Part III: The arrival of the first Huguenots.
Villegagnon was a man of letters and was not averse to new religious ideas. He welcomed some Calvinist pastors to his colony. As a humanist he even proposed to make his colony in the New World a refuge for persecuted Huguenots. So the Calvinists organised the sending of 300 Huguenots to Villegagnon's colony. The refugees were particularly unwell when they arrived in the spring of 1557 in Henriville, but Villegagnon welcomed them with affability and they quickly integrated into the colony. This gave a boost to the colony, which was now populated by nearly 1,500 souls, but the Protestant bomb eventually exploded in Villegagnon's hands: Villegagnon was still a staunch Catholic and eventually became angry with the Calvinist pastors, whom he deemed heretical, and sent them back to Europe. In 1559, he also had to travel to the French court to justify himself against those who accused him of heresy. Villegagnon was then forced to divide Henriville into two separate districts, one for Catholics and one for Calvinists.
Villegagnon died of old age in his colony in 1571, while at the same time France was embroiled in a civil war between Protestants and Catholics. Sent by Gaspard de Coligny, the main representative of the Huguenots in France, large numbers of Huguenots arrived each year to seek refuge in the colony.
Villegagnon's nephew, Lord Legendre de Boissy, succeeded him as head of the colony after his death. Although a Catholic, Legendre de Boissy, having managed the transport of the 300 Huguenots to the colony in 1557, still welcomed new Calvinist settlers who arrived regularly. The colony soon passed the 5,000 people, the port of Henriville in the Lagune des Canards became an important naval base in the New World, and outlying villages began to spring up along the lagoon.
On 24 August 1574, St. Bartholomew's Day, the Wars of Religion in France degenerated into a terrible massacre in Paris that took the lives of nearly 10,000 Huguenots. The point of no return was reached. The troubles also reached the colony, but the Huguenot colonists, who had become the majority, forced Legendre de Boissy to adopt a policy of conciliation between Catholics and Protestants in the colony and a position of neutrality in the face of the events unfolding in France.
The rupture was consummated between the royal court and the young colony: for nearly 25 years, the colony had a quasi-independence and Legendre de Boissy, although excommunicated, took the opportunity to proclaim himself "viceroy" of Antarctic France in the New World. Meanwhile, waves of Huguenot refugees continued to arrive in the colony from the Netherlands and England. Things were soon put right with the accession of the ex-Protestant Henry IV to the French throne and the Edict of Nantes of 1598. Things had become clear: in order to pacify the kingdom of France, Antarctic France was to become a "dumping ground" of Huguenots. By the end of the 16th century, the colony had grown to 12,000 inhabitants, two-thirds of whom were Protestants.