of May.”
– Abiel Holmes, D.D. from an address delivered before the American Antiquarian Society in King’s Chapel, Boston on their second anniversary, October 24, 1814
The Psalm Ribault recited before the dagger was thrust into his body was the 132nd Psalm which begins, “Lord, remember David”; but Ribault began it, according to an eyewitness, with “ Lord, remember me.”
Bennett, Laudonnière and Fort Caroline, p. 42-43.
“Shall I, Laudonnière, pass away untouched by glory?
Florida, of the region which now comprise America,
Is not the least of those subject to the glory of France.
If a treacherous band of friends had not disgracefully betrayed
This person to the enemy (a person who nevertheless has escaped from all injuries, from all hands) what things,
What manner of things, and how many things I might have accomplished!
-From an inscription circling a portrait of Laudonnière in Effigies Regum Ac Principum by Crispin van de Passe. See Bennett, Laudonnière and Fort Caroline, p. 53
Furthermore, the Fort Caroline settlement set a new pattern for religious freedom in America – a pattern which was to be imitated until religious liberty and personal freedom become the great trademark for the United States.
-Bennett, Laudonnière and Fort Caroline, 53
It is very difficult, almost impossible, in commanding a body of men brought together from various nations, such as we have in our wars, yes, I say it is impossible to evade having among them people of bad disposition, who are difficult to manage and who easily conceive hatred against the commander because of corrections made for the purpose of military discipline. It takes but a small occasion founded on a slight pretext for them to put into the ears of superiors and complaint they have contrived against those whose execution of injustice is painful to them.
-Renè Laudonnière, see Bennett, Three Voyages, 152
Concerning the great storm that shipwrecked Jean Ribault and led to his death and the demise of Fort Caroline…
I spoke first and cautioned against the consequences of such a project, telling him, among other things, about the dangerous winds that rise up on this coast, that if he be driven on shore it would be very difficult to get to sea again, and in the meantime those who stayed at the fort would be in danger and peril.
-Renè Laudonnière, see Bennett, Three Voyages, 159.
On Sept. 10, the day they departed, such a great storm came up, with such heavy winds, that the Indians assured me that it was the worst that had ever come to the coast.
-Renè Laudonnière, see Bennett, Three Voyages, 161.