huh, what a surprise, protestants siding with evil against the mother church.....and they lost...that tells you who God sided with....and always will.....

huh, what a surprise, protestants siding with evil against the mother church.....and they lost...that tells you who God sided with....and always will.....

I am always amused by ignorant Catholics that have the temerity to proclaim the "righteousness" of their religion and the evilness or lack of correctness of Protestants and their adherence to the Bible over tradition. Here are some facts that dispute your incorrect analysis of Protestantism and Catholicism.

This is only a drop in the bucket where the sinful misdeeds of Catholics against those who disagree with them are concerned.

The National Park Service provides these details of the conflict:

Spanish treasure fleets sailed along the Florida coast on their way to Spain and Fort Caroline provided a perfect base for French attacks. Worst of all to the devoutly Catholic Philip, the settlers were Huguenots (French Protestants). Despite Philip's protests, Jean Ribault sailed from France in May 1565 with more than 600 soldiers and settlers to resupply Fort Caroline.
General Pedro Menéndez de Aviles, charged with removing the French, also sailed in May, arriving at the Saint Johns River in August with some 800 people, shortly after Ribault. The Spanish came ashore on September 8 and established and named their new village "St. Augustine" because land had first been sighted on the Feast Day of St. Augustine, August 28.
Jean Ribault sailed on September 10 to attack and wipe out the Spanish at St. Augustine, but a hurricane carried his ships far to the south, wrecking them on the Florida coast.
At the same time, Menéndez led a force to attack Fort Caroline. Since most of the soldiers were absent, Menéndez was easily able to capture the French settlement, killing most of the men in the battle. He then learned from Timucuan Indians that a group of white men were on the beach a few miles south of St. Augustine. He marched with 70 soldiers to where an inlet had blocked 127 of the shipwrecked Frenchmen trying to get back to Fort Caroline.
With a captured Frenchman as translator, Menéndez described how Fort Caroline had been captured and urged the French to surrender. Rumors to the contrary, he made no promises as to sparing them. Having lost most of their food and weapons in the shipwreck, they did surrender. However, when Menéndez then demanded that they give up their Protestant faith and accept Catholicism, they refused. 111 Frenchmen were killed. Only sixteen were spared - a few who professed being Catholic, some impressed Breton sailors, and four artisans needed at St. Augustine.
Two weeks later the sequence of events was repeated. More French survivors appeared at the inlet, including Jean Ribault. On October 12 Ribault and his men surrendered and met their fate, again refusing to give up their faith. This time 134 were killed. From that time, the inlet was called Matanzas -- meaning "slaughters" in Spanish.

The Capitol Hill Prayer newsletter recently featured a story on the anniversary of the French Huguenot massacre.

"Although they died as martyrs 444 years ago, the sacrifice of the French Huguenots in Florida still stands in eternity, and the price has been paid in the heavens for our freedom on this land, here on earth. Praise God. . . . they loved not their lives unto death." (Rev. 12:11)

The newsletter explains that a mural in the United States Capitol reveals this part of Florida's history and provides a map depicting the three oldest cities in our nation:

"An often overlooked site of interest in the U.S. Capitol is a historical map that is shown in the ceiling of the Cox Corridor in the House wing of the Capitol Building. Titled 'Fort St. Augustine,' this mural is in the ceiling of the corridor, and shows the dates of the founding of the first three cities in our land: St. Augustine (1565), Jamestown (1607), and Plymouth (1620)."

"The Spanish conquistadors founded St. Augustine, Florida on September 8, 1565 while they carried out the command of King Philip II of Spain, to 'do away with' the 'French problem' on land that Spain had claimed."

"Later, the Spanish built the Castillo de San Marcos -- a fearsome-looking fortress, designed to serve as a signal to all others that this land belonged to Spain! The Castillo de San Marcos, which took 30 years to build, is also shown on this map."

"St. Augustine, Florida, is the oldest city in America today, having been founded by Europeans who have resided there ever since."

These are significant and beautiful historic sites and, in combination with Fort Caroline in Jacksonville, and Fort Matanzas, just south of St. Augustine on the Atlantic Coast, are worth a visit.

From Wikipedia concerning the history of the Catholics and the Huguenots

Huguenot numbers peaked near an estimated two million by 1562, concentrated mainly in the southern and central parts of France, about one-eighth the number of French Catholics. As Huguenots gained influence and more openly displayed their faith, Catholic hostility grew, in spite of increasingly liberal political concessions and edicts of toleration from the French crown. A series of religious conflicts followed, known as the Wars of Religion, fought intermittently from 1562 to 1598. The wars finally ended with the granting of the Edict of Nantes, which granted the Huguenots substantial religious, political and military autonomy.

Renewed religious warfare in the 1620s caused the political and military privileges of the Huguenots to be abolished following their defeat. They retained the religious provisions of the Edict of Nantes until the rule of Louis XIV, who progressively increased persecution of them until he issued the Edict of Fontainebleau (1685), which abolished all legal recognition of Protestantism in France, and forced the Huguenots to convert. While nearly three-quarters eventually were killed [1] or submitted, roughly 500,000 Huguenots had fled France by the early 18th century[citation needed].

The bulk of Huguenot émigrés relocated to Protestant European nations such as England, Wales, Scotland, Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland, the Dutch Republic, the Electorate of Brandenburg and Electorate of the Palatinate in the Holy Roman Empire, the Duchy of Prussia, the Channel Islands, and Ireland. They also spread beyond the Old World to the Dutch Cape Colony in South Africa, the Dutch East Indies, the Caribbean, and several of the English colonies of North America, where they were accepted and allowed to worship freely.

Persecution of Protestants diminished in France after the death of Louis XIV in 1715, and officially ended with the Edict of Versailles, commonly called the Edict of Tolerance, signed by Louis XVI in 1787. Two years later, with the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789, Protestants gained equal rights as citizens.[2]

FOX'S BOOK OF MARTYRS

CHAPTER IV

Papal Persecutions

Thus far our history of persecution has been confined principally to the pagan world. We come now to a period when persecution, under the guise of Christianity, committed more enormities than ever disgraced the annals of paganism. Disregarding the maxims and the spirit of the Gospel, the papal Church, arming herself with the power of the sword, vexed the Church of God and wasted it for several centuries, a period most appropriately termed in history, the "dark ages." The kings of the earth, gave their power to the "Beast," and submitted to be trodden on by the miserable vermin that often filled the papal chair, as in the case of Henry, emperor of Germany. The storm of papal persecution first burst upon the Waldenses in France.

Persecution of the Waldenses in France

Popery having brought various innovations into the Church, and overspread the Christian world with darkness and superstition, some few, who plainly perceived the pernicious tendency of such errors, determined to show the light of the Gospel in its real purity, and to disperse those clouds which artful priests had raised about it, in order to blind the people, and obscure its real brightness.

The principal among these was Berengarius, who, about the year 1000, boldly preached Gospel truths, according to their primitive purity. Many, from conviction, assented to his doctrine, and were, on that account, called Berengarians. To Berengarius succeeded Peer Bruis, who preached at Toulouse, under the protection of an earl, named Hildephonsus; and the whole tenets of the reformers, with the reasons of their separation from the Church of Rome, were published in a book written by Bruis, under the title of "Antichrist."

By the year of Christ 1140, the number of the reformed was very great, and the probability of its increasing alarmed the pope, who wrote to several princes to banish them from their dominions, and employed many learned men to write against their doctrines.

Persecutions of the Albigenses

The Albigenses were a people of the reformed religion, who inhabited the country of Albi. They were condemned on the score of religion in the Council of Lateran, by order of Pope Alexander III. Nevertheless, they increased so prodigiously, that many cities were inhabited by persons only of their persuasion, and several eminent noblemen embraced their doctrines. Among the latter were Raymond, earl of Toulouse, Raymond, earl of Foix, the earl of Beziers, etc.

A friar, named Peter, having been murdered in the dominions of the earl of Toulouse, the pope made the murder a pretense to persecute that nobleman and his subjects. To effect this, he sent persons throughout all Europe, in order to raise forces to act coercively against the Albigenses, and promised paradise to all that would come to this war, which he termed a Holy War, and bear arms for forty days. The same indulgences were likewise held out to all who entered themselves for the purpose as to such as engaged in crusades to the Holy Land. The brave earl defended Toulouse and other places with the most heroic bravery and various success against the pope's legates and Simon, earl of Montfort, a bigoted Catholic nobleman. Unable to subdue the earl of Toulouse openly, the king of France, and the queen mother, and three archbishops raised another formidable army, and had the art to persuade the earl of Toulouse to come to a conference, when he was treacherously seized upon, made a prisoner, forced to appear barefooted and bareheaded before his enemies, and compelled to subscribe an abject recantation. This was followed by a severe persecution against the Albigenses; and express orders that the laity should not be permitted to read the sacred Scriptures. In the year 1620 also, the persecution against the Albigenses was very severe. In 1648 a heavy persecution raged throughout Lithuania and Poland. The cruelty of the Cossacks was so excessive that the Tartars themselves were ashamed of their barbarities. Among others who suffered was the Rev. Adrian Chalinski, who was roasted alive by a slow fire, and whose sufferings and mode of death may depict the horrors which the professors of Christianity have endured from the enemies of the Redeemer.

The reformation of papistical error very early was projected in France; for in the third century a learned man, named Almericus, and six of his disciples, were ordered to be burnt at Paris for asserting that God was no otherwise present in the sacramental bread than in any other bread; that it was idolatry to build altars or shrines to saints and that it was ridiculous to offer incense to them.

The martyrdom of Almericus and his pupils did not, however, prevent many from acknowledging the justness of his notions, and seeing the purity of the reformed religion, so that the faith of Christ continually increased, and in time not only spread itself over many parts of France, but diffused the light of the Gospel over various other countries.

In the year 1524, at a town in France, called Melden, one John Clark set up a bill on the church door, wherein he called the pope Antichrist. For this offence he was repeatedly whipped, and then branded on the forehead. Going afterward to Mentz, in Lorraine, he demolished some images, for which he had his right hand and nose cut off, and his arms and breast torn with pincers. He sustained these cruelties with amazing fortitude, and was even sufficiently cool to sing the One hundredth and fifteenth Psalm, which expressly forbids idolatry; after which he was thrown into the fire, and burnt to ashes.