Pedro Menéndez de Avilés

From Hispanopedia
Pedro Menéndez de Avilés
4th Adelantado of La Florida
In office
1565 – September 16, 1574
Preceded byHernando de Soto
Succeeded byHernando de Miranda
1st Governor of Florida
(and from 1567, Governor of Cuba)
In office
1565 – September 16, 1574
MonarchPhilip II of Spain
Preceded byNew office
Succeeded byDiego de Velasco
9th Governor of Cuba
(and of Florida)
In office
November 24, 1567 – September 16, 1574
Preceded byFrancisco García Osorio
Succeeded byTwo in succession:
Personal details
BornFebruary 15, 1519
Avilés, Principality of Asturias
Crown of Spain
DiedSeptember 16, 1574 (aged 55)
Santander, Old Castile
Crown of Spain
ProfessionAdmiral and general of the Spanish Navy of the Carrera de Indias, explorer, conquistador and colonial ruler
Known for
Captain of the Armada de Indias and Commander of the Order of Santiago

Pedro Menéndez de Avilés (Avilés, February 15, 1519 – Santander, September 16, 1574) was a Spanish military officer and sailor and a ruler in the Indies. In 1565 he reconquered La Florida, after destroying Fort Caroline and other settlements of French Huguenots who were occupying it, and founded the city of St. Augustine. He governed that province with the title of Perpetual Adelantado Mayor, and he was also Governor of the island of Cuba between 1567 and 1574.

Biography

Family origin and early years

Birthplace of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés according to local tradition

Pedro Menéndez de Avilés was born on February 15, 1519, in the port town of Avilés in the Principality of Asturias, which was part of the Spanish Crown,[1] into a hidalgo family.

He was the younger son of Juan Alfonso Sánchez de Avilés, of the same origin, and of María Alonso de Arango, a native of the municipality of Pravia.

His father died when he was eight years old, and his mother remarried. Twenty children were born of the two marriages, so Pedro did not inherit any fortune.

His older brothers Álvar Sánchez de Avilés and Bartolomé Menéndez de Avilés were also sailors.

Pursuit of corsairs in the Cantabrian Sea

At the age of eight or nine he ran away from home as a result of his mother's second marriage. From then on he devoted himself to trades connected with the sea, and at fourteen he must have enlisted for the first time as a cabin boy on a warship in some port of the Cantabrian Sea. Thus began his military career, devoted to pursuing the pirates and corsairs who operated in that sea against the Spanish fleet. At nineteen, after selling the share of the inheritance that had fallen to him on his father's death, he fitted out a modest patache with fifty men drawn from relatives, friends and acquaintances, and began working on his own account against the enemies of Spain's interests, in adventurous privateering operations[2] and without letters of marque, and with it he captured two French ships.

After several years of naval adventures he married Ana María de Solís, to whom he had been betrothed by contract since childhood, but married life did not keep him at home.

In 1544 a French squadron commanded by Jean Alphonse de Saintonge captured 18 Biscayan ships at Finisterre. Menéndez de Avilés pursued him to the port of La Rochelle, where he had taken refuge, recovered five of the ships, boarded the flagship and personally killed Jean Alphonse de Saintonge.[3]

Despite the French forces in the port of La Rochelle, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés managed to get out of there with his prizes. The Emperor Charles V authorized him to continue his actions against the French, so that the Asturian sailor was chiefly responsible for putting an end to the French raids along the Galician and Asturian coasts. Such was his fame that in 1554 the Emperor commissioned him to go to Flanders.

Honors and voyages to America

He was a Knight of the Order of Santiago and Commander of that Order in Santa Cruz de la Zarza (Toledo, Spain).[4]

In 1549 he was charged with pursuing the French corsair Juan Alfonso Portugués, whom he captured in the port of La Rochelle.

In 1552 he began his voyages to America as Captain of various ships. That same year he was also captured by pirates and freed upon payment of a ransom. Two years later, when he was 35 years old, he was appointed Captain General of the Fleet of the Indies by Philip II, a post he came to hold on nine occasions from 1555 to 1574. He was 46 years old when he attained the highest rank within the Spanish Navy.

In 1554 he commanded the fleet that King Philip II sent to England when he was about to marry Queen Mary.

In 1555 he commanded the fleet of the Viceroy of Peru Andrés Hurtado de Mendoza, which sailed from Sanlúcar de Barrameda on October 15 with seventy-eight merchant ships, two navy galleons and three large caravels. That same year, without consulting the officials of the Casa de Contratación of Seville, the King entrusted him with the mission of transporting the treasures of the Indies, coveted by the pirates who roamed the Caribbean Sea, and with only six ships to protect the fleet, made up of more than seventy merchantmen, he managed to reach Seville successfully. From then on the officials of the Casa de Contratación regarded him as their enemy.

In 1556 he was appointed Captain General of the Armada de Indias, and the following year he took part in the Battle of St. Quentin. In 1561 he personally undertook to design and fit out a flotilla of "galley-like galleons" similar to the galleasses built by Álvaro de Bazán the Elder, twelve in number and of 230 tons each, in order to escort the Fleet of the Indies against enemy pirates and corsairs. Although the ships did not prove very effective when it came to using their oars, their performance in combat was otherwise excellent and earned them the nickname of the Twelve Apostles, their effectiveness improving even further when combined with two large galleasses of 800 tons built by the prestigious Cantabrian Cristóbal de Barros. His ship design came to be known as the "galeoncete".[5]

Also in 1561 he led a large fleet of galleons carrying precious metals from Mexico to Spain. When he reached his destination in Spain, he asked permission to go back in search of a lost ship, but permission was denied. This was the ship on which his son and other relatives and friends were traveling. He was then arrested by the Casa de Contratación of Seville together with his brother, the sailor Bartolomé Menéndez de Avilés, who had accompanied him on that voyage.

He was imprisoned for twenty months for unclear reasons, connected with the audits the Casa de Contratación always carried out on the merchandise arriving in Spain, until he managed to get out by appealing to the King, who had him tried, the brothers being sentenced to pay a meager fine.

Monument to Pedro Menéndez de Avilés in his hometown.

Once out of prison he obtained permission to search for his son, whom he believed shipwrecked in Florida, on the condition that he should explore and colonize La Florida as Adelantado of King Philip II, a title recognized by the Monarch in 1565. For that purpose he financed an expedition out of his own pocket. When he was about to set sail, orders arrived that he was to eliminate all the Protestant intruders found there or in any corner of the Indies.

Statue of Pedro Menéndez de Avilés in St. Augustine, Florida, in front of the Lightner Museum.

This was because on June 22, 1564, a French expedition made up of three ships and 300 settlers, mainly Huguenots, led by René Goulaine de Laudonnière, had founded Fort Caroline (later reinforced by 800 settlers, sailors and soldiers and 7 ships of Jean Ribault who arrived the following year), from where various attacks were launched against Spanish colonies and ships, which led King Philip II to order a punitive expedition. The French quickly allied themselves with the caciques Saturiwa and Utina of the Timucua, supporting them with men in their struggles against their rivals, especially the Potano.[6]

Menéndez failed in his attempt to attack the French fort by sea with four ships and withdrew to his camp, the future City of St. Augustine, which prompted a counterattack by Ribault with five ships and 500 men, which were sunk by a hurricane. With the enemy fleet destroyed, he decided to attack the fort by marching overland so as to avoid losing his ships to the storms. During the three-day march he lost a hundred of his five hundred soldiers to disease and desertion. It is also important to acknowledge the alliance between Pedro de Menéndez and the Timucua of the cacique Seloy,[7] who served as a key element in providing resources, men and his own settlement as a base of operations.[8]

He reached Fort Caroline on August 28, the feast of Saint Augustine. The French colony had barely 150 inhabitants, but only 20 were men able to fight, and they were led by Laudonnière, who was ill. In a surprise assault they took the fort, and the French survivors had to escape on the ships still remaining in the harbor. He quickly returned to St. Augustine and in early October massacred the survivors of the shipwreck of the French fleet. The place came to be known as the Bay of Matanzas. Subsequently, on September 8, 1565, he founded at that place the Fort of St. Augustine, which would become the oldest still-existing city of the United States.

Father Francisco López de Mendoza Grajales, chaplain of the expedition, celebrated the first Mass of Thanksgiving at the site[9] (mentioned as a forerunner of today's Thanksgiving[10]). In turn, on the outskirts of the Fort of St. Augustine, the Mission Nombre de Dios and an Indian village of the same name were founded,[11] where the Timucua allied with the Spaniards lived. Over time this mission would also serve the nearby villages of the Mocama people,[12] becoming the center of an important chiefdom at the end of the 16th century and in the 17th century.[13]

In May 1566, owing to the constant attacks by the Timucua allied with the Huguenots, Menéndez decided to move the Spanish settlement to a more defensible position, a barrier island at the northern end of the Bay of Matanzas, where a wooden fort was built. In 1572 the settlement was moved back to the mainland, just south of the present-day town plaza. Later, when Pedro Menéndez was already Governor of Cuba, he explored the surrounding area further and built additional fortifications.[14]

After these events he sailed the Caribbean in pursuit of pirates and of Jacques, Ribault's eldest son. He also married, in an indigenous ceremony, the sister of the Calusa cacique Carlos,[15] who was baptized as Antonia. While it is true that Pedro Menéndez de Avilés did not favor the idea of having a double marriage, since from a very young age he had been married to the Spaniard María de Solís Cascos, with whom he had several children,[16] he accepted the union for the sake of maintaining diplomacy.[13] Doña Antonia was taken to Havana to be instructed in the Catholic religion, but because she was not treated with the dignity of the conquistador's wife, a conflict arose between the two, and Menéndez finally returned her to her brother in Florida. King Carlos planned to marry Antonia again to another newly evangelized Indian called "Don Pedro", who had been named his heir, but Menéndez decided to reclaim Doña Antonia in order to send her back to Havana. This decision unleashed the fury of the Calusa cacique, who threatened to "kill many Spaniards" unless his sister was returned to him. Tensions between the Calusa and Pedro de Menéndez grew when an unfavorable peace treaty was established between the Tocobaga and the Calusa,[13] for which reason he left the capital of the chiefdom (renamed San Antón de Carlos) and returned to St. Augustine, leaving only a garrison of soldiers and some Jesuit missionaries.[17] However, he was unable to find his own son, who had disappeared long before, and he returned to Spain in 1567.

Governor of Cuba

In 1568 he asked the King for help, since the Governor of Cuba had denied it to him, in order to aid the settlers of La Florida. The King not only heeded his request but appointed him Governor of Cuba. At the same time, tensions between the Spanish garrison and the Calusa reached a climax at which the former decided to kill the cacique Carlos,[13] his successor Felipe and several nobles before abandoning their fort and mission in 1569,[17] accompanied by Doña Antonia, who returned to Havana.[13] Once he had taken possession of his office, he went back to La Florida to relieve the Spaniards there, who had been left in poor condition.

As Governor of Cuba, he ordered its first map to be drawn up. In addition, he sailed along the coasts of the present-day states of Florida, Georgia, South Carolina and the Channel of the Bahamas, capturing and eliminating the corsairs of that area.

Death

He died on his return to Spain in Santander, when the King had entrusted him with organizing a fleet to attack England and support Luis de Requesens in Flanders. The fleet system that Spain designed to trade with America from 1561 onward was inspired by a commemorative memorial of his, for which reason he is considered the father of that system of navigation.[18] His legacy, in the form of a will, is held in the Provincial Historical Archive of Cádiz.[19]

See also

Notes and references

  1. ↑ So Barrientos states: "He was born in the town of Avilés, on Thursday, February 15, in the year 1519." But the fact is not well documented, since his baptismal record has not been found. Francisco Mellén (op. cit. 2011, p. 2) points out that "although his origin is supported by dozens of witnesses, both in the examinations of proof for the Order of Santiago and in various lawsuits that cite him as a native and resident of Avilés, there remains room to think that he may have been born not necessarily in the town of Avilés but in its municipality. As for the year of his birth, 1519, several documents of the House of Canalejas record it as 1523, with the aggravating factor that they in turn state that he died in 1574 at the age of 55, which implies an error by the writer, since the result of a simple subtraction of 55 from 1574 is 1519, as Barrientos says."
  2. ↑ "Catálogo general de publicaciones oficiales" (in español).
  3. ↑ "Menéndez de Avilés, fundador de San Agustín de la Florida". RTVE (in español). 10/09/2023. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  4. ↑ "Biografía de Pedro Menéndez de Avilés" (in español). Archived from the original on March 13, 2007. Retrieved September 26, 2008.
  5. ↑ Rodríguez González (2017), p. 307-308.
  6. ↑ The Timucua. Jerald T. Milanich, pp. 85-86, Wiley-Blackwell, 1999.
  7. ↑ "First Contacts". St. Augustine: America's Ancient City. Retrieved 2024-11-28.
  8. ↑ "The Timucua and the Village of Seloy". Old Town Trolley Tours. Retrieved 2024-11-28.
  9. ↑ Augustine, Diocese of St (2015-11-06). "Mission Nombre de Dios Museum Opens New Exhibit". Diocese of St. Augustine. Retrieved 2024-11-28.
  10. ↑ "El Primer Día de Gracias se Celebró en Florida, 56 Años antes de Plymouth Rock". www.visitflorida.com (in español). 2016-12-21. Retrieved 2024-11-28.
  11. ↑ "La Florida". www.accioncultural.es (in español). Retrieved 2024-11-28.
  12. ↑ Herreros, Mauricio (2005). Spiritual Florida: a guide to retreat centers and religious sites in Florida and nearby (1st ed ed.). Pineapple Press. ISBN 978-1-56164-331-8. Retrieved 2024-11-28. {{cite book}}: |edition= has extra text (help)
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 Augustine, Mailing Address: 8635 A1A South Saint. "Women - Fort Matanzas National Monument (U.S. National Park Service)". www.nps.gov. Retrieved 2024-11-28.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  14. ↑ Deagan, Kathleen (2008). Historical Archaeology at the Fountain of Youth Park Site (PDF). Gainesville: Florida Museum of Natural History & University of Florida. p. 427. Retrieved 28-11-2024. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |access-date= (help)
  15. ↑ "La Florida". www.accioncultural.es (in español). Retrieved 2024-11-28.
  16. ↑ "Las mujeres de Pedro Menéndez de Avilés". El Comercio: Diario de Asturias (in español). 2019-02-16. Retrieved 2024-11-28.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Macmahon, Darcie A.; Marquardt, William H. (2004). The Calusa and Their Legacy: South Florida People and Their Environments (Native Peoples, Cultures, and Places of the Southeastern United States). Gainesville, EUA: University Press of Florida. ISBN 978-0813027739.
  18. ↑ Mira Caballos, Esteban: "Pedro Menéndez de Avilés diseñó el sistema de flotas de la Carrera de Indias" Revista de Historia Naval N. 94. Madrid, 2006, pp. 7-24 (in Spanish)
  19. ↑ "Portal de Archivos de Andalucía". www.juntadeandalucia.es (in español). Retrieved 2022-02-20.
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