[ansel12]

After Menéndez had signed a contract with the Crown for his colonization effort, the Spanish discovered that Huguenots — Protestant settlers from France — had already set up a settlement on the Florida coast. In 1565 Menéndez, arriving with colonists and soldiers from Spain, oversaw an attack on the French settlement and coolly ordered the slaying of most of the male colonists, in part out of anti-Protestant zealotry.

Philip II, the Spanish monarch who also ruled the powerful Hapsburg empire, later voiced approval of the executions less because the Huguenots were colonial rivals than because they were, in Philip’s eyes, religious heretics.

http://www.learnnc.org/lp/editions/nchist-twoworlds/1680

[hellbender]

Then there was the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, when as many as 30,000 Huguenots (Protestants) were slaughtered in France. Many of the surviving Protestants fled with only the clothes on their backs, and they or their descendants settled in England, Prussia, South Africa, and the American colonies. In each of those places, they contributed powerfully to the economy and culture. For instance, the founder of Du Pond was a Huguenot.

[muawiyah]

Your argument neglects the fact that France and Spain had several treaties that effectively allowed French settlers to settle on Spanish lands in America and do business directly with Spanish traders and merchants.

Mendoza violated the treaties when he ran off the Huguenots and murdered all the women and children. He particularly liked to kill children.