Kartik Krishnaiyer explains why he believes Fort Caroline represents the actual origin story of the United States - decades before Jamestown or Plymouth Rock.

What did the French colonists find in the way of plants in the northwest corner of the Florida peninsula?

In the finale of our miniseries of the French in Colonial Florida we discuss the 1719 capture and occupation of Pensacola by the French. By 1726, Pensacola had been returned to Spanish rule.

French privateer Dominique de Gourgues works with the Timucuan to exact a measure of revenge on the Spanish with a massacre at San Mateo.

We read from Laudonnière 's memoires of his voyages how exactly he escaped Fort Caroline and why he believes "Florida was lost."

The Spanish effort to retake Florida ends in success- Jean Ribault and his men are slaughtered.

Summer 1565 led Laudonnière's Fort Caroline colony to interact with help British travelers, then be reinforced and botted up by their own countrymen sent by the French King and then finally slaughtered by the Spanish while the other French left the colony to try and hunt down the Spanish at St Augustine.

Rene Laudonnière establishes Fort Caroline at the mouth of the St Johns River. The colony struggles with mutiny and food though relations with the nearby Timucua were generally good, they began to become strained. All the while the Spanish are hunting down the French Huguenots.

The first French settlement in what was then Florida but is now South Carolina took place in 1862. But the colony was soon abandoned while religious strife back home engulfed some of our key figures.

We discuss the religious strife that dominated 16th Century Europe as well as France's pragmatic diplomatic and foreign policy of the era- despite being a Kingdom dominated by the Catholic Church hierarchy, tension with Spain often led to pragmatism and alliances with Protestants and Muslims on the continent.

This world view also contributed to France's colonial policies in the New World setting up its interest in Florida.