Dominique de Gourgues

He is best known for leading a privateer attack against Spanish Florida in 1568, in retaliation for the no quarter given after the capture of Fort Caroline and the subsequent Massacre at Matanzas Inlet.

After his return to France, he made a voyage to Brazil and the West Indies, and then entered the service of Duke de Guise, and was employed against the Huguenots.

[1] Philip II of Spain was a Roman Catholic king who hated Protestants, including the French Huguenots, and considered them heretics.

Therefore, in 1565, troops under Pedro Menéndez de Avilés notoriously massacred hundreds of Frenchmen around Fort Caroline in what is now Jacksonville, Florida.

[1] 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.