They were not as isolated — they were a community of hundreds rather than a single person — but they were ill-supplied, poorly adapted to their environment, and governed by a man whose approach to discipline appears to have been brutal even by the standards of his era.

The cosmographer André Thevet, who had personal knowledge of the expedition’s aftermath, described Roberval’s governance in unflattering terms: “Captain Roberval was very cruel in dealing with his men, forcing them to work; otherwise they were deprived of food and drink.

If anyone failed in his duty, Roberval had him punished.

One day he had six of them hanged and some he ordered to be banished to an island, in leg-irons.”

The last detail — banishing colonists to an island, in leg-irons — has a grim resonance with what he had done to Marguerite.