Chapter 3: The Florentine French. c1520–1565.

By the early 16th century, Spain's military, political, and economic primacy overshadowed the old rivalries of Western Europe. In France, King Francis I (1515-1547), labored the length of his reign to restore prestige to his eclipsed kingdom. Moving away from Gothic architecture and medieval art, he brought to France some of the greatest Renaissance talents from Florence, including Benvenuto Cellini and Leonardo da Vinci. From da Vinci, King Francis bought the Mona Lisa for 4,000 gold ducats – to hang on the wall of his bathroom at Fontainebleau.

In 1522, two ships sent by the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes, laden with the treasures of the Emperor Montezuma and intended for Emperor Charles V, were captured by the French corsair Jean Fleury and joyfully received by King Francis. The wondrous Aztec treasures aroused the French king's interest in the Indies and compelled him to challenge the Spanish and Portuguese monopoly over the western Atlantic. King Francis encouraged Fleury, also spelled Florin – reflecting his family's Florentine heritage – to continue his attacks on Spanish and Portuguese shipping. The king also launched a new expedition to the Indies and placed it under the command of one of Fleury's Florentine-born colleagues based in Dieppe: Giovanni da Verrazzano.

Engaged to explore the Indies and seek a viable northern route to Asia, Verrazzano embarked in 1523 with four ships. Delayed by storm damage that grounded three of his ships, he finally crossed the Atlantic in 1524 with just his flagship, La Dauphine. Hoping to find a passage north of Florida that led to the Pacific, the Florentine mariner found instead land. Coasting north for a thousand miles, he found an unyielding shoreline twinkling with Indian fires. Around the fortieth parallel, Verrazzano guided La Dauphine into a bay that posterity would make the busiest on the continent. He called the place 'Angouleme' for King Francis, formerly titled Count of Angouleme.

In the name of King Francis, more so than for France, Verrazzano claimed the entire land under the pseudo-Latin name of 'Francesca.' But Girolamo da Verrazzano, who accompanied his brother on the voyage, wrote another name on his map: thinking more of France than of King Francis, he scrawled the Latin name of 'Nova Gallia' – New France. In his report to the king, Giovanni da Verrazzano provided yet another name for the vast northern region. He likened the idyllic coastal region, verdant, fruitful, and abounding in trees, to a region of Greece, feted in mythology as a pastoral refuge: Arcadia or ACADIA. This name was to share a long history with French colonialism, outliving the names of Francesca and New France.

Back in France, Verrazzano waited while King Francis waged a bitter war with Emperor Charles V for hegemony in Western Europe. Defeated at the 1525 battle of Pavia, Francis remained Charles' prisoner for 13 months. To secure his release, Francis paid a king's ransom and offered as hostages his two young sons: Prince Francis and Prince Henry. Forced also to renounce various territorial claims in Europe, King Francis turned once more to the Americas – sponsoring two more Verrazzano voyages in 1527 and 1528. The Florentine captain never returned from the latter. Contemporary reports claimed he was killed by Caribbean islanders and cannibalized before the eyes of his brother and crewmen. The Spanish, who indeed did capture and hang Jean Fleury as a pirate in 1527, later claimed to have inflicted the same fate upon Verrazzano. In overhauling the House of Trade of the Indies, the Spanish also dismissed the Florentine Pilot Major, Giovanni Vespucci – the nephew of Amerigo Vespucci. Suspected of spying for the Medicis of Florence, Giovanni also vanished from history in 1527.

Hostilities between the Spanish and French abated in 1530 after Francis agreed to marry the sister of Charles V, Eleanor of Austria. After four years in Spanish captivity, Princes Francis and Henry were finally returned to France. Groomed to succeed his father, the teenage Francis would later collapse and die after a game of real tennis – leaving Henry heir to the throne.

In 1534, King Francis gave command of a new Atlantic expedition to an experienced French mariner – a veteran of Verrazzano's voyages – Jacques Cartier. Officially, Cartier was to explore new lands in the North Atlantic wherever great quantities of gold might be acquired; unofficially, he was to continue seeking a strait leading to Asia. Making landfall near Newfoundland, Cartier encountered a medley of capes and islands. The lands, waters, and skies abounded in wildlife; Cartier watched in awe as an 'infinite number' of passenger pigeons flew overhead in flocks so large they blacked out the sun. Alas, for Cartier, the natives could not cloak him in gold. Local Indians had only threadbare possessions, and for simple European articles they stripped themselves naked to barter everything they owned. From among the many Indians encountered on the expedition, Cartier seized two who had travelled east from the interior. Taken to France, they were trained as interpreters and quizzed about their native land: of their own home, the two men spoke of 'Kanata.' Cartier understood the term to describe a grand kingdom whose name he transcribed as 'Canada.' 1

Returning in the summer of 1535, with the two Indians serving as guides, Cartier entered a great gulf; around August 10, he named the gulf for the feast day of ST LAWRENCE. 2 This gulf was in fact the world's largest estuary, stocked with fish, walruses, and beluga whales. Continuing westward, Cartier found the gulf narrowing until it revealed the mouth of a great waterway coursing from deep within the continent. 3 Without a clear cut off point between the gulf and the river, the name of St Lawrence spread further west, along another 750 miles of river.

Pushing upriver, deep into the continent, Cartier surveyed a landmass much vaster than he had imagined, with boundless forests of oak, ash, beech, and maple. After cutting down one maple, the Frenchmen sampled the sweet syrup with relish. Reaching his destination, Cartier was chagrined to discover that the 'Kingdom of Canada' was in fact a small, fortified village. He then gave credence to new native tales that farther up the river's course lay a large kingdom, glittering in gold. Upriver, however, he was again disappointed to find another village of fifty communal huts. Cartier climbed to the top of a hill on a broad riverine island and surveyed the surrounding land. 4 He saw no signs of wealth or grand civilization anywhere. He saw in the St Lawrence River a set of impassible rapids and was warned of many more along its course; as a navigable route to the Orient, the river now had to be excluded. Cartier found one enduring consolation: gazing out to the distant horizons, he saw 'the finest land it is possible to see, being arable, level, and flat.' The land might someday make a prosperous French colony.

In 1541, Cartier returned once more to Canada, spearheading a large colonial expedition. Still blinded by glittering visions, Cartier thought he had finally found his fortune. Loading his ships with what he believed to be gold and diamonds, he abandoned the prospective colony and set sail for France. His triumphant return proved illusory: his precious metal was fool's gold, and his gemstones were as false as Canadian diamonds. French interest in the New World waned. However, the threat posed by French corsairs finally compelled the Portuguese crown to order the occupation of Brazil. 5

Upon the death of Francis I, the French crown passed to his son, King Henry II (1547-1559). By his marriage to a Florentine princess, Catherine de Medici, King Henry heightened the influence of Florence over France. Among many innovations that Catherine and her entourage introduced to the French court was an item of cutlery considered more dignified than the common spoon – the fork. The pronged utensil quickly spread to royal palaces across western Europe and thence to dining tables around the world.

Henry's reign was consumed with the suppression of Huguenots – French Protestants dedicated to the dangerous theology of John Calvin. The most influential church reformer since Martin Luther, Calvin was now living in exile in Geneva, but Calvinists continued to threaten the Catholic establishment in France. King Henry responded with blood and fire: vocal heretics had their tongues cut out; more ardent Huguenots were burnt at the stake.

In 1555 Gaspar de Coligny, Admiral of France, prevailed upon Henry to sanction a French colony in Brazil. But the budding French colony took on a different complexion in 1558 after Coligny converted to the Protestant ethos, began corresponding with Calvin, and then encouraged Huguenot colonists to settle in Brazil. 6 The Portuguese soon stormed the French fort and scattered both Catholics and Huguenots. 7

With civil and foreign wars imminent, Catherine feared for the future of the royal family. Seeking reassurance, she consulted clairvoyants and seers – including King Henry's personal physician, Nostradamus. The old prophet saw apocalyptic visions for the church and state. But one prophecy haunted Catherine's conscience: her husband was doomed to a premature death, and three of her sons would succeed him on the throne in swift succession; but, said the prophecy, she was destined to outlive them all. After Henry II died in a jousting accident in 1559, Catherine watched over the coronation of her sickly, eldest son Francis II (1559-1560). Francis' marriage to Mary, Queen of Scots, promised a strategic alliance between the Valois and Tudor dynasties and a possible union between France, Scotland, and perhaps even England. But the premature death of Francis II, which began with an earache, sabotaged these and other dynastic hopes. Catherine now feared the imminent collapse of the Valois dynasty.

Catherine's 10-year-old son now assumed the throne as Charles IX (1560-1574); disfigured by a birthmark between his upper lip and nose – and prone to childish tantrums throughout his reign – he was known to critics as 'Le Roi Morveux,' The Snotty King. Catherine suffered increasingly painful migraines until she sampled some tobacco sent to her by the French ambassador to Portugal, Jean Nicot. Crediting Nicot's tobacco with the alleviation of her headaches, and a wide range of other maladies, she encouraged its use at home and at court, popularizing the 'Queen's Herb,' later called nicotine.

As Queen-Regent during the boy-king's minority, Catherine contended with the growing threat of the Huguenots. To preserve the peace, the devout Catholic Catherine granted limited rights to Protestant worshippers. She also conceded to Coligny the right to establish a Huguenot colony in North America. In 1562, as the Wars of Religion unleashed carnage across France, Coligny entrusted Huguenot Jean Ribault to lead the first flock of religious refugees ever seen in North America. They explored the littoral extending north from Florida – a long expanse of marsh, lush with myrtle and palmetto trees – and entered a deep sound on the east coast of the mainland. Paying homage to the Catholic king, Huguenot colonists fortified a site as 'Charlesfort.' Paying further dues to the tolerant monarchy, Ribault christened the surrounding sound PORT ROYAL.

Ribault re-embarked for France to retrieve more supplies but was waylaid by warring factions of Catholics and Huguenots. After escaping to England, he was accused of espionage and imprisoned in the Tower of London. Tired of waiting for Ribault's return, suffering colonists killed their commander and set their own course for a return to France. Crossing the Atlantic in an open boat, many succumbed to the elements; others succumbed to cannibalism.

Ribault's deputy, Rene Goulaine de Laudonniere, returned with a new crop of Huguenot colonists in 1564. Disembarking south of the abandoned Charlesfort, Laudonniere dedicated another stockade to the teenage king; from the Latin name of Charles – Carolus – he called it 'Fort Caroline.' Freeing himself from European intrigues, Ribault returned to Florida the following year, leading a small fleet into Fort Caroline. Once more honoring King Charles, Ribault referred to the surrounding region as 'Carolana.' By the late 16th century, the vast region north of Florida appeared on maps as 'Carolana.' By the early 17th century, it was more commonly spelled CAROLINA.

As the Wars of Religion consumed France, the neglected Huguenot colony in Carolana faced an ominous fate. Coligny's focus remained fixed on France. Leading Huguenot armies to the outskirts of Paris, he prevailed upon King Charles – still under the influence of his mother Catherine – to grant more concessions to the Huguenots. But after years of conciliation, Charles and Catherine turned decisively on Coligny and plotted his assassination. Catholic mercenaries finally cornered him in his Paris residence on August 24, 1572, where they slashed and stabbed him, pushed his body out the window, and let the mobs below behead and mutilate him. Coligny's death signaled the start of the St Bartholomew's Day Massacre, in which French Catholics massacred some 20,000 Huguenots. But the Carolana colonists would not live long enough to suffer the spite of their own eponymous king. Reports of the heretical French colony had already reached Catholic Spain, and the new Spanish king resolved to wipe the French from the map.