Pedro Menéndez de Avilés

Pedro Menéndez de Avilés

Pedro Menéndez de Avilés (* 1519 in Avilés , Asturias , † September 17, 1574 in Santander ) was a Spanish admiral , explorer and colonial administrator. He founded St. Augustine, the oldest city still in existence in the United States, and was also the first governor of the Spanish colony of La Florida .

Life

Menéndez came from a noble family and distinguished himself in the service of Emperor Charles V in the fight against pirates in the Atlantic . He accompanied the later Spanish King Philip II to England in 1554 . In 1557 he carried the troops that won the Spanish victory at St. Quentin on his ships.

As commander of the Spanish silver fleet , together with Álvaro de Bazán, he developed the system of the Carrera de las Indias, according to which the merchant ships that brought the yields of the Spanish colonies from the Caribbean and Mexico to Spain are carried by several galleons - a type of ship newly developed for this purpose. were protected.

After his son was shipwrecked on an expedition to Florida in 1561 and has since been considered missing, he developed his own plans to explore this region. The French Huguenots built the Fort Caroline settlement there in 1564 . Spain, however, sought for its part to control Florida and commissioned Menéndez to take the peninsula and settle it as Adelantado . At the end of August 1565, Menéndez left for Florida. During the same period, Jean Ribault arrived there with a French fleet to protect the settlement from the Spanish. A first meeting of the two fleets ended with the withdrawal of the Spaniards. Menéndez sailed south in search of a suitable location for an outpost. On August 28, the feast day of Augustine of Hippo , the crew discovered a seemingly favorable spot and went ashore a few days later. Menéndez founded the settlement of St. Augustine here , which he named after the saint. Ribault had meanwhile pursued the Spaniards, but a heavy storm lasting several days held up the French fleet for days and decimated them considerably. Menéndez used this to his advantage and began a land attack on the largely defenseless Fort Caroline. After a brief siege, the settlement was taken. Except for a few women and children, all residents suspected of Protestantism were killed. Shortly afterwards Ribault could also be caught; he was taken to St. Augustine and executed there.

In 1572 he leads a punitive action against the Powhatan in Chesapeake Bay. Over 20 Indians were killed and some were then hanged in the rigging. The massacre is part of a series of escalating conflicts in the prehistory of the Powhatan Wars .

Shortly before his death, he was called to Spain to take command of the Spanish Armada .

Web links

Commons : Pedro Menéndez de Avilés  - Collection of images, videos and audio files