History of the Waldenses

By J. A. Wylie

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Title: History of the Waldenses

Author: J. A. Wylie

Release date: July 20, 2024 [eBook #74084]

Language: English

Original publication: London: Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co, 1880

Credits: Carol Brown, Brian Wilson, MWS and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF THE WALDENSES ***

HISTORY

OF THE

WALDENSES.

[Illustration: MAP OF THE WALDENSIAN VALLEYS.]

HISTORY

OF THE

WALDENSES.

BY THE

REV. J. A. WYLIE, LL.D.,

AUTHOR OF “THE PAPACY,” “DAYBREAK IN SPAIN,” ETC.

Illustrated.

CASSELL, PETTER, GALPIN & CO.

_LONDON, PARIS & NEW YORK_.

PREFACE.

This work--which is a reprint of the Sixteenth Book of the HISTORY
OF PROTESTANTISM--is exclusively occupied with the subject of the
Waldenses. It describes succinctly the conflicts they waged and the
martyrdoms they endured in defence of their faith and their liberty,
and is published in the present form to meet the requirements of those
who take a special interest in this remarkable people.

Recent events in Europe have brought the Waldenses into prominence,
and thrown a new light upon the grandeur of their struggle and the
important and enduring issues which have flowed from it. To them, in a
very particular manner, are we to trace the constitutional liberties
which Italy at this hour enjoys. In the eventful year of 1848, when
a new constitution was being framed for Piedmont, the Waldenses made
it plain to the Government that there would not be standing-room for
them within the lines of that constitution, unless it embraced the
great principle of freedom of conscience. For that principle they had
contended during five hundred years, and nothing short of it could
they accept as a basis of national settlement, persuaded that any
other guarantee of their liberties would be illusory. Their demand
was conceded: the principle of freedom of conscience--the root of
all liberty--was embodied in the new constitution, and thus the whole
inhabitants of Piedmont shared equally with the Waldenses in a boon
which the struggles of the latter had been mainly instrumental in
securing.

Not only so: in process of time the constitution of Piedmont was
extended to the rest of Italy, and the whole Italian nation is at
this hour sharing in the fruits which have sprung from the toil and
the blood, the unswerving faith, and the heroic devotion of the
Waldenses. Nor is their work finished even yet. They have understood
the end for which they have been preserved through so many ages of
darkness and conflict, and have energetically thrown themselves into
the evangelisation of modern Italy, and doubtless these ancient
confessors are destined to win, in the land where they endured so many
dark sorrows, not a few brilliant triumphs, and by the labours of the
present to add to the obligations which Christendom owes them for the
services of the past.

J. A. WYLIE.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

THE WALDENSES--THEIR VALLEYS. PAGE

Submission of the Churches of Lombardy to Rome--The Old
Faith maintained in the Mountains--The Waldensian
Churches--Question of their Antiquity--Approach to
their Mountains--Arrangement of their Valleys--Picture
of blended Beauty and Grandeur 1

CHAPTER II.

THE WALDENSES--THEIR MISSIONS AND MARTYRDOMS.

Their Synod and College--Their Theological Tenets--Romaunt
Version of the New Testament--The Constitution of their
Church--Their Missionary Labours--Wide Diffusion of their
Tenets--The Stone Smiting the Image 10

CHAPTER III.

FIRST PERSECUTIONS OF THE WALDENSES.

Their Unique Position in Christendom--Their Twofold
Testimony--They Witness against Rome and for Protestantism--
Hated by Rome--The Cottian Alps--Albigenses and Waldenses--
The Waldensian Territory Proper--Papal Testimony to the
Flourishing State of their Church in the Fourteenth
Century--Early Bulls against them--Tragedy of Christmas,
1400--Constancy of the Waldenses--Crusade of Pope
Innocent VIII.--His Bull of 1487--The Army Assembles--Two
Frightful Tempests approach the Valleys 19

CHAPTER IV.

CATANEO’S EXPEDITION (1488) AGAINST THE DAUPHINESE AND
PIEDMONTESE CONFESSORS.

The Confessors of the Dauphinese Alps--Attacked--Flee to Mont
Pelvoux--Retreat into a Cave--Are Suffocated--French
Crusaders Cross the Alps--Enter the Valley of Pragelas--
Piedmontese Army Advances against La Torre--Deputation of
Waldensian Patriarchs--The Valley of Lucerna--Villaro--
Bobbio--Cataneo’s Plan of Campaign--His Soldiers Cross the
Col Julien--Grandeurs of the Pass--Valley of Prali--Defeat
of Cataneo’s Expedition 31

CHAPTER V.

FAILURE OF CATANEO’S EXPEDITION.

The Valley of Angrogna--An Alternative--The Waldenses Prepare
for Battle--Cataneo’s Repulse--His Rage--He Renews the
Attempt--Enters Angrogna with his Army--Advances to the
Barrier--Enters the Chasm--The Waldenses on the point of
being Cut to Pieces--The Mountain Mist--Deliverance--Utter
Rout of the Papal Army--Pool of Saquet--Sufferings of the
Waldenses--Extinction of the Invading Host--Deputation
to their Prince--Vaudois Children--Peace 43

CHAPTER VI.

SYNOD IN THE WALDENSIAN VALLEYS.

The Old Vine seems Dying--New Life--The Reformation--Tidings
Reach the Waldenses--They Send Deputies into Germany and
Switzerland to Inquire--Joy of Œcolampadius--His Admonitory
Letter--Waldensian Deputies at Strasburg--The Two Churches
a Wonder to each other--Martyrdom of One of the Deputies--
Resolution to Call a Synod in the Valleys--Its Catholic
Character--Spot where it Met--Confession of Faith framed--
The Spirit of the Vaudois Revives--They Rebuild their
Churches, &c.--Journey of Farel and Saunier to the Synod 52

CHAPTER VII.

PERSECUTIONS AND MARTYRDOMS.

A Peace of Twenty-eight Years--Flourishing State--Bersour--A
Martyr--Martyrdom of Pastor Gonin--Martyrdoms of a Student
and a Monk--Trial and Burning of a Colporteur--A List of
Horrible Deaths--The Valleys under the Sway of France--
Restored to Savoy--Emmanuel Philibert--Persecution
Renewed--Carignano--Persecution Approaches the
Mountains--Deputation to the Duke--The Old Paths--
Remonstrance to the Duke--To the Duchess--To the Council 63

CHAPTER VIII.

PREPARATIONS FOR A WAR OF EXTERMINATION.

Pastor Gilles Carries the Remonstrance to the Duke--No
Tidings for Three Months--The Monks of Pinerolo begin
the Persecution--Raid in San Martino--Philip of Savoy’s
Attempt at Conciliation--A Monk’s Sermon--The Duke Declares
War against the Vaudois--Dreadful Character of his Army--The
Waldenses hold a Fast, &c.--Skirmishing in Angrogna--Night
Panic--La Trinita Occupies the Val di Lucerna--An
Intrigue--Fruitless Concessions--Affecting Incidents--La
Trinita Demands 20,000 Crowns from the Men of the
Valleys--He Retires into Winter Quarters--Outrages of his
Soldiers 77

CHAPTER IX.

THE GREAT CAMPAIGN OF 1561.

Mass or Extermination--Covenant in the Valleys--Their
Solemn Oath--How the Waldenses Recant--Their Energetic
Preparations--La Trinita Advances his Army--Twice
Attempts to Enter Angrogna, and is Repulsed--A Third
Attempt--Attacks on Three Points--Repulsed on all
Three--Ravages the Valley of Rora--Receives Reinforcements
from France and Spain--Commences a Third Campaign--Six Men
against an Army--Utter Discomfiture--Extinction of La
Trinita’s Host--Peace 88

CHAPTER X.

WALDENSIAN COLONIES IN CALABRIA AND APULIA.

An Inn at Turin--Two Waldensian Youths--A Stranger--Invitation
to Calabria--The Waldenses Search the Land--They Settle
there--Their Colony Flourishes--Build Towns--Cultivate
Science--They Hear of the Reformation--Petition for a Fixed
Pastor--Jean Louis Paschale sent to them--Apprehended--
Brought in Chains to Naples--Conducted to Rome 104

CHAPTER XI.

EXTINCTION OF WALDENSES IN CALABRIA.

Arrival of Inquisitors in Calabria--Flight of the Inhabitants
of San Sexto--Pursued and Destroyed--La Guardia--Its
Citizens Seized--Their Tortures--Horrible Butchery--The
Calabrian Colony Exterminated--Louis Paschale--His
Condemnation--The Castle of St. Angelo--The Pope, Cardinals,
and Citizens--The Martyr--His Last Words--His Execution--
His Tomb 114

CHAPTER XII.

THE YEAR OF THE PLAGUE.

Peace--Re-occupation of their Homes--Partial
Famine--Contributions of Foreign Churches--Castrocaro,
Governor of the Valleys--His Treacheries and Oppressions--
Letter of Elector Palatine to the Duke--A Voice raised for
Toleration--Fate of Castrocaro--The Plague--Awful
Ravages--10,000 Deaths--Only Two Pastors Survive--Ministers
come from Switzerland, &c.--Worship conducted henceforward
in French 123

CHAPTER XIII.

THE GREAT MASSACRE.

Preliminary Attacks--The Propaganda de Fide--Marchioness
de Pianeza--Gastaldo’s Order--Its Barbarous Execution--
Greater Sorrows--Perfidy of Pianeza--The Massacring
Army--Its Attack and Repulse--Treachery--The Massacre
Begins--Its Horrors--Modes of Torture--Individual Martyrs--
Leger collects Evidence on the Spot--He Appeals to the
Protestant States--Interposition of Cromwell--Mission
of Sir Samuel Morland--A Martyr’s Monument 132

CHAPTER XIV.

EXPLOITS OF GIANAVELLO--MASSACRE AND PILLAGE OF RORA.

Ascent of La Combe--Beauty and Grandeur of Valley of Rora--
Gianavello--His Character--Marquis de Pianeza--His First
Assault--Brave Repulse--Treachery of the Marquis--No Faith
with Heretics--Gianavello’s Band--Repulse of Second and
Third Attacks--Death of a Persecutor--An Army raised to
invade Rora--Massacre and Pillage--Letter of Pianeza--
Gianavello’s Heroic Reply--Gianavello renews the War--
500 against 15,000--Success of the Waldenses--Horror at
the Massacre--Interposition of England--Letter of
Cromwell--Treaty of Peace 151

CHAPTER XV.

THE EXILE.

New Troubles--Louis XIV. and his Confessor--Edict against
the Vaudois--Their Defenceless Condition--Their Fight and
Victory--They Surrender--The Whole Nation Thrown into
Prison--Utter Desolation of the Land--Horrors of the
Imprisonment--Their Release--Journey across the Alps--Its
Hardships--Arrival of the Exiles at Geneva--Their
Hospitable Reception 166

CHAPTER XVI.

RETURN TO THE VALLEYS.

Longings after their Valleys--Thoughts of Returning--Their
Re-assembling--Cross Lake Leman--Begin their March--The
“Eight Hundred”--Cross Mont Cénis--Great Victory in the
Valley of the Dora--First View of their Mountains--Worship
on the Mountaintop--Enter their Valleys--Pass their First
Sunday at Prali--Worship 179

CHAPTER XVII.

FINAL RE-ESTABLISHMENT IN THE VALLEYS.

Cross the Col Julien--Seize Bobbio--Oath of Sibaud--March to
Villaro--Guerilla War--Retreat to La Balsiglia--Its
Strength--Beauty and Grandeur of San Martino--Encampment on
the Balsiglia--Surrounded--Repulse of the Enemy--Depart for
the Winter--Return of French and Piedmontese Army in
Spring--The Balsiglia Stormed--Enemy Driven Back--Final
Assault with Cannon--Wonderful Deliverance of the Vaudois--
Overtures of Peace 189

CHAPTER XVIII.

CONDITION OF THE WALDENSES FROM 1690.

Annoyances--Burdens--Foreign Contributions--French Revolution--
Spiritual Revivals--Felix Neff--Dr. Gilly--General
Beckwith--Oppressed Condition previous to 1840--Edict of
Carlo Alberto--Freedom of Conscience--The Vaudois Church,
the Door by which Religious Liberty Entered Italy--Their
Lamp Kindled at Rome 203

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

Map of the Waldensian Valleys _Frontispiece_

Monte Castelluzzo and the Waldensian Temple 8

Waldensian Missionaries in Guise of Pedlars 17

View in the Valley of Roumeyer, Dauphiné 25

View of La Torre 39

View in Turin 53

The Village of Balsiglia, San Martino 81

The Vaudois taking their Oath 89

View in the Village of Angrogna 97

Parting of Paschale from his Betrothed 111

Group of Roman Peasants 121

Interior of St. John Lateran, Rome 129

The Entrance to La Torre 145

Cromwell and Milton 161

The Pass of Pra Del Tor 169

View of the Protestant Church of St. Jean, Waldensian Valleys 177

The Vaudois Crossing Lake Leman by Night 184

View in the Village of San Laurenzo, Angrogna 193

Church of Chabas, the oldest in the Valleys 201

Tomb of General Beckwith 209

CHAPTER I.

THE WALDENSES--THEIR VALLEYS.

It was the ninth century, and superstitious beliefs and idolatrous
rites were overspreading the Church, when Claudius, Bishop of Turin,
who was deeply imbued with the spirit of Augustine, set himself to
arrest the growing corruption with all the fervour of a living faith,
and the vigour of a courageous and powerful intellect. To the battle
for the purity of doctrine he joined that for the independence of the
Churches of Lombardy. Even in Claude’s day they remained free, although
many Churches more remote from Rome had already been subjugated by
that all-conquering power. The Ambrosian Liturgy was still used in
the cathedral of Milan, and the Augustinian doctrine continued to
be preached from many of the pulpits of Lombardy and Piedmont. This
independence of Rome, and this greater purity of faith and worship,
these Churches mainly owed to the three Apostolic men whose names adorn
their annals--Ambrose, Vigilantius, and Claude.

When Claude went to his grave, about the year 840, the battle, although
not altogether dropped, was but languidly maintained. Attempts were
renewed to induce the Bishops of Milan to accept the episcopal pall,
the badge of spiritual vassalage, from the Pope; but it was not till
the middle of the eleventh century (1059), under Nicholas II., that
these attempts were successful. Petrus Damianus, Bishop of Ostia, and
Anselm, Bishop of Lucca, were dispatched by the Pontiff to receive
the submission of the Lombard Churches, and the popular tumults amid
which that submission was extorted sufficiently show that the spirit
of Claude still lingered at the foot of the Alps. Nor did the clergy
conceal the regret with which they surrendered their ancient liberties
to a power before which the whole earth was then bowing down; for the
Papal legate, Damianus, informs us that the clergy of Milan maintained
in his presence that “The Ambrosian Church, according to the ancient
institutions of the Fathers, was always free, without being subject to
the laws of Rome, and that the Pope of Rome had no jurisdiction over
their Church as to the government or constitution of it.”[1]

But if the plains were conquered, not so the mountains. A considerable
body of Protesters stood out against this deed of submission. Of these
some crossed the Alps, descended the Rhine, and raised the standard
of opposition in the diocese of Cologne, where they were branded as
Manicheans, and rewarded with the stake. Others retired into the
valleys of the Piedmontese Alps, and there maintained their scriptural
faith and their ancient independence. What has just been related
respecting the dioceses of Milan and Turin settles the question of
the apostolicity of the Churches of the Waldensian valleys. It is not
necessary to show that missionaries were sent from Rome in the first
age to plant Christianity in these valleys, nor is it necessary to show
that these Churches have existed as distinct and separate communities
from early days; enough that they formed a part, as unquestionably
they did, of the great evangelical Church of the North of Italy. This
is the proof at once of their apostolicity and their independence. It
attests their descent from apostolic men, if doctrine be the life of
Churches. When their co-religionists on the plains entered within the
pale of the Roman jurisdiction, they retired within the mountains,
and, spurning alike the tyrannical yoke and the corrupt tenets of the
Church of the Seven Hills, they preserved in its purity and simplicity
the faith their fathers had handed down to them. Rome manifestly was
the schismatic, she it was that had abandoned what was once the common
faith of Christendom, leaving by that step to all who remained on the
old ground the indisputably valid title of the True Church.

Behind this rampart of mountains, which Providence, foreseeing the
approach of evil days, would almost seem to have reared on purpose, did
the remnant of the early apostolic Church of Italy kindle their lamp,
and here did that lamp continue to burn all through the long night
which descended on Christendom. There is a singular concurrence of
evidence in favour of their high antiquity. Their traditions invariably
point to an unbroken descent from the earliest times, as regards
their religious belief. The _Nobla Leyçon_, which dates from the year
1100,[2] goes to prove that the Waldenses of Piedmont did not owe their
rise to Peter Waldo of Lyons, who did not appear till the latter half
of that century (1160). The _Nobla Leyçon_ though a poem, is in reality
a confession of faith, and could have been composed only after some
considerable study of the system of Christianity, in contradistinction
to the errors of Rome. How could a Church have arisen with such a
document in her hands? Or how could these herdsmen and vine-dressers,
shut up in their mountains, have detected the errors against which
they bore testimony, and found their way to the truths of which they
made open profession in times of darkness like these? If we grant
that their religious beliefs were the heritage of former ages, handed
down from an evangelical ancestry, all is plain; but if we maintain
that they were the discovery of the men of those days, we assert what
approaches almost to a miracle. Their greatest enemies, Claude Seyssel
of Turin (1517), and Reynerius the Inquisitor (1250), have admitted
their antiquity, and stigmatised them as “the most dangerous of all
heretics, because the most ancient.”

Rorenco, Prior of St. Roch, Turin (1640), was employed to investigate
the origin and antiquity of the Waldenses, and of course had access to
all the Waldensian documents in the ducal archives, and being their
bitter enemy he may be presumed to have made his report not more
favourable than he could help. Yet he states that “they were not a new
sect in the ninth and tenth centuries, and that Claude of Turin must
have detached them from the Church in the ninth century.”

Within the limits of her own land did God provide a dwelling for this
venerable Church. Let us bestow a glance upon the region. As one comes
from the south, across the level plain of Piedmont, while yet nearly
a hundred miles off, one sees the Alps rise before one, stretching
like a great wall along the horizon. From the gates of the morning to
those of the setting sun, the mountains run on in a line of towering
magnificence. Pasturages and chestnut-forests clothe their base;
eternal snows crown their summits. How varied are their forms! Some
rise like castles of stupendous strength; others shoot up tall and
tapering like needles; while others again run along in serrated lines,
their summits torn and cleft by the storms of many thousand winters. At
the hour of sunrise, what a glory kindles along the crest of that snowy
rampart! At sunset the spectacle is again renewed, and a line of pyres
is seen to burn in the evening sky.

Drawing nearer the hills, on a line about thirty miles west of Turin,
there opens before one what seems a great mountain portal. This is the
entrance to the Waldensian territory. A low hill drawn along in front
serves as a defence against all who may come with hostile intent,
as but too frequently happened in times gone by, while a stupendous
monolith--the Castelluzzo--shoots up to the clouds, and stands sentinel
at the gate of this renowned region. As one approaches La Torre the
Castelluzzo rises higher and higher, and irresistibly fixes the eye by
the perfect beauty of its pillar-like form.[3] But to this mountain a
higher interest belongs than any that mere symmetry can give it. It is
indissolubly linked with martyr-memories, and borrows a halo from the
achievements of the past. How often, in days of old, was the confessor
hurled sheer down its awful steep, and dashed on the rocks at its foot!
And there, commingled in one ghastly heap, growing ever the bigger
and ghastlier as another and yet another victim was added to it, lay
the mangled bodies of pastor and peasant, of mother and child! It was
the tragedies connected with this mountain mainly that called forth
Milton’s noble sonnet:--

“Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold.
* * * in Thy book record their groans
Who were Thy sheep, and in their ancient fold,
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that rolled
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To heaven.”

The Waldensian valleys are seven in number; they were more in ancient
times, but the limits of the Vaudois territory have undergone repeated
curtailment, and now only seven remain, lying between Pinerolo on the
east and Monte Viso on the west--that pyramidal hill which forms so
prominent an object from every part of the plain of Piedmont, towering
as it does above the surrounding mountains, and, like a horn of silver,
cutting the ebon of the firmament.

The first three valleys run out somewhat like the spokes of a wheel,
the spot on which we stand--the gateway, namely--being the nave. The
first is _Luserna_, or Valley of Light. It runs right out in a grand
gorge of some twelve miles in length by about two in width. It wears a
carpeting of meadows, which the waters of the Pelice keep ever fresh
and bright. A profusion of vines, acacias, and mulberry-trees, fleck
it with their shadows; and a wall of lofty mountains encloses it on
either hand. The second is _Rora_, or Valley of Dews. It is a vast cup,
some fifty miles in circumference, its sides luxuriantly clothed with
meadow and corn-field, with fruit and forest trees, and its rim formed
of craggy and peaked mountains, many of them snow-clad. The third is
_Angrogna_, or Valley of Groans. Of it we shall speak more particularly
afterwards. Beyond the extremity of the first three valleys are the
remaining four, forming, as it were, the rim of the wheel. These last
are enclosed in their turn by a line of lofty mountains, which form a
wall of defence around the entire territory. Each valley is a fortress
having its own gate of ingress and egress, with its caves, and rocks,
and mighty chestnut-trees, forming places of retreat and shelter, so
that the highest engineering skill could not have better adapted each
several valley to this very purpose. It is not less remarkable that,
taking all these valleys together, each is so related to each, the one
opening into the other, that they may be said to form one fortress
of amazing and matchless strength--wholly impregnable, in fact. All
the fortresses of Europe, though combined, would not form a citadel
so enormously strong, and so dazzlingly magnificent, as the mountain
dwelling of the Vaudois. “The Eternal, our God,” says Leger, “having
destined this land to be the theatre of his marvels, and the bulwark of
his ark, has, by natural means, most marvellously fortified it.” The
battle begun in one valley could be continued in another, and carried
round the entire territory, till at last the invading foe, overpowered
by the rocks rolled upon him from the mountains, or assailed by
enemies which would start suddenly out of the mist or issue from some
unsuspected cave, found retreat impossible, and, cut off in detail,
left his bones to whiten the mountains he had come to subdue.

These valleys are lovely and fertile, as well as strong. They are
watered by numerous torrents, which descend from the snows of the
summits. The grassy carpet of their bottom; the mantling vine and
the golden grain of their lower slopes; the châlets that dot their
sides, sweetly embowered amid fruit-trees; and, higher up, the great
chestnut-forests and the pasture-lands, where the herdsmen keep watch
over their flocks all through the summer days and the starlit nights:
the nodding crags, from which the torrent leaps into the light; the
rivulet, singing with quiet gladness in the shady nook; the mists,
moving grandly among the mountains, now veiling, now revealing, their
majesty; and the far-off summits, tipped with silver, to be changed
at eve into gleaming gold--make up a picture of blended beauty and
grandeur, not equalled, perhaps, and certainly not surpassed, in any
other region of the earth.

[Illustration: MONTE CASTELLUZZO AND THE WALDENSIAN TEMPLE.]

In the heart of their mountains is situated the most interesting,
perhaps, of all their valleys. It was in this retreat, walled round by
“hills whose heads touch heaven,” that their _barbes_ or pastors, from
all their several parishes, were wont to meet in annual synod. It was
here that their college stood, and it was here that their missionaries
were trained, and, after ordination, were sent forth to sow the
good seed, as opportunity offered, in other lands. Let us visit this
valley. We ascend to it by the long, narrow, and winding Angrogna.
Bright meadows enliven its entrance. The mountains on either hand are
clothed with the vine, the mulberry, and the chestnut. Anon the valley
contracts. It becomes rough with projecting rocks, and shady with great
trees. A few paces farther, and it expands into a circular basin,
feathery with birches, musical with falling waters, environed atop
by naked crags, fringed with dark pines, while the white peak looks
down out of heaven. A little in advance the valley seems shut in by a
mountainous wall, drawn right across it; and beyond, towering sublimely
upward, is seen an assemblage of snow-clad Alps, amid which is placed
the valley we are in quest of, where burned of old the candle of the
Waldenses. Some terrible convulsion has rent this mountain from top to
bottom, opening a path through it to the valley beyond. We enter the
dark chasm, and proceed along on a narrow ledge in the mountain’s side,
hung half-way between the torrent, which is heard thundering in the
abyss below, and the summits which lean over us above. Journeying thus
for about two miles, we find the pass beginning to widen, the light to
break in, and now we arrive at the gate of the Pra.

There opens before us a noble circular valley, its grassy bottom
watered by torrents, its sides dotted with dwellings and clothed with
corn-fields and pasturages, with a ring of white peaks encircling it
above. This was the inner sanctuary of the Waldensian temple. The rest
of Italy had turned aside to idols, the Waldensian territory alone had
been reserved for the worship of the true God. And was it not meet that
on its native soil a remnant of the Apostolic Church of Italy should
be maintained, that Rome and all Christendom might have before their
eyes a perpetual monument of what they themselves had once been, and a
living witness to testify how far they had departed from their first
faith?[4]

CHAPTER II.

THE WALDENSES--THEIR MISSIONS AND MARTYRDOMS.

Their Synod and College--Their Theological Tenets--Romaunt Version
of the New Testament--The Constitution of their Church--Their
Missionary Labours--Wide Diffusion of their Tenets--The
Stone Smiting the Image.

One would like to have a near view of the _barbes_ or pastors, who
presided over the school of early Protestant theology that existed in
the valleys, and to know how it fared with evangelical Christianity
in the ages that preceded the Reformation. But the time is remote,
and the events are dim. We can but doubtfully glean from a variety of
sources the facts necessary to form a picture of this venerable Church,
and even then the picture is not complete. The theology of which
this was one of the fountain-heads was not the clear, well-defined,
and comprehensive system which the sixteenth century gave us; it was
only what the faithful men of the Lombard Churches had been able to
save from the wreck of primitive Christianity. True religion, being a
revelation, was from the beginning complete and perfect; nevertheless,
in this as in every other branch of knowledge, it is only by patient
labour that man is able to extricate and arrange all its parts, and to
come into the full possession of truth. The theology taught in former
ages in the peak-environed valley in which we have in imagination
placed ourselves was drawn from the Bible. The atoning death and
justifying righteousness of Christ was its cardinal truth. This, the
_Nobla Leyçon_ and other ancient documents abundantly testify. The
_Nobla Leyçon_ sets forth with tolerable clearness the doctrine of the
Trinity, the fall of man, the incarnation of the Son, the perpetual
authority of the Decalogue as given by God,[5] the need of Divine grace
in order to do good works, the necessity of holiness, the institution
of the ministry, the resurrection of the body, and the eternal bliss
of heaven.[6] This creed its professors exemplified in lives of
evangelical virtue. The blamelessness of the Waldenses passed into a
proverb, so that one more than ordinarily exempt from the vices of his
time was sure to be suspected of being a Vaudés.[7]

If doubt there were regarding the tenets of the Waldenses, the charges
which their enemies have preferred against them would set that doubt
at rest, and make it tolerably certain that they held substantially
what the apostles before their day, and the Reformers after it, taught.
The indictment against the Waldenses included a formidable list of
“heresies.” They held that there had been no true Pope since the days
of Sylvester; that temporal offices and dignities were not meet for
preachers of the Gospel; that the Pope’s pardons were a cheat; that
purgatory was a fable; that relics were simply rotten bones which had
belonged to one knew not whom; that to go on pilgrimage served no end,
save to empty one’s purse; that flesh might be eaten any day if one’s
appetite served him; that holy water was not a whit more efficacious
than rain-water; and that prayer in a barn was just as effectual as if
offered in a church. They were accused, moreover, of having scoffed at
the doctrine of transubstantiation, and of having spoken blasphemously
of Rome as the harlot of the Apocalypse.[8]

There is reason to believe, from recent historical researches, that the
Waldenses possessed the New Testament in the vernacular. The “Lingua
Romana,” or Romaunt tongue, was the common language of the south of
Europe from the eighth to the fourteenth century. It was the language
of the troubadours and of men of letters in the Dark Ages. Into this
tongue--the Romaunt--was the first translation of the whole of the New
Testament made so early as the twelfth century. This fact Dr. Gilly has
been at great pains to prove in his work, _The Romaunt Version[9] of
the Gospel according to John_. The sum of what Dr. Gilly, by a patient
investigation into facts, and a great array of historic documents,
maintains, is that all the books of the New Testament were translated
from the Latin Vulgate into the Romaunt, that this was the first
literal version since the fall of the empire, that it was made in the
twelfth century, and was the first translation available for popular
use. There were numerous earlier translations, but only of parts of
the Word of God, and many of these were rather paraphrases or digests
of Scripture than translations, and, moreover, they were so bulky, and
by consequence so costly, as to be utterly beyond the reach of the
common people. This Romaunt version was the first complete and literal
translation of the New Testament of Holy Scripture; it was made, as
Dr. Gilly, by a chain of proofs, shows, most probably under the
superintendence and at the expense of Peter Waldo of Lyons, not later
than 1180, and so is older than any complete version in German, French,
Italian, Spanish, or English. This version was widely spread in the
south of France, and in the cities of Lombardy. It was in common use
among the Waldenses of Piedmont, and it was no small part, doubtless,
of the testimony borne to truth by these mountaineers to preserve and
circulate it. Of the Romaunt New Testament six copies have come down
to our day. A copy is preserved at each of the four following places:
Lyons, Grenoble, Zurich, Dublin; and two copies at Paris. These are
small, plain, and portable volumes, contrasting with those splendid and
ponderous folios of the Latin Vulgate, penned in characters of gold
and silver, richly illuminated, their bindings decorated with gems,
inviting admiration rather than study, and unfitted by their size and
splendour for the use of the people.

The Church of the Alps, in the simplicity of its constitution, may be
held to have been a reflection of the Church of the first centuries.
The entire territory included in the Waldensian limits was divided
into parishes. In each parish was placed a pastor, who led his flock
to the living waters of the Word of God. He preached, he dispensed the
Sacraments, he visited the sick, and catechised the young. With him
was associated in the government of his congregation a consistory of
laymen. The synod met once a year. It was composed of all the pastors,
with an equal number of laymen, and its most frequent place of meeting
was the secluded mountain-engirdled valley at the head of Angrogna.
Sometimes as many as a hundred and fifty _barbes_, with the same
number of lay members, would assemble. We can imagine them seated--it
may be on the grassy slopes of the valley--a venerable company of
humble, learned, earnest men, presided over by a simple moderator (for
higher office or authority was unknown amongst them), and suspending
their deliberations respecting the affairs of their Churches, and the
condition of their flocks, only to offer their prayers and praises to
the Eternal, while the majestic snow-clad peaks looked down upon them
from the silent firmament. There needed, verily, no magnificent fane,
no blazonry of mystic rites to make their assembly august.

The youth who here sat at the feet of the more venerable and learned
of their _barbes_ used as their text-book the Holy Scriptures. And not
only did they study the sacred volume; they were required to commit to
memory, and be able accurately to recite, whole Gospels and Epistles.
This was a necessary accomplishment on the part of public instructors
in those ages when printing was unknown, and copies of the Word of God
were rare. Part of their time was occupied in transcribing the Holy
Scriptures, or portions of them, which they were to distribute when
they went forth as missionaries. By this, and by other agencies, the
seed of the Divine Word was scattered throughout Europe more widely
than is commonly supposed. To this a variety of causes contributed.
There was then a general impression that the world was soon to end.
Men thought that they saw the prognostications of its dissolution in
the disorder into which all things had fallen. The pride, luxury, and
profligacy of the clergy, led not a few laymen to ask if better and
more certain guides were not to be had. Many of the troubadours were
religious men, whose lays were sermons. The hour of deep and universal
slumber had passed; the serf was contending with his seigneur for
personal freedom, and the city was waging war with the baronial castle
for civic and corporate independence. The New Testament--and, as we
learn from incidental notices, portions of the Old--coming at this
juncture in a language understood alike in the court as in the camp, in
the city as in the rural hamlet, was welcome to many, and its truths
obtained a wider promulgation than perhaps had taken place since the
publication of the Vulgate by Jerome.

After passing a certain time in the school of the _barbes_, it was
not uncommon for the Waldensian youth to proceed to the seminaries in
the great cities of Lombardy, or to the Sorbonne at Paris. There they
saw other customs, were initiated into other studies, and had a wider
horizon around them than in the seclusion of their native valleys.
Many of them became expert dialecticians, and often made converts of
the rich merchants with whom they traded, and the landlords in whose
houses they lodged. The priests seldom cared to meet in argument the
Waldensian missionary.

To maintain the truth in their own mountains was not the only object
of this people. They felt their relations to the rest of Christendom.
They sought to drive back the darkness, and re-conquer the kingdom
which Rome had overwhelmed. They were an evangelistic as well as
an evangelical Church. It was an old law among them that all who
took orders in their Church should, before being eligible to a home
charge, serve three years in the mission field. The youth on whose
head the assembled _barbes_ laid their hands saw in prospect not a
rich benefice, but a possible martyrdom. The ocean they did not cross.
Their mission field was the realms that lay outspread at the foot of
their own mountains. They went forth two and two, concealing their
real character under the guise of a secular profession, most commonly
that of merchants or pedlars. They carried silks, jewellery, and other
articles, at that time not easily purchasable save at distant marts,
and they were welcomed as merchants where they would have been spurned
as missionaries. The door of the cottage and the portal of the baron’s
castle stood equally open to them. But their address was mainly shown
in selling, without money and without price, rarer and more valuable
merchandise than the gems and silks which had procured them entrance.
They took care to carry with them, concealed among their wares or about
their persons, portions of the Word of God, their own transcription
commonly, and to this they would draw the attention of the inmates.
When they saw a desire to possess it, they would freely make a gift of
it where the means of purchase were absent.

There was no kingdom of Southern and Central Europe to which these
missionaries did not find their way, and where they did not leave
traces of their visit in the disciples whom they made. On the west
they penetrated into Spain. In Southern France they found congenial
fellow-labourers in the Albigenses, by whom the seeds of truth were
plentifully scattered over Dauphiné and Languedoc. On the east,
descending the Rhine and the Danube, they leavened Germany, Bohemia,
and Poland[10] with their doctrines, their track being marked with the
edifices for worship and the stakes of martyrdom that arose around
their steps. Even the Seven-hilled City they feared not to enter,
scattering the seed on ungenial soil, if perchance some of it might
take root and grow. Their naked feet and coarse woollen garments made
them somewhat marked figures, in the streets of a city that clothed
itself in purple and fine linen; and when their real errand was
discovered, as sometimes chanced, the rulers of Christendom took care
to further, in their own way, the springing of the seed, by watering it
with the blood of the men who had sowed it.[11]

[Illustration: WALDENSIAN MISSIONARIES IN GUISE OF PEDLARS.]

Thus did the Bible in those ages, veiling its majesty and its mission,
travel silently through Christendom, entering homes and hearts, and
there making its abode. From her lofty seat Rome looked down with
contempt upon the Book and its humble bearers. She aimed at bowing the
necks of kings, thinking if they were obedient meaner men would not
dare revolt, and so she took little heed of a power which, weak as it
seemed, was destined at a future day to break in pieces the fabric of
her dominion. By-and-by she began to be uneasy, and to have a boding
of calamity. The penetrating eye of Innocent III. detected the quarter
whence danger was to arise. He saw in the labours of these humble men
the beginning of a movement which, if permitted to go on and gather
strength, would one day sweep away all that it had taken the toils
and intrigues of centuries to achieve. He straightway commenced those
terrible crusades which wasted the sowers but watered the seed, and
helped to bring on, at its appointed hour, the catastrophe which he
sought to avert.

CHAPTER III.

FIRST PERSECUTIONS OF THE WALDENSES.

Their Unique Position in Christendom--Their Twofold Testimony--
They Witness against Rome and for Protestantism--Hated by
Rome--The Cottian Alps--Albigenses and Waldenses--The
Waldensian Territory Proper--Papal Testimony to the
Flourishing State of their Church in the Fourteenth
Century--Early Bulls against them--Tragedy of Christmas,
1400--Constancy of the Waldenses--Crusade of Pope Innocent
VIII.--His Bull of 1487---The Army Assembles--Two Frightful
Tempests approach the Valleys.

The Waldenses stand apart and alone in the Christian world. Their place
on the surface of Europe is unique; their position in history is not
less unique; and the end appointed them to fulfil is one which has been
assigned to them alone, no other people being permitted to share it
with them.

The Waldenses bear a twofold testimony. Like the snow-clad peaks amid
which their dwelling is placed, which look down upon the plains of
Italy on the one side, and the provinces of France on the other, this
people stand equally related to primitive ages and modern times, and
give by no means equivocal testimony respecting both Rome and the
Reformation. If they are old, then Rome is new; if they are pure,
then Rome is corrupt; and if they have retained the faith of the
apostles, it follows incontestably that Rome has departed from it.
That the Waldensian faith and worship existed many centuries before
Protestantism arose is undeniable; the proofs and monuments of this
fact lie scattered over all the histories and all the lands of mediæval
Europe; but the antiquity of the Waldenses is the antiquity of
Protestantism. The Church of the Reformation was in the loins of the
Waldensian Church ages before the birth of Luther; her first cradle was
placed amid those terrors and sublimities, those ice-clad peaks and
great bulwarks of rock. In their dispersions over so many lands--over
France, the Low Countries, Germany, Poland, Bohemia, Moravia, England,
Calabria, Naples--the Waldenses sowed the seeds of that great spiritual
revival which, beginning in the days of Wicliffe, and advancing in the
times of Luther and Calvin, awaits its full consummation in the ages to
come.

In the place which the Church of the Alps has held, and the office
she has discharged, we see the reason of that peculiar and bitter
hostility which Rome has ever borne this holy and venerable community.
It was natural that Rome should wish to efface so conclusive a proof
of her apostacy, and silence a witness whose testimony so emphatically
corroborates the position of Protestantism. The great bulwark of
the Reformed Church is the Word of God; but next to this is the
pre-existence of a community spread throughout Western Christendom,
with doctrines and worship substantially one with those of the
Reformation.

The persecutions of this remarkable people form one of the most heroic
pages of the Church’s history. These persecutions, protracted through
many centuries, were endured with a patience, a constancy, a bravery,
honourable to the Gospel as well as to those simple people, whom the
Gospel converted into heroes and martyrs. Their resplendent virtues
illumined the darkness of their age; and we turn with no little relief
from a Christendom sunk in barbarism and superstition to this remnant
of an ancient people, who here in their mountain-engirdled territory
practised the simplicity, the piety, and the heroism of a better age.
It is the main object of this work to deal with those persecutions of
the Waldenses which connect themselves with the Reformation and which
were, in fact, part of that mighty effort made by Rome to extinguish
Protestantism. But we must introduce ourselves to the great tragedy by
a brief notice of the attacks which led up to it.

That part of the Alpine chain which extends between Turin on the east
and Grenoble on the west is known as the Cottian Alps. This is the
dwelling-place of the Waldenses, the land of ancient Protestantism.
On the west the mountains slope towards the plains of France, and on
the east they run down to those of Piedmont. That line of glittering
summits, conspicuous among which is the lofty snow-clad peak of Monte
Viso on the west, and the craggy escarpments of Genèvre on the east,
forms the boundary between the Albigenses and the Waldenses, the
two bodies of these early witnesses. On the western slope were the
dwellings of the former people, and on the eastern those of the latter.
Not entirely so, however, for the Waldenses, crossing the summits,
had taken possession of the more elevated portion of the western
declivities, and scarcely was there a valley in which their villages
and sanctuaries were not to be found. But in the lower valleys, and
more particularly in the vast and fertile plains of Dauphiné and
Provence, spread out at the foot of the Alps, the inhabitants were
mainly of cis-Alpine or Gallic extraction, and are known in history as
the Albigenses. How flourishing they were, how numerous and opulent
their towns, how rich their corn-fields and vineyards, and how polished
the manners and cultured the genius of the people, we have already
said. Innocent III. exacted terrible expiation of them for their
attachment to a purer Christianity than that of Rome. He launched his
bull; he sent forth his inquisitors; and soon the fertility and beauty
of the region were swept away; city and sanctuary sank in ruins; and
the plains so recently covered with smiling fields were converted
into a desert. The work of destruction had been done with tolerable
completeness on the west of the Alps; and after a short pause it was
commenced on the east, it being resolved to pursue these confessors
of a pure faith across the mountains, and attack them in those grand
valleys which open into Italy, where they lay entrenched, as it were,
amid dense chestnut forests and mighty pinnacles of rock.

We place ourselves at the foot of the eastern declivity, about thirty
miles to the west of Turin. Behind us is the vast sweep of the plain
of Piedmont. Above us in front tower the Alps, here forming a crescent
of grand mountains, extending from the escarped summit that leans
over Pinerolo on the right, to the pyramidal peak of Monte Viso,
which cleaves the ebon like a horn of silver, and marks the farthest
limit of the Waldensian territory on the left. In the bosom of that
mountain crescent, shaded by its chestnut forests, and encircled by
its glittering peaks, are hung the famous valleys of that people whose
martyrdoms we are now to narrate.

In the centre of the picture, right before us, rises the pillar-like
Castelluzzo; behind it is the towering mass of the Vandalin; and in
front, as if to bar the way against the entrance of any hostile force
into this sacred territory, is drawn the long, low hill of Bricherasio,
feathery with woods, bristling with great rocks, and leaving open,
between its rugged mass and the spurs of Monte Friolante on the west,
only a narrow avenue, shaded by walnut and acacia trees, which leads up
to the point where the valleys, spreading out fan-like, bury themselves
in the mountains that open their stony arms to receive them. Historians
have enumerated some thirty persecutions enacted on this little spot.

One of the earliest dates in the martyr-history of this people is 1332,
or thereabouts, for the time is not distinctly marked. The reigning
Pope was John XXII. Desirous of resuming the work of Innocent III.,
he ordered the inquisitors to repair to the Valleys of Lucerna and
Perosa, and execute the laws of the Vatican against the heretics that
peopled them. What success attended the expedition is not known, and
we instance it chiefly on this account, that the bull commanding it
hears undesigned testimony to the then flourishing condition of the
Waldensian Church, inasmuch as it complains that synods, which the Pope
calls “chapters,” were wont to assemble in the Valley of Angrogna,
attended by 500 delegates.[12] This was before Wicliffe had begun his
career in England.

After this date scarcely was there a Pope who did not bear
unintentional testimony to their great numbers and wide diffusion.
In 1352 we find Pope Clement VI. charging the Bishop of Embrun, with
whom he associates a Francisan friar and inquisitor, to essay the
purification of those parts adjoining his diocese which were known
to be infected with heresy. The territorial lords and city syndics
were invited to aid him. While providing for the heretics of the
Valleys, the Pope did not overlook those farther off. He urged the
Dauphin, Charles of France, and Louis, King of Naples, to seek out
and punish those of their subjects who had strayed from the faith.
Clement referred doubtless to the Vaudois colonies, which are known to
have existed in that age at Naples. The fact that the heresy of the
Waldensian mountains extended to the plains at their feet, is attested
by the letter of the Pope to Joanna, wife of the King of Naples, who
owned lands in the Marquisate[13] of Saluzzo, near the Valleys, urging
her to purge her territory of the heretics that lived in it.

The zeal of the Pope, however, was but indifferently seconded by that
of the secular lords. The men they were enjoined to exterminate were
the most industrious and peaceable of their subjects; and willing as
they no doubt were to oblige the Pope, they were naturally averse to
incur so great a loss as would be caused by the destruction of the
flower of their populations. Besides, the princes of that age were
often at war among themselves, and had not much leisure or inclination
to make war on the Pope’s behalf. Therefore the Papal thunder sometimes
rolled harmlessly over the Valleys, and the mountain-home of these
confessors was wonderfully shielded till very nearly the era of the
Reformation. We find Gregory XI., in 1373, writing to Charles V.
of France, to complain that his officers thwarted his inquisitors
in Dauphiné; that the Papal judges were not permitted to institute
proceedings against the suspected without the consent of the civil
judge; and that the disrespect to the spiritual tribunal was sometimes
carried so far as to release condemned heretics from prison.[14]
Notwithstanding this leniency--so culpable in the eyes of Rome--on the
part of princes and magistrates, the inquisitors were able to make not
a few victims. These acts of violence provoked reprisals at times on
the part of the Waldenses. On one occasion (1375) the Popish city of
Susa was attacked, the Dominican convent forced, and the inquisitor put
to death. Other Dominicans were called to expiate their rigour against
the Vaudois with the penalty of their lives. An obnoxious inquisitor of
Turin is said to have been slain on the highway near Bricherasio.[15]

There came evil days to the Popes themselves. First, they were chased
to Avignon; next, the yet greater calamity of the “schism” befel
them; but their own afflictions had not the effect of softening their
hearts towards the confessors of the Alps. During the clouded era
of their “captivity,” and the tempestuous days of the schism, they
pursued with the same inflexible rigour their policy of extermination.
They were ever and anon fulminating their persecuting edicts, and
their inquisitors were scouring the Valleys in pursuit of victims. An
inquisitor of the name of Borelli had 150 Vaudois men, besides a great
number of women, girls, and even young children, brought to Grenoble
and burned alive.[16]

[Illustration: VIEW IN THE VALLEY OF ROUMEYER, DAUPHINÉ.]

The closing days of the year 1400 witnessed a terrible tragedy, the
memory of which has not been obliterated by the many greater which have
followed it. The scene of this catastrophe was the Valley of Pragelas,
one of the higher reaches of Perosa, which opens near Pinerolo, and
is watered by the Clusone. It was the Christmas of 1400, and the
inhabitants dreaded no attack, believing themselves sufficiently
protected by the snows which then lay deep on their mountains. They
were destined to experience the bitter fact that the rigours of the
season had not quenched the fire of their persecutor’s malice. Borelli,
at the head of an armed troop, broke suddenly into Pragelas, meditating
the entire extinction of its population. The miserable inhabitants fled
in haste to the mountains, carrying on their shoulders their old men,
their sick, and their infants, knowing what fate awaited them should
they leave them behind. In their flight a great many were overtaken
and slain. Nightfall brought them deliverance from the pursuit, but
no deliverance from horrors not less dreadful. The main body of the
fugitives wandered in the direction of Macel, in the storm-swept
and now ice-clad valley of San Martino, where they encamped on a
summit which has ever since, in memory of the event, borne the name
of the Alberge or Refuge. Without shelter, without food, the frozen
snow around them, the winter’s sky overhead, their sufferings were
inexpressibly great. When morning broke what a heartrending spectacle
did day disclose! Some of the miserable group lost their hands and feet
from frostbite; while others were stretched out on the snow, stiffened
corpses. Fifty young children, some say eighty, were found dead with
cold, some lying on the bare ice, others locked in the frozen arms of
their mothers, who had perished on that dreadful night along with their
babes.[17] In the Valley of Pragelas, to this day, sire recites to son
the tale of that Christmas tragedy.

The century, the opening of which had been so fearfully marked, passed
on amid continuous executions of the Waldenses. In the absence of
such catastrophes as that of Christmas, 1400, individual Vaudois were
kidnapped by the inquisitors, ever on the track for them, or waylaid,
whenever they ventured down into the plain of Piedmont, and were
carried to Turin and other towns, and burned alive. But Rome saw that
she was making no progress in the extermination of a heresy which had
found a seat amid these hills, as firm as it was ancient. The numbers
of the Waldenses were not thinned; their constancy was not shaken,
they still refused to enter the Roman Church, and they met all the
edicts and inquisitors, all the torturings and burnings of their great
persecutor, with a resistance as unyielding as that offered by their
rocks to the tempests of hail and snow which the whirlwinds of winter
hurl against them.

It was the year 1487. A great blow was meditated. The process of
purging the Valleys languished. Pope Innocent VIII., who then filled
the Papal chair, remembered how his renowned namesake, Innocent III.,
by an act of summary vengeance, had swept the Albigensian heresy from
the south of France. Imitating the vigour of his predecessor, he would
purge the Valleys as effectually and as speedily as Innocent III. had
done the plains of Dauphiné and Provence.

The first step of the Pope was to issue a bull, denouncing as heretical
those whom he delivered over to slaughter. This bull, after the
manner of all such documents, was expressed in terms as sanctimonious
as its spirit was inexorably cruel. It brings no charge against these
men, as lawless, idle, dishonest, or disorderly; their fault was that
they did not worship as Innocent worshipped, and that they practised
a “simulated sanctity,” which had the effect of seducing the sheep of
the true fold, therefore he orders “that malicious and abominable sect
of malignants,” if they “refuse to abjure, to be crushed like venomous
snakes.”[18]

To carry out his bull, Innocent VIII. appointed Albert Cataneo,
Archdeacon of Cremona, his legate, entrusting to him the chief conduct
of the enterprise. He fortified him, moreover, with Papal missives to
all princes, dukes, and powers, within whose dominions any Vaudois were
to be found. The Pope especially accredited him to Charles VIII. of
France and Charles II. of Savoy, commanding them to support him with
the whole power of their arms. The bull invited all Catholics to take
up the cross against the heretics; and to stimulate them in this pious
work it “absolved from all ecclesiastical pains and penalties, general
and particular; it released all who joined the crusade from any oaths
they might have taken; it legitimatised their title to any property
they might have illegally acquired; and promised remission of all their
sins to such as should kill any heretic. It annulled all contracts made
in favour of Vaudois, ordered their domestics to abandon them, forbade
all persons to give them any aid whatever, and empowered all persons to
take possession of their property.”

These were powerful incentives--plenary pardon and unrestrained
licence. They were hardly needed to awaken the zeal of the
neighbouring populations, always too ready to show their devotion to
Rome by spilling the blood and making a booty of the goods of the
Waldenses. The King of France and the Duke of Savoy lent a willing
ear to the summons from the Vatican. They made haste to unfurl their
banners, and enlist soldiers in this holy cause, and soon a numerous
army was on its march to sweep from the mountains where they had dwelt
from immemorial time, these confessors of the Gospel faith pure and
undefiled. In the train of this armed host came a motley crowd of
volunteers, “vagabond adventurers,” says Muston, “ambitious fanatics,
reckless pillagers, merciless assassins, assembled from all parts of
Italy”[19]--a horde of brigands in short, the worthy tools of the man
whose bloody work they were assembled to do.

Before all these arrangements were finished it was the month of June
of 1488. The Pope’s bull was talked of in all countries; and the
din of preparation rung far and near, for it was not only on the
Waldensian mountains, but on the Waldensian race, wherever dispersed,
in Germany, in Calabria, and in other countries, that this terrible
blow was to fall.[20] All kings were invited to gird on the sword,
and come to the help of the Church in the execution of her purpose of
effecting an extermination of her enemies that should never need to
be repeated. Wherever a Vaudois foot trod, the soil was polluted, and
had to be cleansed; wherever a Vaudois breathed, the air was tainted,
and must be purified; wherever Vaudois psalm or prayer ascended,
there was the infection of heresy, and around the spot a cordon must
be drawn to protect the spiritual health of the district. The Pope’s
bull was thus very universal in its application, and almost the only
people left ignorant of the commotion it had excited, and the bustle
of preparation it had called forth, were those poor men on whom this
terrible tempest was about to burst.

The joint army numbered about 18,000 regular soldiers. This force was
swelled by the thousands of ruffians, already mentioned, drawn together
by the spiritual and temporal rewards to be earned in this work of
combined piety and pillage.[21] The Piedmontese division of this host
directed their course towards the “Valleys” proper, on the Italian side
of the Alps. The French division, marching from the north, advanced to
attack the inhabitants of the Dauphinese Alps, where the Albigensian
heresy, recovering somewhat its terrible excision by Innocent III.,
had begun again to take root. Two storms, from opposite points, or
rather from all points, were approaching those mighty mountains, the
sanctuary and citadel of the primitive faith. That lamp is about to be
extinguished at last, which has burned here during so many ages, and
survived so many tempests. The mailed hand of the Pope is uplifted, and
we wait to see the blow fall.

CHAPTER IV.

CATANEO’S EXPEDITION (1488) AGAINST THE DAUPHINESE AND PIEDMONTESE
CONFESSORS.

The Confessors of the Dauphinese Alps--Attacked--Flee to Mont
Pelvoux--Retreat into a Cave--Are Suffocated--French
Crusaders Cross the Alps--Enter the Valley of Pragelas--
Piedmontese Army Advances against La Torre--Deputation of
Waldensian Patriarchs--The Valley of Lucerna--Villaro--Bobbio--
Cataneo’s Plan of Campaign--His Soldiers Cross the Col
Julien--Grandeurs of the Pass--Valley of Prali--Defeat of
Cataneo’s Expedition.

We see at this moment two armies on the march to attack the Christians
inhabiting the Cottian and Dauphinese Alps. The sword now unsheathed is
to be returned to its scabbard only when there breathes no longer in
these mountains a single confessor of the faith condemned in the bull
of Innocent VIII. The plan of the campaign was to attack at the same
time on two opposite points of the great mountain-chain; and advancing,
the one army from the south-east, and the other from the north-west, to
meet in the Valley of Angrogna, the centre of the territory, and there
strike the final blow. Let us follow first the French division of this
host, that which is advancing against the Alps of Dauphiné.

This portion of the crusaders was led by a daring and cruel man,
skilled in such adventures, the Lord of La Palu. He ascended the
mountains with his fanatics, and entered the Vale of Loyse, a deep
gorge overhung by towering mountains. The inhabitants, seeing an armed
force twenty times their own number enter their valley, despaired of
being able to resist them, and prepared for flight. They placed their
old people and children in rustic carts, together with their domestic
utensils, and such store of victuals as the urgency of the occasion
permitted them to collect, and driving their herds before them, they
began to climb the rugged slopes of Mount Pelvoux, which rises some six
thousand feet over the level of the valley. They sang canticles as they
climbed the steeps, which served at once to smooth their rugged path,
and to dispel their terrors. Not a few were overtaken and slaughtered,
and theirs was perhaps the happier lot.

About half-way up there is an immense cavern, called Aigue-Froid, from
the cold springs that gush out from its rocky walls. In front of the
cavern is a platform of rock, where the spectator sees beneath him only
fearful precipices, which must be clambered over before one can reach
the entrance to the grotto. The roof of the cave forms a magnificent
arch, which gradually subsides and contracts into a narrow passage, or
throat, and then widens once more, and forms a roomy hall of irregular
form. Into this grotto, as into an impregnable castle, did the Vaudois
enter. Their women, infants, and old men, they placed in the inner
hall; their cattle and sheep they distributed along the lateral
cavities of the grotto. The able-bodied men posted themselves at the
entrance. Having barricaded with huge stones both the doorway of the
cave and the path that led to it, they deemed themselves secure. They
had provisions to last, Cataneo says in his _Memoirs_, “two years;” and
it would cost them little effort to hurl headlong down the precipices
any one who should attempt to scale them in order to reach the entrance
of the cavern.

But a device of their pursuer rendered all these precautions and
defences vain. La Palu ascended the mountain on the other side, and
approaching the cave from above, let down his soldiers by ropes from
the precipice overhanging the entrance to the grotto. The platform in
front was thus secured by his soldiers. The Vaudois might have cut the
ropes and dispatched their foes as they were being lowered one by one,
but the boldness of the manœuvre would seem to have paralysed them.
They retreated into the cavern to find in it their grave. La Palu saw
the danger of permitting his men to follow them into the depths of
their hiding-place. He adopted the easier and safer method of piling up
at its entrance all the wood he could collect and setting fire to it. A
huge volume of black smoke began to roll into the cave, leaving to the
unhappy inmates the miserable alternative of rushing out and falling by
the sword that waited for them, or of remaining in the interior to be
stifled by the murky vapour.[22] Some rushed out, and were massacred;
but the greater part remained till death slowly approached them by
suffocation. “When the cavern was afterwards examined,” says Muston,
“there were found in it 400 infants, suffocated in their cradles, or
in the arms of their dead mothers. Altogether there perished in this
cavern more than 3,000 Vaudois, including the entire population of Val
Loyse. Cataneo distributed the property of these unfortunates among the
vagabonds who accompanied him, and never again did the Vaudois Church
raise its head in these bloodstained valleys.”[23]

The terrible stroke that fell on the Vale of Loyse was the shielding
of the neighbouring valleys of Argentière and Fraissinière. Their
inhabitants had been destined to destruction also, but the fate of
their co-religionists taught them that their only chance of safety lay
in resistance. Accordingly, barricading the passes of their valleys,
they showed such a front to the foe when he advanced, that he deemed it
prudent to turn away and leave them in peace. This devastating tempest
now swept along to discharge its violence on other valleys. “One would
have thought,” to use the words o£ Muston, “that the plague had passed
along the track over which its march lay: it was only the inquisitors.”

A detachment of the French army struck across the Alps in a south-east
direction, holding their course toward the Waldensian Valleys, there
to unite with the main body of the crusaders under Cataneo. They
slaughtered, pillaged, and burned as they went onward, and at last
arrived with dripping swords in the Valley of Pragelas.

The Valley of Pragelas, where we now see these assassins, sweeps
along, from almost the summit of the Alps, to the south, watered by
the rivers Clusone and Dora, and opens on the great plain of Piedmont,
having Pinerolo on the one side and Susa on the other. It was then
and long after under the dominion of France. “Prior to the revocation
of the Edict of Nantes,” says Muston, “the Vaudois of these valleys
[that is, Pragelas, and the lateral vales branching out from it]
possessed eleven parishes, eighteen churches, and sixty-four centres
of religious assembling, where worship was celebrated morning and
evening, in as many hamlets. It was in Laus, in Pragelas, that was held
the famous synod where, 200 years before the Protestant Reformation,
140 Protestant pastors assembled, each accompanied by two or three lay
deputies; and it was from the Val di Pragelas that the Gospel of God
made its way into France prior to the fifteenth century.”[24]

This was the valley of Pragelas which had been the scene of the
terrible tragedy of Christmas, 1400. Again terror, mourning, and death
were carried into it. The peaceful inhabitants, who were expecting no
such invasion, were busy reaping their harvests, when this horde of
assassins burst upon them. In the first panic they abandoned their
dwellings and fled. Many were overtaken and slain; hamlets and whole
villages were given to the flames; nor could the caves in which
multitudes sought refuge afford any protection. The horrible barbarity
of the Val Loyse was repeated in the Valley of Pragelas. Combustible
materials were piled up and fires kindled at the mouths of these
hiding-places; and when extinguished, all was silent within. Folded
together in one motionless heap lay mother and babe, patriarch and
stripling; while the fatal smoke, which had cast them into that deep
sleep, was eddying along the roof, and slowly making its exit into the
clear sunlit summer sky. But the course of this destruction was stayed.
After the first surprise the inhabitants took heart, and turning upon
their murderers drove them from their valley, exacting a heavy penalty
in the pursuit for the ravages they had committed in it.

We now turn to the Piedmontese portion of this army. It was led by the
Papal legate, Cataneo, in person. It was destined to operate against
those valleys in Piedmont which were the most ancient seat of these
religionists, and were deemed the stronghold of the Vaudois heresy.
Cataneo repaired to Pinerolo, which adjoins the frontier of the doomed
territory. Thence he dispatched a band of preaching monks to convert
the men of the Valleys. These missionaries returned without having, so
far as appears, made a single convert. The legate now put his soldiers
in motion. Traversing the glorious plain, the Clusone gleaming out
through rich corn-fields and vineyards on their left, and the mighty
rampart of the hills, with their chestnut forests, their pasturages and
snows, rising grandly on their right, and turning round the shoulder of
the copse-clad Bricherasio, this army, with another army of pillagers
and cut-throats in its rear, advanced up the long avenue that leads to
La Torre, the capital of the Valleys, and sat down before it. They
had come against a simple, unarmed people, who knew how to tend their
vines, and lead their herds to pasture, but were ignorant of the art of
war. It seemed as if the last hour of the Waldensian race had struck.

Seeing this mighty host before their Valleys, the Waldenses sent two
of their patriarchs to request an interview with Cataneo, and turn,
if possible, his heart to peace. John Campo and John Desiderio were
dispatched on this embassy. “Do not condemn us without hearing us,”
said they, “for we are Christians and faithful subjects; and our Barbes
are prepared to prove, in public or in private, that our doctrines are
conformable to the Word of God.... Our hope in God is greater than our
desire to please men; beware how you draw down upon yourselves His
anger by persecuting us; for remember that, if God so wills it, all the
forces you have assembled against us will nothing avail.”

These were weighty words, and they were meekly spoken, but as to
changing Cataneo’s purpose, or softening the hearts of the ruffian-host
which he led, they might as well have been addressed to the rocks which
rose around the speakers. Nevertheless, they fell not to the ground.

Cataneo, believing that the Vaudois herdsmen would not stand an hour
before his men-at-arms, and desirous of striking a finishing blow,
divided his army into a number of attacking parties, which were
to begin the battle on various points at the same time. The folly
of extending his line so as to embrace the whole territory led to
Cataneo’s destruction; but his strategy was rewarded with a few small
successes at first.

One troop was stationed at the entrance of the Val Lucerna; we shall
follow its march till it disappears on the mountains which it hopes
to conquer, and then we shall return and narrate the more decisive
operations of the campaign under Cataneo in the Val Angrogna.

The first step of the invaders was to occupy the town of La Torre,
situated on the angle formed by the junction of the Val Lucerna and
the Val Angrogna, the silver Pelice at its feet and the shadow of
the Castelluzzo covering it. The soldiers were probably spared the
necessity or denied the pleasure of slaughter, the inhabitants having
fled to the mountains. The valley beyond La Torre is too open to admit
of being defended, and the troop advanced along it unopposed. Than this
theatre of war nothing in ordinary times is more peaceful, nothing
more grand. A carpet of rich meadows clothes it from side to side;
fruitful trees fleck it with their shadows; the Pelice waters it; and
on either hand is a wall of mountains, whose sides display successive
zones of festooned vines, golden grain, dark chestnut forests, and rich
pasturages. Over these are hung stupendous battlements of rock; and
above all, towering high in air, are the everlasting peaks in their
robes of ice and snow. But the sublimities of nature were nothing to
men whose thoughts were only of blood.

Pursuing their march up the valley, the soldiers next came to Villaro.
It is situated about midway between the entrance and head of Lucerna,
on a ledge of turf in the side of the great mountains, raised some 200
feet above the Pelice, which flows past at about a quarter of a mile’s
distance. The troop had little difficulty in taking possession. Most
of the inhabitants, warned of the approach of danger, had fled to the
Alps. What Cataneo’s troops inflicted on those who had been unable to
make their escape, no history records. The half of Lucerna, with the
towns of La Torre and Villaro and their hamlets, was in the occupation
of Cataneo’s soldiers; their march so far had been a victorious one,
though certainly not a glorious one, such victories as they had gained
being only over unarmed peasants and bed-rid women.

Resuming their march the troop came next to Bobbio. The name of Bobbio
is not unknown in classic story. It nestles at the base of gigantic
cliffs, where the lofty summit of the Col la Croix points the way to
France, and overhangs a path which apostolic feet may have trodden. The
Pelice is seen forcing its way through the dark gorges of the mountains
in a thundering torrent, and meandering in a flood of silver along the
valley.

At this point the grandeur of the Val Lucerna attains its height.
Let us pause to survey the scene that must here have met the eyes of
Cataneo’s soldiers, and which, one would suppose, might have turned
them from their cruel purpose. Immediately behind Bobbio shoots up the
“Barion,” symmetrical as Egyptian obelisk, but far taller and more
massive. Its summit rises 3,000 feet above the roofs of the little
town. Compared with this majestic monolith the proudest monument of
Europe’s proudest capital is a mere toy. Yet even the Barion is but
one item in this assemblage of glories. Overtopping it behind, and
sweeping round the extremity of the valley, is a glorious amphitheatre
of crags and precipices, enclosed by a background of great mountains,
some rounded like domes, others sharp as needles; and rising out of
this sea of hills, are the grander and loftier forms of the Alp des
Rousses and the Col de Malaure, which guard the gloomy pass that winds
its way through splintered rocks and under overhanging precipices, till
it opens into the valleys of the French Protestants, and lands the
traveller on the plains of Dauphiné. In this unrivalled amphitheatre
sits Bobbio, in summer buried in blossoms and fruit, and in winter
wrapped in the shadows of its great mountains, and the mists of their
tempests. What a contrast between the still repose and grand sublimity
of nature and the dreadful errand on which the men now pressing forward
to the little town are bent! To them nature speaks in vain! they are
engrossed with but one thought.

[Illustration: VIEW OF LA TORRE.]

The capture of Bobbio--an easy task--put the soldiers in possession
of the entire Valley of Lucerna; its inhabitants had been chased to
the Alps, or their blood mingled with the waters of their own Pelice.
Other and remoter expeditions were now projected. Their plan was to
traverse the Col Julien, sweep down on the Valley of Prali, which lies
on the north of it, chastise its inhabitants, pass on to the Valleys
of San Martino and Perosa, and pursuing the circuit of the Valleys,
and clearing the ground as they went onward of its inveterate heresy,
at least of its heretics, join the main body of crusaders, who, they
expected, would by this time have finished their work in the Valley of
Angrogna, and all together celebrate their victory. They would then be
able to say that they had gone the round of the Waldensian territory,
and had at last effected the long-meditated work, so often attempted,
but hitherto in vain, of the utter extirpation of its heresy. But the
war was destined to have a very different termination.

The expedition across the Col Julien was immediately commenced. A corps
of 700 men was detached from the army in Lucerna for this service.[25]
The ascent of the mountain opens immediately on the north side of
Bobbio. We see the soldiers toiling upwards on the track, which is a
mere foot-path formed by the herdsmen. At every short distance they
pass the thick-planted châlets and hamlets sweetly embowered amid
mantling vines, or the branches of the apple and cherry tree, or the
goodlier chestnut; but the inhabitants have fled. They have now reached
a great height on the mountainside. Beneath is Bobbio, a speck of
brown. There is the Valley of Lucerna, a ribbon of green, with a thread
of silver woven into it, and lying along amid masses of mighty rocks.
There, across Lucerna, are the great mountains that enclose the Valley
of Rora, standing up in the silent sky; on the right are the spiky
crags that bristle along the Pass of Mirabouc, that leads to France,
and yonder in the east is a glimpse of the far-extending Plains of
Piedmont.

But the summit is yet a long way off, and the soldiers of the Papal
legate, bearing their weapons, to be employed, not in venturesome
battle, but in cowardly massacre, toil up the ascent. As they gain on
the mountain, they look down on pinnacles which half an hour before
had looked down on them. Other heights, tall as the former, still
rise above them; they climb to these airy spires, which in their turn
sink beneath their feet. This process they repeat again and again,
and at last they come out upon the downs that clothe the shoulders
of the mountain. Now it is that the scene around them becomes one of
stupendous and inexpressible grandeur. Away to the east, now fully
under the eye, is the plain of Piedmont, green as meadow, and level as
ocean. At their feet yawn gorges and abysses, while spiky pinnacles
peer up from below as if to buttress the mountain. The horizon is
filled with Alpine peaks, conspicuous among which, on the east, is the
Col la Vechera, whose snow-clad summit draws the eye to the more than
classic valley over which it towers, where the Barbes in ancient days
were wont to assemble in synod, and whence their missionaries went
forth, at the peril of life, to distribute the Scriptures and sow the
seed of the Kingdom. It was not unmarked, doubtless, by this corps,
forming, as they meant it should do, the terminating point of their
expedition in the Val di Angrogna. On the west, the crowning glory of
the scene was Monte Viso, standing up in bold relief in the ebon vault,
in a robe of silver. But in vain had Nature spread out her magnificence
before men who had neither eyes to see nor hearts to feel her glory.

Climbing on their hands and knees the steep grassy slope in which the
pass terminates, they looked down from the summit on the Valley of
Prali, at that moment a scene of peace. Its great snow-clad hills,
conspicuous among which is the Col d’Abries, kept guard around it.
Down their sides rolled foaming torrents, which, uniting in the valley,
flowed along in a full and rapid river. Over the bosom of the plain
were scattered numerous hamlets. Suddenly on the mountains above had
gathered this flock of vultures that with greedy eyes were looking
down upon their prey. Impatient to begin their work, the 700 assassins
rushed down on the plain.

The troop had reckoned that, no tidings of their approach having
reached this secluded valley, they would fall upon its unarmed peasants
as falls the avalanche, and crush them. But it was not to be so.
Instead of fleeing, panic-struck, as the invaders expected, the men
of Prali hastily assembled, and stood to their defence. Battle was
joined at the hamlet of Pommiers. The weapons of the Vaudois were
rude, but their trust in God, and their indignation at the cowardly
and bloody assault, gave them strength and courage. The Piedmontese
soldiers, wearied with the rugged, slippery tracks they had traversed,
fell beneath the blows of their opponents. Every man of them was cut
down with the exception of one ensign.[26] Of all the 700, he alone
survived. During the carnage, he made his escape, and ascending the
banks of a mountain torrent, he crept into a cavity which the summer
heats had formed in a mass of snow. There he remained hid for some
days; at last, cold and hunger drove him forth to cast himself upon the
mercy of the men of Prali. They were generous enough to pardon this
solitary survivor of the host that had come to massacre them. They sent
him back across the Col Julien, to tell those from whom he had come
that the Vaudois had courage to fight for their hearths and altars, and
that of the army of 700 which they had sent to slay them, he only had
escaped to carry tidings of the fate which had befallen his companions.

CHAPTER V.

FAILURE OF CATANEO’S EXPEDITION.

The Valley of Angrogna--An Alternative--The Waldenses
Prepare for Battle--Cataneo’s Repulse--His Rage--He
Renews the Attempt--Enters Angrogna with his Army--
Advances to the Barrier--Enters the Chasm--The Waldenses
on the point of being Cut to Pieces--The Mountain
Mist--Deliverance--Utter Rout of the Papal Army--Pool of
Saquet--Sufferings of the Waldenses--Extinction of the
Invading Host--Deputation to their Prince--Vaudois
Children--Peace.

The camp of Cataneo was pitched almost at the gates of La Torre,
beneath the shadow of the Castelluzzo. The Papal legate is about to
try to force his way into the Val di Angrogna. This valley opens hard
by the spot where the legate had established his camp, and runs on
for a dozen miles into the Alps, a magnificent succession of narrow
gorges and open dells, walled throughout by majestic mountains, and
terminating in a noble circular basin--the Pra del Tor--which is set
round with snowy peaks, and forms the most venerated spot in all the
Waldensian territory, inasmuch as it was the seat of their college, and
the meeting-place of their Barbes.

In the Pra del Tor, or Meadow of the Tower, Cataneo expected to
surprise the mass of the Waldensian people, now gathered into it as
being the strongest refuge which their hills afforded. There, too, he
expected to be joined by the corps which he had sent round by Lucerna
to make the circuit of the Valleys, and after devastating Prali and San
Martino, to climb the mountain barrier and join their companions in
the Pra, little imagining that the soldiers he had dispatched on that
errand of massacre were now enriching with their corpses the Valleys
they had been sent to subdue. In that same spot where the Barbes had
so often met in synod, and enacted rules for the government of their
Church and the spread of their faith, the Papal legate would reunite
his victorious host, and finish the campaign by proclaiming that now
the Waldensian heresy, root and branch, was extinct.

The Waldenses--their humble supplication for peace having been
contemptuously rejected, as we have already said--had three courses in
their choice--to go to mass, to be butchered as sheep, or to fight for
their lives. They chose the last, and made ready for battle. But first
they must remove to a place of safety all who were unable to bear arms.

Packing up their kneading-troughs, their ovens, and other culinary
utensils, laying their aged on their shoulders, and their sick in
couches, and leading their children by the hand, they began to climb
the hills, in the direction of the Pra del Tor, at the head of the Val
di Angrogna. Transporting their household stuff, they could be seen
traversing the rugged paths, and making the mountains resound with
psalms, which they sweetly sung as they journeyed up the ascent. Those
who remained busied themselves in manufacturing pikes and other weapons
of defence and attack, in repairing the barricades, in arranging
themselves into fighting parties, and assigning to the various corps
the posts they were to defend.

Cataneo now put his soldiers in motion. Advancing to near the town of
La Torre, they made a sharp turn to the right, and entered the Val
di Angrogna. Its opening offers no obstruction, being soft and even
as any meadow in all England. By-and-by it begins to swell into the
heights of Rocomaneot, where the Vaudois had resolved to make a stand.
Their fighting men were posted along its ridge. Their army was of the
simplest. The bow was almost their only weapon of attack. They wore
bucklers of skin, covered with the bark of the chestnut-tree, the
better to resist thrust of pike or cut of sword. In the hollow behind,
protected by the rising ground on which their fathers, husbands, and
brothers were posted, were a number of women and children, gathered
there for shelter. The Piedmontese host pressed up the acclivity,
discharging a shower of arrows as they advanced, and the Waldensian
line on which these missiles fell, seemed to waver, and to be on the
point of giving way. Those behind, espying the danger, fell on their
knees and, extending their hands in supplication to the God of battles,
cried aloud, “O God of our fathers, help us! O God, deliver us!” That
cry was heard by the attacking host, and especially by one of its
captains, Le Noir of Mondovi, or the Black Mondovi, a proud, bigoted,
bloodthirsty man. He instantly shouted out that his soldiers would give
the answer, accompanying his threat with horrible blasphemies. The
Black Mondovi raised his visor as he spoke. At the instant an arrow
from the bow of Pierre Revel, of Angrogna, entering between his eyes,
transfixed his skull, and he fell on the earth a corpse. The fall of
this daring leader disheartened the Papal army. The soldiers began to
fall back. They were chased down the slopes by the Vaudois, who now
descended upon them like one of their own mountain torrents. Having
driven their invaders to the plain, cutting off not a few in their
flight, they returned as the evening began to fall, to celebrate with
songs, on the heights where they had won it, the victory with which it
had pleased the God of their fathers to crown their arms.

Cataneo burned with rage and shame at being defeated by these herdsmen.
In a few days, reassembling his host, he made a second attempt to enter
the Angrogna. This promised to be successful. He passed the height of
Rocomaneot, where he had encountered his first defeat, without meeting
any resistance. He led his soldiers into the narrow defiles beyond.
Here great rocks overhang the path: mighty chestnut-trees fling their
branches across the way, veiling it in gloom, and far down thunders
the torrent that waters the valley. Still advancing, he found himself,
without fighting, in possession of the ample and fruitful expanse into
which, these defiles passed, the valley opens. He was now master so far
of the Val di Angrogna, comprehending the numerous hamlets, with their
finely cultivated fields and vineyards, on the left of the torrent.
But he had seen none of the inhabitants. These, he knew, were with
the men of Lucerna in the Pra del Tor. Between him and his prey rose
the “Barricade,” a steep unscaleable mountain, which runs like a wall
across the valley, and forms a rampart to the famous “Meadow,” which
combines the solemnity of sanctuary with the strength of citadel.

Must the advance of the Papal legate and his army here end? It seemed
as if it must. Cataneo was in a vast _cul-de-sac_. He could see the
white peaks round the Pra, but between him and the Pra itself rose,
in Cyclopean strength and height, the Barricade. He searched and,
unhappily for himself, found an entrance. Some convulsion of nature has
here rent the mountains, and through the long, narrow, and dark chasm
thus formed lies the one only path that leads to the head of Angrogna.
The leader of the Papal host boldly ordered his men to enter and
traverse this frightful gorge, not knowing how few of them he should
ever lead back. The only pathway through this chasm is a rocky ledge
on the side of the mountain, so narrow that not more than two abreast
can advance along it. If assailed either in front, or in rear, or
from above, there is absolutely no retreat. Nor is there room for the
party attacked to fight. The pathway is hung midway between the bottom
of the gorge, along which rolls the stream, and the summit of the
mountain. Here the naked cliff runs sheer up for at least one thousand
feet; there it leans over the path in stupendous masses, which look
as if about to fall. Here lateral fissures admit the golden beams of
the sun, which relieve the darkness of the pass, and make it visible.
There a half-acre or so of level space gives standing-room on the
mountain’s side to a clump of birches, with their tall silvery trunks,
or a châlet, with its bit of bright close-shaven meadow. But these only
partially relieve the terrors of the chasm, which runs on from one to
two miles, when, with a burst of light, and a sudden flashing of white
peaks on the eye, it opens into an amphitheatre of meadow of dimensions
so goodly, that an entire nation might find room to encamp in it.

It was into this terrible defile that the soldiers of the Papal legate
now marched. They kept advancing, as best they could, along the narrow
ledge. They were now nearing the Pra. It seemed impossible for their
prey to escape them. Assembled on this spot the Waldensian people had
but one neck, and the Papal soldiers, so Cataneo believed, were to
sever that neck at a blow. But God was watching over the Vaudois. He
had said of the Papal legate and his army, as of another tyrant of
former days, “I will put my hook in thy nose, and my bridle in thy
lips, and I will cause thee to return by the way by which thou camest.”
But by what agency was the advance of that host to be stayed? Will
some mighty angel smite Cataneo’s army, as he did Sennacherib’s? No
angel blockaded the pass. Will thunder-bolts and hailstones be rained
upon Cataneo’s soldiers, as of old on Sisera’s? The thunders slept;
the hail fell not. Will earthquake and whirlwind discomfit them?
No earthquake rocked the ground; no whirlwinds rent the mountains.
The instrumentality now put in motion to shield the Vaudois from
destruction was one of the lightest and frailest in all nature; yet no
bars of adamant could have more effectually shut the pass, and brought
the march of the host to an instant halt.

A white cloud, no bigger than a man’s hand, unobserved by the
Piedmontese, but keenly watched by the Vaudois, was seen to gather
on the mountain’s summit, about the time the army would be entering
the defile. That cloud grew rapidly bigger and blacker. It began to
descend. It came rolling down the mountain’s side, wave on wave, like
an ocean tumbling out of heaven--a sea of murky vapour. It fell right
into the chasm in which was the Papal army, sealing it up, and filling
it from top to bottom with a thick black fog. In a moment the host were
in night; they were bewildered, stupefied, and could see neither before
nor behind, could neither advance nor retreat. They halted in a state
bordering on terror.[27]

The Waldenses interpreted this as an interposition of Providence
in their behalf. It had given them the power of repelling the
invader. Climbing the slopes of the Pra, and issuing from all their
hiding-places in its environs, they spread themselves over the
mountains, the paths of which were familiar to them, and while the
host stood riveted beneath them, caught in the double toils of the
defile and the mist, they tore up huge stones and rocks, and sent them
thundering down into the ravine. The Papal soldiers were crushed where
they stood. Nor was this all. Some of the Waldenses boldly entered the
chasm, sword in hand, and attacked them in front. Consternation seized
the Piedmontese host. Panic impelled them to flee, but their effort
to escape was more fatal than the sword of the Vaudois, or the rocks
that, swift as arrow, came bounding down the mountain. They jostled one
another; they threw each other down in the struggle; some were trodden
to death; others were rolled over the precipice, and crushed on the
rocks below, or drowned in the torrent, and so perished miserably.[28]

The fate of one of these invaders has been preserved in story. He was
a certain Captain Saquet, a man, it is said, of gigantic stature, from
Polonghera, in Piedmont. He began, like his Philistine prototype, to
vent curses on the Waldensian dogs. The words were yet in his mouth
when his foot slipped. Rolling over the precipice, and tumbling into
the torrent of the Angrogna, he was carried away by the stream, and
his body finally deposited in a deep eddy or whirlpool, called in the
_patois_ of the country a “tompie,” from the noise made by its waters.
It bears to this day the name of the Tompie de Saquet, or Gulf of
Saquet.[29]

This war hung above the Valleys, like a cloud of tempest, for a whole
year. It inflicted much suffering and loss upon the Waldenses; their
homes were burned, their fields devastated, their goods carried off,
and their persons slain; but the invaders suffered heavier losses than
they inflicted. Of the 18,000 regular troops, to which we may add about
an equal number of desperadoes, with which the campaign opened, few
ever returned to their homes. They left their bones on the mountains
they had come to subdue. They were cut off mostly in detail. They
were led weary chases from valley to mountain and from mountain to
valley. The rocks rolled upon them gave them at once death and burial.
They were met in narrow defiles and cut to pieces. Flying parties of
Waldenses would suddenly issue from the mist, or from some cave known
only to themselves, attack and discomfit the foe, and then as suddenly
retreat into the friendly vapour or the sheltering rock. Thus it came
to pass that, in the words of Muston, “this army of invaders vanished
from the Vaudois mountains as rain in the sands of the desert.”[30]

“God,” says Leger, “turned the heart of their prince toward this poor
people.” He sent a prelate to their Valleys, to assure them of his
good-will, and to intimate his wish to receive their deputies. They
sent twelve of their more venerable men to Turin, who being admitted
into the duke’s presence, gave him such an account of their faith,
that he candidly confessed that he had been misled in what he had done
against them, and would not again suffer such wrongs to be inflicted
upon them. He several times said that he “had not so virtuous, so
faithful, and so obedient subjects as the Vaudois.”[31]

He caused the deputies a little surprise by expressing a wish to see
some of the Vaudois children. Twelve infants, with their mothers, were
straightway sent for from the valley of Angrogna, and presented before
the prince. He examined them narrowly. He found them well formed, and
testified his admiration of their healthy faces, clear eyes and lively
prattle. He had been told, he said, that “the Vaudois children were
monsters, with only one eye placed in the middle of the forehead, four
rows of black teeth, and other similar deformities.”[32]

The prince, Charles II., a youth of only twenty years, but humane and
wise, confirmed the privileges and immunities of the Vaudois, and
dismissed them with his promise that they should be unmolested in the
future.[33] The Churches of the Valleys now enjoyed a short respite
from persecution.

CHAPTER VI.

SYNOD IN THE WALDENSIAN VALLEYS.

The Old Vine seems Dying--New Life--The Reformation--Tidings
Reach the Waldenses--They Send Deputies into Germany and
Switzerland to Inquire--Joy of Œcolampadius--His Admonitory
Letter--Waldensian Deputies at Strasburg--The Two Churches a
Wonder to each other--Martyrdom of One of the Deputies,
Resolution to Call a Synod in the Valleys--Its Catholic
Character--Spot where it Met--Confession of Faith
framed--The Spirit of the Vaudois Revives--They Rebuild
their Churches, &c.--Journey of Farel and Saunier to the
Synod.

The Duke of Savoy was sincere in the promise that the Vaudois should
not be disturbed, but fully to make it good was not altogether in his
power. He could take care that such armies of crusaders as that which
mustered under the standard of Cataneo should not invade their Valleys,
but he could not guard them from the secret machinations of the
priesthood. In the absence of the armed crusader, the missionary and
the inquisitor assailed them. Some were seduced, others were kidnapped,
and carried off to the Holy Office. To these annoyances was added
the yet greater evil of a decaying piety. A desire for repose made
many conform outwardly to the Romish Church. “In order to be shielded
from all interruption in their journeys on business, they obtained
from the priests, who were settled in the Valleys, certificates or
testimonials of their being Papists.”[34] To obtain this credential it
was necessary to attend the Romish chapel, to confess, to go to mass,
and to have their children baptised by the priests. For this shameful
and criminal dissimulation they fancied they made amends by muttering
to themselves when they entered the Romish temples, “Cave of robbers,
may God confound thee!”[35] At the same time they continued to attend
the preaching of the Vaudois pastors, and to submit themselves to their
censures. But beyond all question the men who practised these deceits,
and the Church that tolerated them, had greatly declined. That old vine
seemed to be dying. A little while and it would disappear from off
those mountains which it had so long covered with the shadow of its
boughs.

[Illustration: VIEW IN TURIN.]

But He who had planted it “looked down from heaven and visited it.”
It was now that the Reformation broke out. The river of the Water of
Life was opened a second time, and began to flow through Christendom.
The old and dying stock in the Alps, drinking of the celestial stream,
lived anew; its boughs began to be covered with blossoms and fruit as
of old.

The Reformation had begun its career, and had already stirred most of
the countries of Europe to their depths before tidings of the mighty
change reached these secluded mountains. When at last the great news
was announced, the Vaudois “were as men who dreamed.” Eager to have
them confirmed, and to know to what extent the yoke of Rome had been
cast off by the nations of Europe, they sent forth Pastor Martin, of
the valley of Lucerna, on a mission of inquiry. In 1526 he returned
with the amazing intelligence that the light of the old Evangel had
broken on Germany, on Switzerland, on France, and that every day was
adding to the number of those who openly professed the same doctrines
to which the Vaudois had borne witness from ancient times. To attest
what he said, he produced the books he had received in Germany
containing the views of the Reformers.[36]

The remnant of the Vaudois on the north of the Alps also sent out
men to collect information respecting that great spiritual revolution
which had so surprised and gladdened them. In 1530 the Churches of
Provence and Dauphiné commissioned George Morel, of Merindol, and
Pierre Masson, of Bergundy, to visit the Reformers of Switzerland and
Germany, and bring them word touching their doctrine and manner of
life. The deputies met in conference with the members of the Protestant
Churches of Neuchâtel, Morat, and Bern. They had also interviews with
Berthold Haller and William Farel. Going on to Basle they presented
to Œcolampadius, in October, 1530, a document in Latin, containing a
complete account of their ecclesiastical discipline, worship, doctrine,
and manners. They begged in return that Œcolampadius would say whether
he approved of the order and doctrine of their Church, and if he held
it to be defective, to specify in what points, and to what extent. The
elder Church submitted itself to the younger.

The visit of these two pastors of this ancient Church gave unspeakable
joy to the Reformer of Basle. He heard in them the voice of the
primitive and apostolic Church speaking to the Christians of the
sixteenth century, and bidding them welcome within the gates of
the City of God. What a miracle was before him! For ages had this
Church been in the fires, yet she had not been consumed. Was not this
encouragement to those who were just entering into persecutions not
less terrific? “We render thanks,” said Œcolampadius in his letter,
October 13th, 1530, to the Churches of Provence, “to our most gracious
Father that he has called you into such marvellous light, during ages
in which such thick darkness has covered almost the whole world under
the empire of Antichrist. We love you as brethren.”

But his affection for them did not blind him to their declensions,
nor make him withhold those admonitions which he saw to be needed.
“As we approve of many things among you,” he wrote, “so there are
several which we wish to see amended. We are informed that the fear of
persecution has caused you to dissemble and to conceal your faith....
There is no concord between Christ and Belial. You commune with
unbelievers; you take part in their abominable masses, in which the
death and passion of Christ are blasphemed.... I know your weakness,
but it becomes those who have been redeemed by the blood of Christ to
be more courageous. It is better for us to die than to be overcome
by temptation.” It was thus that Œcolampadius, speaking in the name
of the Church of the Reformation, repaid the Church of the Alps for
the services she had rendered to the world in former ages. By sharp,
faithful, brotherly rebuke, he sought to restore to her the purity and
glory which she had lost.

Having finished with Œcolampadius, the deputies went on to Strasburg.
There they had interviews with Bucer and Capito. A similar statement
of their faith to the Reformers of that city drew forth similar
congratulations and counsels. In the clear light of her morning the
Reformation Church saw many things which had grown dim in the evening
of the Vaudois Church; and the Reformers willingly permitted their
elder sister the benefit of their own wider views. If the men of the
sixteenth century recognised the voice of primitive Christianity
speaking in the Vaudois, the latter heard the voice of the Bible,
or rather of God himself, speaking in the Reformers, and submitted
themselves with modesty and docility to their reproofs. The last had
become first.

A manifold interest belongs to the meeting of these two Churches. Each
is a miracle to the other. The preservation of the Vaudois Church for
so many ages, amid the fires of persecution, made her a wonder to the
Church of the sixteenth century. The bringing up of the latter from
the dead made her a yet greater wonder to the Church of the first
century. These two Churches compare their respective beliefs: they find
that their creeds are not twain, but one. They compare the sources of
their knowledge: they find that they have both of them drawn their
doctrine from the Word of God; they are not two Churches, they are one.
They are the elder and younger members of the same glorious family, the
children of the same Father. What a magnificent monument of the true
antiquity and genuine catholicity of Protestantism!

Only one of the two Provence deputies returned from their visit to the
Reformers of Switzerland. On their way back, at Dijon, suspicion, from
some cause or other, fell on Pierre Masson. He was thrown into prison,
and ultimately condemned and burned. His fellow-deputy was allowed to
go on his way. George Morel, bearing the answers of the Reformers, and
especially the letters of Œcolampadius, happily arrived in safety in
Provence.

The documents he brought with him were much canvassed. Their contents
caused these two ancient Churches mingled joy and sorrow; the former,
however, greatly predominating. The news touching the numerous body
of Christians, now appearing in many lands, so full of knowledge,
and faith, and courage, was literally astounding. The confessors of
the Alps thought that they were alone in the world; every successive
century saw their numbers thinning, and their spirit growing less
resolute; their ancient enemy, on the other hand, was steadfastly
widening her dominion and strengthening her sway. A little longer, they
imagined, and all public faithful profession of the Gospel would cease.
It was at that moment they were told that a new army of champions had
arisen to maintain the old battle. This announcement explained and
justified the past to them, for now they beheld the fruits of their
fathers’ blood. They who had fought the battle were not to have the
honour of the victory. That was reserved for combatants who had newly
come into the field. They had forfeited this reward, they painfully
felt, by their defections; hence the regret that mingled with their joy.

They proceeded to discuss the answers that should be made to the
Churches of the Protestant faith, considering especially whether they
should adopt the reforms urged upon them in the communications which
their deputies had brought back from the Swiss and German Reformers.
The great majority of the Vaudois barbes were of opinion that they
ought. A small minority, however, were opposed to this, because they
thought that it did not become the new disciples to dictate to the
old, or because they themselves were secretly inclined to the Roman
superstitions. They went back again to the Reformers for advice;
and, after repeated interchange of views, it was finally resolved to
convene a synod in the Valleys, at which all the questions between
the two Churches might be debated, and the relations which they were
to sustain towards each other in time to come, determined. If the
Church of the Alps was to continue apart, as before the Reformation,
she felt that she must justify her position by proving the existence
of great and substantial differences in doctrine between herself and
the newly-arisen Church. But if no such differences existed, she would
not, and dared not, remain separate and alone; she must unite with the
Church of the Reformation.

It was resolved that the coming synod should be a truly œcumenical
one--a general assembly of all the children of the Protestant faith. A
hearty invitation was sent forth, and it was cordially and generally
responded to. All the Waldensian Churches in the bosom of the Alps were
represented in this synod. The Albigensian communities on the north
of the chain, and the Vaudois Churches in Calabria, sent deputies to
it. The Churches of French Switzerland chose William Farel and Anthony
Saunier to attend it.[37] From even more distant lands, as Bohemia,
came men to deliberate and vote in this famous convention.

The representatives assembled on the 12th of October, 1532. Two years
earlier the Augsburg Confession had been given to the world, marking
the culmination of the German Reformation. A year before, Zwingle had
died on the field of Cappel. In France, the Reformation was beginning
to be illustrated by the heroic deaths of its children. Calvin had
not taken his prominent place at Geneva, but he was already enrolled
under the Protestant banner. The princes of the Schmalkald League were
standing at bay in the presence of Charles V. It was a critical yet
glorious era in the annals of Protestantism which saw this assembly
convened. It met at the town of Chamforans, in the heart of the Valley
of Angrogna. There are few grander or stronger positions in all that
valley than the site occupied by this little town. The approach to it
was defended by the heights of Rocomaneot and La Serre, and by defiles
which now contract, now widen, but are everywhere overhung by great
rocks and mighty chestnut trees, behind and above which rise the taller
peaks, some of them snow-clad. A little beyond La Serre is the plateau
on which the town stood, overlooking the grassy bosom of the valley,
which is watered by the crystal torrent, dotted by numerous châlets,
and runs on for about two miles, till shut in by the steep, naked
precipices of the Barricade, which, stretching from side to side of
Angrogna, leaves only the long, dark chasm we have already described,
as the pathway to the Pra del Tor, whose majestic mountains here rise
on the sight and suggest to the traveller the idea that he is drawing
nigh some city of celestial magnificence. The town of Chamforans does
not now exist; its only representative at this day is a solitary
farmhouse.

The synod sat for six consecutive days. All the points raised in the
communications received from the Protestant Churches were freely
discussed by the assembled barbes and elders. Their findings were
embodied in a “Short Confession of Faith,” which Monastier says “may be
considered as a supplement to the ancient Confession of Faith of the
year 1120, which it does not contradict in any point.”[38] It consists
of seventeen articles,[39] the chief of which are the _Moral inability
of man; election to eternal life; the will of God, as made known in the
Bible, the only rule of duty; and the doctrine of two Sacraments only,
Baptism and the Lord’s Supper_.

The lamp which had been on the point of expiring began, after this
synod, to burn with its former brightness. The ancient spirit of the
Waldenses revived. They no longer practised those dissimulations
and cowardly concealments to which they had had recourse to avoid
persecution. They no longer feared to confess their faith. Henceforward
they were never seen at mass, or in the Popish churches. They refused
to recognise the priests of Rome as ministers of Christ, and under no
circumstances would they receive any spiritual benefit or service at
their hands.

Another sign of the new life that now animated the Vaudois was their
setting about the work of rebuilding their churches. For fifty years
before, public worship may be said to have ceased in their Valleys.
Their churches had been razed by the persecutor, and the Vaudois feared
to rebuild them lest they should draw down upon themselves a new
storm of violence and blood. A cave would serve at times as a place
of meeting. In more peaceful years the house of their barbe, or of
some of their chief men, would be converted into a church; and when
the weather was fine, they would assemble on the mountain side, under
the great boughs of their ancestral trees. But their old sanctuaries
they dared not raise from the ruins into which the persecutor had cast
them. They might say with the ancient Jews, “The holy and beautiful
house in which our fathers praised Thee is burned with fire, and all
our pleasant things are laid waste.” But now, strengthened by the
fellowship and counsels of their Protestant brethren, churches arose,
and the worship of God was reinstituted. Hard by the place where the
synod met, at Lorenzo, namely, was the first of these post-Reformation
churches set up; others speedily followed in the other valleys; pastors
were multiplied; crowds flocked to their preaching, and not a few came
from the plains of Piedmont, and from remote parts of their valleys, to
drink of these living waters again flowing in their land.

Yet another token did this old Church give of the vigorous life
that was now flowing in her veins. This was a translation of the
Scriptures into the French tongue. At the synod, the resolution
was taken to translate and print both the Old and New Testaments,
and, as this was to be done at the sole charge of the Vaudois, it
was considered as their gift to the Churches of the Reformation. A
most appropriate and noble gift! That Book which the Waldenses had
received from the primitive Church--which their fathers had preserved
with their blood--which their barbes had laboriously transcribed and
circulated--they now put into the hands of the Reformers, constituting
them along with themselves the custodians of this, the ark of the
world’s hopes. Robert Olivetan, a near relative of Calvin, was asked
to undertake the translation, and he executed it with the help of
his great kinsman, it is believed. It was printed in folio, in black
letter, at Neuchâtel, in the year 1535, by Pierre de Wingle, commonly
called Picard. The entire expense was defrayed by the Waldenses, who
collected for this object 1,500 crowns of gold, a large sum for so poor
a people. Thus did the Waldensian Church emphatically proclaim, at the
commencement of this new era in her existence, that the Word of God was
her one sole foundation.

As has been already mentioned, a commission to attend the synod had
been given by the Churches of French Switzerland to Farel and Saunier.
Its fulfilment necessarily involved great toil and peril. One crosses
the Alps at this day so easily, that it is difficult to conceive the
toil and danger that attended the journey then. The deputies could not
take the ordinary tracks across the mountains for fear of pursuit; they
were compelled to travel by unfrequented paths. The way often led by
the edge of precipices and abysses, up steep and dangerous ascents, and
across fields of frozen snow. Nor were their pursuers the only dangers
they had to fear; they were exposed to death from the blinding drifts
and tempests of the hills. Nevertheless, they arrived in safety in the
Valleys, and added by their presence and their counsels to the dignity
of this the first great ecclesiastical assembly of modern times. Of
this we have a somewhat remarkable proof. Three years thereafter, a
Vaudois, Jean Peyrel, of Angrogna, being cast into prison, deposed on
his trial that “he had kept guard for the ministers who taught the
good law, who were assembled in the town of Chamforans, in the centre
of Angrogna; and that amongst others present there was one called
Farel, who had a red beard, and a beautiful white horse; and two others
accompanied him, one of whom had a horse, almost black, and the other
was very tall, and rather lame.”[40]

CHAPTER VII.

PERSECUTIONS AND MARTYRDOMS.

A Peace of Twenty-eight Years--Flourishing State--Bersour--A
Martyr--Martyrdom of Pastor Gonin--Martyrdoms of a Student
and a Monk--Trial and Burning of a Colporteur--A List of
Horrible Deaths--The Valleys under the Sway of France--
Restored to Savoy--Emmanuel Philibert--Persecution
Renewed--Carignano--Persecution Approaches the Mountains--
Deputation to the Duke--The Old Paths--Remonstrance to the
Duke--to the Duchess--to the Council.

The Church of the Alps had peace for twenty-eight years. This was
a time of great spiritual prosperity. Sanctuaries arose in all her
Valleys; her pastors and teachers were found too few, and men of
learning and zeal, some of them from foreign lands, pressed into
her service. Individuals and families in the cities on the plain of
Piedmont embraced her faith; and the crowds that attended her worship
were continually growing.[41] In short, this venerable Church had
a second youth. Her lamp, retrimmed, burned with a brightness that
justified her time-honoured motto, “A light shining in darkness.” The
darkness was not now so deep as it had been; the hours of night were
drawing to a close. Nor was the Vaudois community the only light that
now shone in Christendom. It was one of a constellation of lights,
whose brilliance was beginning to irradiate the skies of the Church
with an effulgence which no former age had known.

The exemption from persecution, which the Waldenses enjoyed during this
period, was not absolute, but comparative. The lukewarm are seldom
molested; and the quickened zeal of the Vaudois brought with it a
revival of the persecutor’s malignity, though it did not find vent in
violences so dreadful as the tempests that had lately smitten them.
Only two years after the synod--that is, in 1534--wholesale destruction
fell upon the Vaudois Churches of Provence; but the sad story of their
extinction will more appropriately be told elsewhere. In the valleys of
Piedmont events were from time to time occurring that showed that the
inquisitor’s vengeance had been scotched, not killed. While the Vaudois
as a race were prosperous, their churches multiplying, and their faith
extending its geographical area from one year to another, individual
Vaudois were being at times seized, and put to death, at the stake, on
the rack, or by the cord.

Three years after, the persecution broke out anew, and raged for a
short time. Charles III. of Savoy, a prince of mild manners, but under
the rule of the priests, being solicited by the Archbishop of Turin and
the inquisitor of the same city, gave his consent to “hunting down” the
heretics of the Valleys. The commission was given to a nobleman of the
name of Bersour, whose residence was at Pinerolo, near the entrance of
the Valley of Perosa. Bersour, a man of savage disposition, collected
a troop of 500 horse and foot, and attacked the Valley of Angrogna. He
was repulsed, but the storm which had rolled away from the mountains
fell upon the plains. Turning to the Vaudois who resided around his
own residence, he seized a great number of persons, whom he threw into
the prisons and convents of Pinerolo and the Inquisition of Turin.
Many of them suffered in the flames. One of these martyrs, Catalan
Girard, quaintly taught the spectators a parabolic lesson, standing
at the pile. From amid the flames he asked for two stones, which were
instantly brought him. The crowd looked on in silence, curious to know
what he meant to do with them. Rubbing them against each other, he
said, “You think to extinguish our poor Churches by your persecutions.
You can no more do so, than I with my feeble hands can crush these
stones.”[42]

Heavier tempests seemed about to descend, when suddenly the sky cleared
above the confessors of the Alps. It was a change in the politics of
Europe in this instance, as in many others, that stayed the arm of
persecution. Francis I. of France demanded of Charles, Duke of Savoy,
permission to march an army through his dominions. The object of the
French king was the recovery of the Duchy of Milan, a long-contested
prize between himself and Charles V. The Duke of Savoy refused the
request of his brother monarch; but reflecting that the passes of the
Alps were in the hands of the men whom he was persecuting, and that
should he continue his oppressions, the Vaudois might open the gates
of his kingdom to the enemy, he sent orders to Bersour to stop the
persecution in the Valleys.

In 1536, the Waldensian Church had to mourn the loss of one of the
more distinguished of her pastors. Martin Gonin, of Angrogna--a man of
public spirit and rare gifts--who had gone to Geneva on ecclesiastical
affairs, was returning through Dauphiné, when he was apprehended on
suspicion of being a spy. He cleared himself of that charge, but the
gaoler searching his person, and discovering certain papers upon him,
he was convicted of what the Parliament of Grenoble accounted a much
greater crime--heresy. Condemned to die, he was led forth at night,
and drowned in the river Isère. He would have suffered at the stake
had not his persecutors feared the effect of his dying words upon the
spectators.[43]

There were others, also called to ascend the martyr-pile, whose names
we must not pass over in silence. Two pastors returning from Geneva to
their flocks in the Valleys, in company of three French Protestants,
were seized at the Col de Tamiers, in Savoy, and carried to Chambéry.
There all five were tried, condemned, and burned. The fate of Nicolas
Sartoire is yet more touching. He was a student of theology at Geneva,
and held one of those bursaries which the Lords of Bern had allotted
for the training of young men as pastors in the Churches of the
Valleys. He set out to spend his holiday with his family in Piedmont.
We know how Vaudois heart yearns for its native mountains; nor would
the coming of the youth awaken less lively anticipations on the part
of his friends. The paternal threshold, alas! he was never to cross;
his native Valleys he was to tread no more. Travelling by the pass of
St. Bernard, and the grand valley of Aosta, he had just passed the
Italian frontier, when he was apprehended on the suspicion of heresy.
It was the month of May, when all was life and beauty in the vales and
mountains around him; he himself was in the spring-time of existence;
it was hard to lay down life at such a moment; but the great captain
from whose feet he had just come, had taught him that the first duty
of a soldier of Christ is obedience. He confessed his Lord, nor could
promises or threats--and both were tried--make him waver. He continued
steadfast unto the end, and on the 4th of May, 1557, he was brought
forth from his dungeon at Aosta, and burned alive.[44]

The martyr who died thus heroically at Aosta was a youth, the one we
are now to contemplate was a man of fifty. Geofroi Varaile was a native
of the town of Busco, in Piedmont. His father had been a captain in
that army of murderers who, in 1488, ravaged the Valleys of Lucerna
and Angrogna. The son in 1520 became a monk, and possessing the gift
of a rare eloquence, he was sent on a preaching tour, in company with
another cowled ecclesiastic, yet more famous, Bernardo Ochino of
Sienna, the founder of the order of the Capuchins. The arguments of the
men he was sent to convert staggered Varaile. He fled to Geneva, and in
the city of the Reformers he was taught more fully the “way of life.”
Ordained as a pastor, he returned to the Valleys, where “like another
Paul,” says Leger, “he preached the faith he once destroyed.” After a
ministry of some months, he set out to pay a visit of a few days to
his native town of Busco. He was apprehended by the monks who were
lying in wait for him. He was condemned to death by the Inquisition of
Turin. His execution took place in the castle-piazza of the same city,
March 29th, 1558. He walked to the place where he was to die with a
firm step and a serene countenance; he addressed the vast multitude
around his pile in a way that drew tears from many eyes; after this, he
began to sing with a loud voice, and so continued till he sank amid the
flames.[45]

Two years before this, the same piazza, the castle-yard at Turin, had
witnessed a similar spectacle. Barthelemy Hector was a bookseller in
Poictiers. A man of warm but well-tempered zeal, he travelled as far as
the Valleys, diffusing that knowledge that maketh wise unto salvation.
In the assemblage of white peaks that look down on the Pra del Tor is
one named La Vêchera, so called because the cows love the rich grass
that clothes its sides in summer-time. Barthelemy Hector would take
his seat on the slopes of the mountain, and gathering the herdsmen
and agriculturists of the Pra round him, would induce them to buy his
books, by reading passages to them. Portions of the Scriptures also
would he recite to the grandames and maidens as they watched their
goats, or plied the distaff. His steps were tracked by the inquisitor,
even amid these wild solitudes. He was dragged to Turin, to answer for
the crime of selling Genevese books. His defence before his judges
discovered an admirable courage and wisdom.

“You have been caught in the act,” said his judge, “of selling books
that contain heresy. What say you?”

“If the Bible is heresy to you, it is truth to me,” replied the
prisoner.

“But you use the Bible to deter men from going to mass,” urged the
judge.

“If the Bible deters men from going to mass,” responded Barthelemy, “it
is a proof that God disapproves of it, and that the mass is idolatry.”

The judge, deeming it expedient to make short shrift with such a
heretic, exclaimed, “Retract.”

“I have spoken only truth,” said the bookseller, “can I change truth as
I would a garment?”

His judges kept him some months in prison, in the hope that his
recantation would save them the necessity of burning him. This
unwillingness to have resort to the last penalty was owing to no
feeling of pity for the prisoner, but entirely to the conviction
that these repeated executions were endangering the cause of their
Church. “The smoke of these martyr-piles,” as was said with reference
to the death of Patrick Hamilton, “was infecting those on whom it
blew.” But the constancy of Barthelemy compelled his persecutors to
disregard these prudential considerations. At last, despairing of his
abjuration, they brought him forth and consigned him to the flames. His
behaviour at the stake “drew rivers of tears,” says Leger, “from the
eyes of many in the Popish crowd around his stake, while others vented
reproaches and invectives against the cruelty of the monks and the
inquisitors.”[46]

These are only a few of the many martyrs by whom, even during this
period of comparative peace and prosperity, the Church of the Valleys
was called to testify against Rome. Some of these martyrs perished
by cruel, barbarous, and most horrible methods. To recite all these
cases would be beyond our purpose, and to depict the revolting and
infamous details would be to narrate what no reader could peruse. We
shall quote only part of the brief summary of Muston. “There is no
town in Piedmont,” says he, “under a Vaudois pastor, where some of our
brethren have not been put to death.... Hugo Chiamps of Finestrelle had
his entrails torn from his living body, at Turin. Peter Geymarali of
Bobbio, in like manner, had his entrails taken out at Lucerna, and a
fierce cat thrust in their place to torture him further; Maria Romano
was buried alive at Rocco-patia; Magdalen Foulano underwent the same
fate at San Giovanni; Susan Michelini was bound hand and foot, and left
to perish of cold and hunger at Saracena. Bartholomew Fache, gashed
with sabres, had the wounds filled up with quicklime, and perished thus
in agony at Fenile; Daniel Michelini had his tongue torn out at Bobbio
for having praised God. James Baridari perished covered with sulphurous
matches, which had been forced into his flesh under the nails, between
the fingers, in the nostrils, in the lips, and over all his body, and
then lighted. Daniel Revelli had his mouth filled with gunpowder,
which, being lighted, blew his head to pieces. Maria Monnen, taken at
Liousa, had the flesh cut from her cheek and chin bone, so that her
jaw was left bare, and she was thus left to perish. Paul Garnier was
slowly sliced to pieces at Rora. Thomas Margueti was mutilated in an
indescribable manner at Miraboco, and Susan Jaquin cut in bits at La
Torre. Sara Rostagnol was slit open from the legs to the bosom, and so
left to perish on the road between Eyral and Lucerna. Anne Charbonnier
was impaled and carried thus on a pike, as a standard, from San
Giovanni to La Torre. Daniel Rambaud, at Paesano, had his nails torn
off, then his fingers chopped off, then his feet and his hands, then
his arms and his legs, with each successive refusal on his part to
abjure the Gospel.”[47] Thus the roll of martyrs runs on, and with each
new sufferer comes a new, a more excruciating and more horrible mode of
torture and death.

We have already mentioned the demand which the King of France made
upon the Duke of Savoy, Charles III., that he would permit him to
march an army through his territories. The reply was a refusal;
but Francis I. must needs have a road into Italy. Accordingly he
seized upon Piedmont, and held possession of it, together with the
Waldensian valleys, for twenty-three years. The Waldenses had found
the sway of Francis I. more tolerant than that of their own princes;
for though Francis hated Lutheranism, the necessities of his policy
often compelled him to court the Lutherans, and so it came to pass
that while he was burning heretics in Paris he spared them in the
Valleys. But the general peace of Château Cambrésis, April 3rd, 1559,
restored Piedmont, with the exception of Turin, to its former rulers
of the House of Savoy.[48] Charles III. had been succeeded in 1553 by
Emmanuel Philibert. Philibert was a prince of superior talents and
humane disposition, and the Vaudois cherished the hope that under him
they would be permitted to live in peace, and to worship as their
fathers had done. What strengthened these just expectations was the
fact that Philibert had married a sister of the King of France, Henry
II., who had been carefully instructed in the Protestant faith by her
illustrious relations, Margaret, Queen of Navarre, and Rénée of France,
daughter of Louis XII. But, alas! the treaty that restored Emmanuel
Philibert to the throne of his ancestors, contained a clause binding
the contracting parties to extinguish heresy. This was to send him
back to his subjects with a dagger in his hand.

Whatever the king might incline--and, strengthened by the counsels
of his Protestant queen, he would doubtless, if he could, have dealt
humanely by his faithful subjects, the Vaudois--his intentions were
overborne by men of stronger wills and more determined resolves. The
inquisitors of his kingdom, the nuncio of the Pope, and the ambassadors
of Spain and France, united in urging upon him the purgation of his
dominions, in terms of the agreement in the Treaty of Peace. The
unhappy monarch, unable to resist these powerful solicitations, issued
on the 15th February, 1560, an edict forbidding his subjects to hear
the Protestant preachers in the Valley of Lucerna, or anywhere else,
under pain of a fine of 100 dollars of gold for the first offence, and
of the galleys for life for the second. This edict had reference mainly
to the Protestants on the plain of Piedmont, who resorted in crowds
to hear sermon in the Valleys. There followed, however, in a short
time, a yet severer edict, commanding attendance at mass under pain
of death. To carry out this cruel decree, a commission was given to a
prince of the blood, Philip of Savoy, Count de Raconis, and with him
was associated George Costa, Count de la Trinita, and Thomas Jacomel,
the Inquisitor-General, a man as cruel in disposition as he was
licentious in manners. To these was added a certain Councillor Corbis,
but he was not of the stuff which the business required, and so, after
witnessing a few initial scenes of barbarity and horror, he resigned
his commission.[49]

The first burst of the tempest fell on Carignano. This town reposes
sweetly on one of the spurs of the Apennines, about twenty miles to
the south-west of Turin. It contained many Protestants, some of whom
were of good position. The wealthiest were selected and dragged to the
burning-pile, in order to strike terror into the rest. The blow had not
fallen in vain; the professors of the Protestant creed in Carignano
were scattered; some fled to Turin, then under the domination of
France, some to other places, and some, alas! frightened by the tempest
in front, turned back and sought refuge in the darkness behind them.
They had desired the “better country,” but could not enter in at the
cost of exile and death.

Having done its work in Carignano, this desolating tempest held its
way across the plain of Piedmont, towards those great mountains which
were the ancient fortress of the truth, marking its track through the
villages and country communes in terror, in pillage, and blood. It
moved like one of those thunder-clouds which the traveller on the Alps
may often descry beneath him, traversing the same plain, and shooting
its lightnings earthwards as it advances. Wherever it was known that
there was a Vaudois congregation, thither did the cloud turn. And now
we behold it at the foot of the Waldensian Alps--at the entrance of the
Valleys, within whose mighty natural bulwarks crowds of fugitives from
the towns and villages on the plain have already found asylum.

Rumours of the confiscations, arrests, cruel tortures, and horrible
deaths which had befallen the Churches at the foot of their mountains,
had preceded the appearance of the crusaders at the entrance of the
Valleys. The same devastation which had befallen the flourishing
Churches on the plain of Piedmont, seemed to impend over the Churches
in the bosom of the Alps. At this juncture the pastors and leading
laymen assembled to deliberate on the steps to be taken. Having fasted
and humbled themselves before God, they sought by earnest prayer the
direction of his Holy Spirit.[50] They resolved to approach the throne
of their prince, and by humble remonstrance and petition, set forth the
state of their affairs and the justice of their cause. Their first
claim was to be heard before being condemned--a right denied to no
one accused, however criminal. They next solemnly disclaimed the main
offence laid to their charge, that of departing from the true faith,
and of adopting doctrines unknown to the Scriptures, and the early ages
of the Church. Their faith was that which Christ Himself had taught;
which the apostles, following their Great Master, had preached; which
the Fathers had vindicated with their pens, and the martyrs with their
blood, and which the first four Councils had ratified, and proclaimed
to be the faith of the Christian world. From the “old paths,” the Bible
and all antiquity being witnesses, they had never turned aside; from
father to son they had continued these 1,500 years to walk therein.
Their mountains shielded no novelties; they had bowed the knee to no
strange gods, and, if they were heretics, so too were the first four
Councils; and so too were the apostles themselves. If they erred, it
was in the company of the confessors and martyrs of the early ages.
They were willing any moment to appeal their cause to a General
Council, provided that Council were willing to decide the question by
the only infallible standard they knew, the Word of God. If on this
evidence they should be convicted of even one heresy, most willingly
would they surrender it. On this, the main point of their indictment,
what more could they promise? Show us, they said, what the errors are
which you ask us to renounce under the penalty of death, and you shall
not need to ask a second time.[51]

Their duty to God did not weaken their allegiance to their prince. To
piety they added loyalty. The throne before which they now stood had
not more faithful and devoted subjects than they. When had they plotted
treason, or disputed lawful command of their sovereign? Nay, the more
they feared God, the more they honoured the king. Their services, their
substance, their life, were all at the disposal of their prince; they
were willing to lay them all down in defence of his lawful prerogative;
one thing only they could not surrender--their conscience.

As regarded their Romanist fellow-subjects of Piedmont, they had lived
in good-neighbourhood with them. Whose person had they injured--whose
property had they robbed--whom had they over-reached in their bargains?
Had they not been kind, courteous, honest? If their hills had vied
in fertility with the naturally richer plains at their feet, and if
their mountain-homes had been filled with store of corn, and oil, and
wine, not always found in Piedmontese dwellings, to what was this
owing, save to their superior industry, frugality, and skill? Never had
marauding expedition descended from their hills to carry off the goods
of their neighbours, or to inflict retaliation for the many murders
and robberies to which they had had to submit. Why, then, should their
neighbours rise against them to exterminate them, as if they were a
horde of evildoers, in whose neighbourhood no man could live in peace;
and why should their sovereign unsheathe the sword against those who
had never been found disturbers of his kingdom, nor plotters against
his government, but who, on the contrary, had ever striven to maintain
the authority of his law, and the honour of his throne? “One thing is
certain, most serene prince,” they said, in conclusion, “that the Word
of God will not perish, but will abide for ever. If, then, our religion
is the pure Word of God, as we are persuaded it is, and not a human
invention, no human power will be able to abolish it.”[52]

Never was there a more solemn, or a more just, or a more respectful
remonstrance presented to any throne. The wrong about to be done them
was enormous, yet not an angry word, nor a single accusatory sentence,
do the Vaudois permit themselves to utter. But to what avail this
solemn protest, this triumphant vindication? The more complete and
conclusive it is, the more manifest does it make the immense injustice
and the flagrant criminality of the House of Savoy. The more the
Vaudois put themselves in the right, the more they put the Church of
Rome in the wrong; and they who have already doomed them to perish are
but the more resolutely determined to carry out their purpose.

This document was accompanied by two others: one to the queen, and one
to the Council. The one to the queen is differently conceived from that
to the duke. They offer no apology for their faith: the queen herself
was of it. They allude in a few touching terms to the sufferings they
had already been subjected to, and to the yet greater that appeared
to impend. This was enough, they knew, to awaken all her sympathies,
and enlist her as their advocate with the king, after the example of
Esther, and other noble women in former times, who valued their lofty
station less for its dazzling honours, than for the opportunities it
gave them of shielding the persecuted confessors of the truth.[53]

The remonstrance presented to the Council was couched in terms more
plain and direct, yet still respectful. They bade the counsellors of
the king beware what they did; they warned them that every drop of
innocent blood they should spill they would one day have to account
for; that if the blood of Abel, though only that of one man, cried with
a voice so loud that God heard it in heaven, and came down to call its
shedder to a reckoning, how much mightier the cry that would arise from
the blood of a whole nation, and how much more terrible the vengeance
with which it would be visited! In fine, they reminded the Council that
what they asked was not an unknown privilege in Piedmont, nor would
they be the first or the only persons who had enjoyed that indulgence
if it should be extended to them. Did not the Jew and the Saracen live
unmolested in their cities? Did they not permit the Israelite to build
his synagogue, and the Moor to read his Koran, without annoyance or
restraint? Was it a great thing that the faith of the Bible should be
placed on the same level in this respect with that of the Crescent,
and that the descendants of the men who for generations had been the
subjects of the House of Savoy, and who had enriched the dominions with
their virtues, and defended them with their blood, should be treated
with the same humanity that was shown to the alien and the unbeliever?

These petitions the confessors of the Alps dispatched to the proper
quarter, and having done so, they waited an answer with eyes lifted up
to heaven. If that answer should be peace, with what gratitude to God
and to their prince would they hail it! should it be otherwise, they
were ready to accept that alternative too; they were prepared to die.

CHAPTER VIII.

PREPARATIONS FOR A WAR OF EXTERMINATION.

Where was the Vaudois who would put his life in his hand, and carry
this remonstrance to the Duke? The dangerous service was undertaken
by M. Gilles, Pastor of Bricherasio, a devoted and courageous man. A
companion was associated with him, but wearied out with the rebuffs and
insults he met with, he abandoned the mission, and left its conduct
to Gilles alone. The duke then lived at Nice, for Turin, his capital,
was still in the hands of the French, and the length of the journey
very considerably increased its risks. Gilles reached Nice in safety,
however, and after many difficulties and delays he had an interview
with Queen Margaret, who undertook to place the representations of
which he was the bearer in the hands of her husband, the duke. The
deputy had an interview also with Philip of Savoy, the duke’s brother,
and one of the commissioners under the Act for the purgation of the
Valleys. The Waldensian pastor was, on the whole, well received by him.
Unequally yoked with the cruel and bigoted Count La Trinita, Philip of
Savoy soon became disgusted, and left the bloody business wholly in the
hands of his fellow-commissioner.[54] As regarded the queen, her heart
was in the Valleys; the cause of the poor Vaudois was her cause also.
But she stood alone as their intercessor with the duke; her voice was
drowned by the solicitations and threats of the prelates, the King of
Spain, and the Pope.[55]

For three months there came neither letter nor edict from the court
at Nice. If the men of the Valleys were impatient to know the fate
that awaited them, their enemies, athirst for plunder and blood, were
still more so. The latter, unable longer to restrain their passions,
began persecution on their own account. They thought they knew their
sovereign’s intentions, and made bold to anticipate them.

The tocsin was rung out from the Monastery of Pinerolo. Perched on the
frontier of the Valleys, the monks of this establishment kept their
eyes fixed upon the heretics of the mountains, as vultures watch their
prey, ever ready to sweep down upon hamlet or valley when they found
it unguarded. They hired a troop of marauders, whom they sent forth to
pillage. The band returned, driving before them a wretched company of
captives, whom they had dragged from their homes and vineyards in the
mountains. The poorer sort they burnt alive, or sent to the galleys;
the rich they imprisoned till they had paid the ransom to which they
were held.[56]

The example of the monks was followed by certain Popish landlords in
the Valley of San Martino. The two seigneurs of Perrier attacked,
before day-break of April 2nd, 1560, the villagers of Rioclareto, with
an armed band. Some they slaughtered, the rest they drove out, without
clothes or food, to perish on the snow-clad hills. The ruffians who
had expelled them took possession of their dwellings, protesting that
no one should enter them unless he were willing to go to mass. They
kept possession only three days, for the Protestants of the Valley of
Clusone, to the number of 400, hearing of the outrage, crossed the
mountains, drove out the invaders, and reinstated their brethren.[57]

Next appeared in the Valleys, Philip of Savoy, Count de Raconis, and
Chief Commissioner. He was an earnest Roman Catholic, but a humane and
upright man. He attended sermon one day in the Protestant church of
Angrogna, and was so much pleased with what he heard, that he obtained
from the pastor an outline of the Vaudois faith, so as to send it to
Rome, in the hope that the Pope would cease to persecute a creed that
seemed so little heretical. A sanguine hope truly! Where the honest
Count had seen very little heresy, the Pope, Pius IV., saw a great
deal; and would not even permit a disputation with the Waldensian
pastors, as the Count had proposed. He would stretch his benignity no
further than to absolve “from their past crimes” all who were willing
to enter the Church of Rome. This was not very encouraging, still the
count did not abandon his idea of conciliation. In June, 1560, he came
a second time to the Valley of Lucerna, accompanied by his colleague,
La Trinita, and assembling the pastors and heads of families, he told
them that the persecution would cease immediately, provided they would
consent to hear the preachers he had brought with him, _Brothers of
the Christian Doctrine_. He further proposed that they should silence
their own ministers while they were making trial of his. The Vaudois
expressed their willingness to consent, provided the count’s ministers
preached the pure Gospel; but if they preached human traditions,
they (the Vaudois) would be under the necessity of withholding their
consent; and, as regarded silencing their own ministers, it was only
reasonable that they should be permitted first to make trial of the
count’s preachers. A few days after, they had a taste of the new
expositors. Selecting the ablest among them, they made him ascend
the pulpit, and hold forth to a Vaudois congregation. He took a very
effectual way to make them listen. “I will demonstrate to you,” said
he, “that the mass is found in Scripture. The word _massah_ signifies
‘sent,’ does it not?” “Not precisely,” replied his hearers, who knew
more about Hebrew than was convenient for the preacher. “The primitive
expression,” continued he, “_Ite missa est_, was employed to dismiss
the auditory, was it not?” “That is quite true,” replied his hearers,
without very clearly seeing how it bore on his argument. “Well, then,
you see, gentlemen, that the mass is found in the Holy Scripture.”[58]
The congregation were unable to determine whether the preacher was
arguing with them, or simply laughing at them.

Finding the Waldenses obdurate, as he deemed them, the Duke of Savoy,
in October, 1560, declared war against them. Early in that month a
dreadful rumour reached the Valleys, namely, that the duke was levying
an army to exterminate them. The news was but too true. The duke
offered a free pardon to all “outlaws, convicts, and vagabonds” who
would enrol as volunteers to serve against the Vaudois. Soon an army
of a truly dreadful character was assembled. The Vaudois seemed doomed
to total and inevitable destruction. The pastors and chief persons
assembled to deliberate on the measures to be taken at this terrible
crisis. Feeling that their refuge was in God alone, they resolved that
they would take no means for deliverance which might be offensive to
him, or dishonourable to themselves. The pastors were to exhort every
one to apply to God, with true faith, sincere repentance, and ardent
prayer; and as to defensive measures, they recommended that each family
should collect their provisions, clothes, utensils, and herds, and be
ready at a moment’s notice to convey them, together with all infirm
persons, to their strongholds in the mountains. Meanwhile, the duke’s
army--if the collected ruffianism of Piedmont could be so called--came
nearer every day.[59]

[Illustration: THE VILLAGE OF BALSIGLIA, SAN MARTINO.]

On the 31st of October, a proclamation was posted throughout the
Valley of Angrogna, calling on the inhabitants to return within the
Roman pale, under penalty of extermination by fire and sword. On
the day following, the 1st of November, the Papal army appeared at
Bubiana, on the right bank of the Pelice, at the entrance to the
Waldensian Valleys. The host numbered 4,000 infantry and 200 horse;[60]
comprising, besides the desperadoes that formed its main body, a few
veterans, who had seen a great deal of service in the wars with France.

The Vaudois, the enemy being now in sight, humbled themselves, in a
public fast, before God. Next, they partook together of the Lord’s
Supper. Refreshed in soul by these services, they proceeded to put in
execution the measures previously resolved on. The old men and the
women climbed the mountains, awakening the echoes with the psalms
which they sung on their way to the Pra del Tor, within whose natural
ramparts of rock and snow-clad peaks they sought asylum. The Vaudois
population of the Valleys at that time was not more than 18,000; their
armed men did not exceed 1,200;[61] these were distributed at various
passes and barricades to oppose the enemy, who was now near.

On the 2nd of November the Piedmontese army, putting itself in motion,
crossed the Pelice, and advanced along the narrow defile that leads up
to the Valleys, having the heights of Bricherasio on the right, and
the spurs of Monte Friolante on the left, with the towering masses
of the Vandalin and Castelluzzo in front. The Piedmontese encamped
in the meadows of San Giovanni, within a stone’s-throw of the point
where the Val di Lucerna and the Val di Angrogna divide, the former to
expand into a noble breadth of meadow and vineyard, running on between
magnificent mountains, with their rich clothing of pastures, chestnut
groves, and châlets, till it ends in the savage Pass of Mirabouc; and
the latter to wind and climb in a grand succession of precipice, and
gorge, and grassy dell, till it issues in the funnel-shaped valley
around which the ice-crowned mountains stand the everlasting sentinels.

It was the latter of these two valleys (Angrogna) that La Trinita first
essayed to enter. He marched 1,200 men into it, the wings of his army
deploying over its bordering heights of La Cotière. His soldiers were
opposed by only a small body of Vaudois, some of whom were armed solely
with the sling and the cross-bow. Skirmishing with the foe, the Vaudois
retired, fighting, to the higher grounds. When the evening set in,
neither side could claim a decided advantage. Wearied with skirmishing,
both armies encamped for the night--the Vaudois on the heights of
Roccomaneot, and the Piedmontese, their camp-fires lighted, on the
lower hills of La Cotière.

Suddenly the silence of the evening was startled by a derisive shout
that rose from the Piedmontese host. What had happened to evoke these
sounds of contempt? They had descried, between them and the sky, on
the heights above them, the bending figures of the Vaudois. On their
knees, the Waldensian warriors were supplicating the God of battles.
Hardly had the scoffs with which the Piedmontese hailed the act died
away, when a drum was heard to beat in a side valley. A child had got
hold of the instrument, and was amusing itself with it. The soldiers
of La Trinita saw in imagination a fresh body of Waldensians advancing
from this lateral defile to rush upon them. They seized their arms
in no little disorder. The Vaudois, seeing the movement of the foe,
seized theirs also, and rushed down-hill to anticipate the attack. The
Piedmontese threw away their arms and fled, chased by the Waldenses,
thus losing in half an hour the ground it had cost them a day’s
fighting to gain. The weapons abandoned by the fugitives formed a
much-needed and most opportune supply to the Vaudois. As the result of
the combats of the day, La Trinita had sixty-seven men slain; of the
Vaudois, three only had fallen.[62]

Opening on the left of La Trinita was the corn-clad, vine-clad, and
mountain-ramparted Valley of Lucerna, with its towns, La Torre,
Villaro, Bobbio, and others, forming the noblest of the Waldensian
Valleys. La Trinita now occupied this valley with his soldiers. This
was comparatively an easy achievement, almost all its inhabitants
having fled to the Pra del Tor. Those that remained were mostly
Romanists, who were, at that time, mixed with the Waldensian
population, and even they, committing their wives and daughters to the
keeping of their Vaudois neighbours, had sent them with them to the
Pra del Tor, to escape the brutal outrages of the Papal army. On the
following days La Trinita fought some small affairs with the Vaudois,
in all of which he was repulsed with considerable slaughter. The
arduous nature of the task he had in hand now began to dawn upon him.

The mountaineers, he saw, were courageous, and determined to die rather
than submit their conscience to the Pope, and their families to the
passions of his soldiers. He discovered, moreover, that they were a
simple and confiding people, utterly unversed in the ways of intrigue.
He was delighted to find these qualities in them, because he thought
he saw how he could turn them to account. He had tools with him as
cunning and vile as himself--Jacomel, the inquisitor; and Gastaud, his
secretary; the latter feigned a love for the Gospel. These men he set
to work. When they had prepared matters, he assembled the leading men
of the Waldenses, and recited to them some flattering words, which he
had heard, or professed to have heard, the duke and duchess make use
of towards them; he protested that this was no pleasant business in
which he was engaged, and that he would be glad to have it off his
hands; peace, he thought, could easily be arranged, if they would only
make a few small concessions to show that they were reasonable men; he
would propose that they should deposit their arms in the house of one
of their syndics, and permit him, for form’s sake, to go with a small
train, and celebrate mass in the Church of St. Laurenzo, in Angrogna,
and afterwards pay a visit to the Pra del Tor. La Trinita’s proposal
proved the correctness of the estimate he had formed of Vaudois
confidingness. The people spent a whole night in deliberating over the
count’s proposition, and, contrary to the opinion of their pastors and
some of their laymen, agreed to accept it.[63]

The Papal general said his mass in the Protestant church. After this he
traversed the gloomy defiles that led up to the famous Pra, on whose
green slopes, with their snowy battlements, he was so desirous to feast
his eyes; though, it is said, he showed evident trepidation when he
passed the black pool of Tompie, with its memories of retribution.
Having accomplished these feats in safety, he returned to wear the mask
a little longer.

He resumed the efforts on which he professed to be so earnestly and
laudably bent, of effecting peace. The duke had now come nearer, and
was living at Vercelli, on the plain of Piedmont; La Trinita thought
that the Vaudois ought by all means to send deputies thither. It would
strengthen their supplication--indeed, all but insure its success--if
they would raise a sum of 20,000 crowns. On payment of this sum he
would withdraw his army, and leave them to practice their religion in
peace.[64] The Vaudois, unable to conceive of dissimulation like La
Trinita’s, made concession after concession. They had previously laid
down their arms; they now sent deputies to the duke; next they taxed
themselves to buy off his soldiers; and last, and worst of all, at the
demand of La Trinita, they sent away their pastors. It was dreadful
to think of a journey across the Col Julien at that season; yet it
had to be gone. Over its snowy summits, where the winter drifts were
continually obliterating the track, and piling up fresh wreaths; across
the Valleys of Prali and San Martino, and over the ice-clad mountains
beyond, had this sorrowful band of pastors to pursue their way, to find
refuge among the Protestants in the French Valley of Pragelas. This
difficult and dangerous route was forced upon them, the more direct
road through the Valley of Perosa being closed by the marauders and
assassins that infested it, and especially by those in the pay of the
monks of Pinerolo.

The count believed that the poor people were now entirely in his
power. His soldiers did their pleasure in the Valley of Lucerna. They
pillaged the houses abandoned by the Vaudois. The few inhabitants who
had remained, as well as those who had returned, thinking that during
the negotiations for peace hostilities would be suspended, were fain to
make their escape a second time, and to seek refuge in the woods and
caves of the higher reaches of the Valleys. The outrages committed by
the ruffians to whom the Valley of Lucerna was now given over were of a
kind that cannot be told. The historian Gilles has recorded a touching
instance. A helpless man, who had lived a hundred and three years, was
placed in a cave, and his granddaughter, a girl of seventeen, was left
to take care of him. The soldiers found out his hiding-place; the old
man was murdered, and outrage was offered to his granddaughter. She
fled from the brutal pursuit of the soldiers, leaped over a precipice
and died. In another instance, an old man was pursued to the brink
of a precipice by one of La Trinita’s soldiers. The Vaudois had no
alternative but to throw himself over the brink or die by the sword
of his pursuer. He stopped, turned round, and dropped on his knees,
as if to supplicate for his life. The trooper was raising his sword
to strike him dead, when the Vaudois, clasping him tightly round the
legs, and swaying himself backwards with all his might, rolled over the
precipice, dragging the soldier with him into the abyss.

Part of the sum agreed upon between La Trinita and the Waldenses had
now been paid to him. To raise this money the poor people were under
the necessity of selling their herds. The count now withdrew his army
into winter quarters at Cavour, a point so near the Valleys that a few
hours’ march would enable him to re-enter them at any moment. The corn,
and oil, and wine he had not been able to carry away he destroyed. Even
the mills he broke in pieces. His design appeared to be to leave the
Vaudois only the alternative of submission, or of dying of hunger on
their mountains. To afflict them yet more, he placed garrisons here
and there in the Valleys; and, in the very wantonness of tyranny,
required those who were themselves without bread to provide food for
his soldiers. These soldiers were continually prowling about in search
of victims on whom to gratify their cruelty and their lust. Those who
had the unspeakable misfortune to be dragged into their den, had to
undergo, if men, excruciating torture; if women, revolting outrage.[65]

CHAPTER IX.

THE GREAT CAMPAIGN OF 1561.

Mass or Extermination--Covenant in the Valleys--Their
Solemn Oath--How the Waldenses Recant--Their Energetic
Preparations--La Trinita Advances his Army--Twice
attempts to Enter Angrogna, and is Repulsed--A Third
Attempt--Attacks on Three Points--Repulsed on all
Three--Ravages the Valley of Rora--Receives Reinforcements
from France and Spain--Commences a Third Campaign--Six Men
against an Army--Utter Discomfiture--Extinction of La
Trinita’s Host--Peace.

These frightful inflictions the Waldenses had submitted to, in the
hope that the deputies whom they had sent to the duke would bring
back with them an honourable peace. The impatience with which they
waited their return may well be conceived. At last, after an absence
of six weeks, the commissioners reappeared in the Valleys; but their
dejected faces, even before they had uttered a word, told that they
had not succeeded. They had been sent back with an order, enjoining
on the Vaudois unconditional submission to the church of Rome on
pain of extermination. To enforce that order to the uttermost a more
numerous army was at that moment being raised. The mass or universal
slaughter--such was the alternative now presented to them.

The spirit of the people woke up. Rather than thus disgrace their
ancestors, imperil their own souls, and entail a heritage of slavery
on their children, they would die a thousand times. Their depression
was gone; they were as men who had awakened from heavy sleep; they had
found their arms. Their first care was to recall their pastors, their
next to raise up their fallen churches, and their third to resume
public service in them. Daily their courage grew, and once more joy
lighted up their faces.

[Illustration: THE VAUDOIS TAKING THEIR OATH.]

There came letters of sympathy and promises of help from their
fellow-Protestants of Geneva, Dauphiné, and France. Over the two latter
countries persecution at that hour impended, but their own dangers
made them all the more ready to succour their brethren of the Valleys.
“Thereupon,” says an historian, “took place one of those grand and
solemn scenes, which, at once heroic and religious, seem rather adapted
for an epic poem than for grave history.”[66]

The Waldenses of Lucerna sent deputies across the mountains, then
covered to a great depth with snow, to propose an alliance with the
Protestants of the Valley of Pragelas, who were at that time threatened
by their sovereign, Francis I. The proposed alliance was joyfully
accepted. Assembling on a plateau of snow facing the mountains of
Sestrières, and the chain of the Guinevert, the deputies swore to stand
by each other, and render mutual support in the coming struggle.[67]
It was agreed that this oath of alliance should be sworn with a like
solemnity in the Waldensian Valleys.

The deputies from Pragelas, crossing the Mount Julien, arrived
at Bobbio on the 21st January, 1561. Their coming was singularly
opportune. On the evening before, a ducal proclamation had been
published in the Valleys, commanding the Vaudois, within twenty-four
hours, to give attendance at mass, or abide the consequences--“fire,
sword, the cord: the three arguments of Romanism,” says Muston. This
was the first news with which the Pragelese deputies were met on their
arrival. With all the more enthusiasm they proceeded to renew their
oath. Ascending a low hill behind Bobbio, the deputies from Pragelas,
and those from Lucerna, standing erect in the midst of the assembled
heads of families, who kneeled around, pronounced these words--

“In the name of the Vaudois Churches of the Alps, of Dauphiné, and
of Piedmont, which have ever been united, and of which we are the
representatives, we here promise, our hands on our Bibles, and in the
presence of God, that all our Valleys shall courageously sustain each
other in matters of religion, without prejudice to the obedience due to
their legitimate superiors.

“We promise to maintain the Bible, whole and without admixture,
according to the usage of the true Apostolic Church, persevering in
this holy religion, though it be at the peril of our life, in order
that we may transmit it to our children, intact and pure, as we
received it from our fathers.

“We promise aid and succour to our persecuted brothers, not regarding
our individual interests, but the common cause; and not relying upon
man, but upon God.”[68]

The physical grandeurs of the spot were in meet accordance with the
moral sublimity of the transaction. Immediately beneath was spread
out the green bosom of the valley, with here and there the silver of
the Pelice gleaming out amid vineyards and acacia-groves. Filling
the horizon on all sides save one stood up an array of magnificent
mountains, white with the snows of winter. Conspicuous among them were
the grand peaks of the Col de Malure and the Col de la Croix. They
looked the silent and majestic witnesses of the oath in which a heroic
people bound themselves to die rather than permit the defilement of
their hearths, and the profanation of their altars, by the hordes of
an idolatrous tyranny. It was in this grand fashion that the Waldenses
opened one of the most brilliant campaigns ever waged by their arms.

The next morning, according to the duke’s order, they must choose
between the mass and the penalty annexed to refusal. A neighbouring
church--one of those which had been taken from them--stood ready, with
altar decked and tapers lighted, for the Vaudois to hear their first
mass. Hardly had the day dawned when the expected penitents were at
the church door. They would show the duke in what fashion they meant
to read their recantation. They entered the building. A moment they
stood surveying the strange transformation their church had undergone,
and then they set to work. To extinguish the tapers, pull down the
images, and sweep into the street rosary, and crucifix, and all the
other paraphernalia of the Popish worship, was but the work of a few
minutes. The minister, Humbert Artus, then ascended the pulpit, and
reading out as his text Isaiah xlv. 20--“Assemble yourselves and come;
draw near together, ye that are escaped of the nations: they have no
knowledge that set up the wood of their graven image, and pray unto a
God that cannot save”--preached a sermon which struck the key-note of
the campaign then opening.

The inhabitants of the hamlets and châlets in the mountains rushed
down, like their own winter torrents, into Lucerna, and the army of
the Vaudois reinforced, set out to purge the temple at Villaro. On
their way they encountered the Piedmontese garrison. They attacked and
drove them back; the monks, seigneurs, and magistrates, who had come
to receive the abjuration of the heretics, accompanying the troops
in their ignominious flight. The whole band of fugitives--soldiers,
priests, and judges--shut themselves up in the town of Villaro, which
was now besieged by the Vaudois. Thrice did the garrison from La Torre
attempt to raise the siege, and thrice were they repulsed. At last, on
the tenth day, the garrison surrendered, and had their lives spared,
two Waldensian pastors accompanying them to La Torre, the soldiers
expressing greater confidence in them than in any other escort.

The Count La Trinita, seeing his garrison driven out, struck his
encampment at Cavour, and moved his army into the Valleys. He again
essayed to sow dissension amongst the Vaudois by entangling them in
negotiations for peace, but by this time they had learned too well
the value of his promises to pay the least attention to them, or to
intermit for an hour their preparations for defence. It was now the
beginning of February, 1561.

The Vaudois laboured with the zeal of men who feel that their cause
is a great and a righteous one, and are prepared to sacrifice all for
it. They erected barricades; they planted ambushes; they appointed
signals, to telegraph the movements of the enemy from post to post.
“Every house,” says Muston, “became a manufactory of pikes, bullets,
and other weapons.” They selected the best marksmen their Valleys could
furnish, and formed them into the “Flying Company,” whose duty it was
to hasten to the point where danger pressed the most. To each body of
fighting men they attached two pastors, to maintain the _morale_ of
their army. The pastors, morning and evening, led the public devotions;
they prayed with the soldiers before going into battle; and when the
fighting was over, and the Vaudois were chasing the enemy down their
great mountains, and through their dark gorges, they exerted themselves
to prevent the victory from being stained by any unnecessary effusion
of blood.

La Trinita knew well that if he would subjugate the Valleys, and
bring the campaign to a successful end, he must make himself master
of the Pra del Tor. Into that vast natural citadel was now gathered
the main body of the Waldensian people. What of their herds and
provisions remained to them had been transported thither; there they
had constructed mills and baking-ovens; there, too, sat their council,
and thence directed the whole operations of the defence. A blow struck
there would crush the Vaudois’ heart, and convert what the Waldenses
regarded as their impregnable castle into their tomb.

Deferring the chastisement of the other valleys meanwhile, La Trinita
directed all his efforts against Angrogna. His first attempt to enter
it with his army was made on the 4th February. The fighting lasted
till night, and ended in his repulse. His second attempt, three days
after, carried him some considerable way into Angrogna, burning and
ravaging, but his partial success cost him dear, and the ground won had
ultimately to be abandoned.[69]

The 14th of February saw the severest struggle. Employing all his
strategy to make himself master of the much-coveted Pra, with all in
it, he divided his army into three corps, and advanced against it from
three points. One body of troops, marching along the gorges of the
Angrogna, and traversing the narrow chasm that leads up to the Pra,
attacked it on the south. Another body, climbing the heights from
Pramol, and crossing the snowy flanks of La Vêchera, tried to force an
entrance on the east; while a third, ascending from San Martino, and
crossing the lofty summits that wall in the Pra on the north, descended
upon it from that quarter. The count’s confident expectation was that
if his men should be unable to force an entrance at one point, they
were sure to do so at another.

No scout had given warning of what was approaching. While three
armies were marching to attack them, the Waldenses, in their grand
valley, with its rampart of ice-crowned peaks, were engaged in their
morning devotions. Suddenly the cries of fugitives, and the shouts of
assailants, issuing from the narrow chasm on the south, broke upon
their ear, together with the smoke of burning hamlets. Of the three
points of attack, this was the easiest to be defended. Six brave
Waldensian youths strode down the valley, to stop the way against La
Trinita’s soldiers. They were six against an army.

The road by which the soldiers were advancing is long and gloomy, and
overhung by great rocks, and so narrow that only two men can march
abreast. On this side rises the mountain; on that, far down, thunders
the torrent; a ledge in the steep face of the cliff, running here in
the darkness, there in the sunshine, serves as a pathway. It leads to
what is termed the gate of the Pra. That gateway is formed by an angle
of the mountain, which obtrudes upon the narrow ledge on the one side,
while a huge rock rises on the other, and still further narrows the
point of ingress into the Pra del Tor. Access into the famous Pra, of
which La Trinita was now striving to make himself master, there is
not on this side, save through this narrow opening; seeing that on
the right rises the mountain; on the left yawns the gulf, into which,
if one steps aside but in the least, he tumbles headlong. To friend
and foe alike the only entrance into the Pra del Tor on the south
is by this gate of Nature’s own erecting. It was here that the six
Waldensian warriors took their stand.[70] Immovable as their own Alps,
they not only checked the advance of the host, but drove it back in a
panic-stricken mass, which made the precipices of the defile doubly
fatal.

Others would have hastened to their aid, had not danger suddenly
presented itself in another quarter. On the heights of La Vêchera,
crossing the snow, was descried an armed troop, making their entrance
into the valley on the east. Before they had time to descend they were
met by the Waldenses, who dispersed them and made them flee. Two of the
attacking parties of the count have failed; will the third have better
success?

As the Waldenses were pursuing the routed enemy on La Vêchera, they saw
yet another armed troop, which had crossed the mountains that separate
the Val San Martino from the Pra del Tor on the north, descending
upon them. Instantly the alarm was raised. A few men only could they
dispatch to meet the invaders. These lay in ambush at the mouth of a
defile through which the attacking party was making its way down into
the Pra. Emerging from the defile, and looking down into the valley
beneath them, they exclaimed, “Haste, haste! Angrogna is ours.” The
Vaudois, starting up and crying out, “It is you that are ours,” rushed
upon them sword in hand. Trusting to their superior numbers, the
Piedmontese soldiers fought desperately. But a few minutes sufficed
for the men of the Valleys to hurry from the points where they were
now victorious, to the assistance of their brethren. The invaders,
seeing themselves attacked on all sides, turned and fled up the slopes
they had just descended. Many were slain, nor would a man of them have
re-crossed the mountains but for the pastor of the Flying Company, who,
raising his voice to the utmost pitch, entreated the pursuers to spare
the lives of those who were no longer able to resist. Among the slain
was Charles Truchet, who so cruelly ravaged the commune of Rioclaret
a few months before. A stone from a sling laid him prostrate on the
ground, and his head was cut off with his own sword. Louis de Monteuil,
another noted persecutor of the Vaudois, perished in the same action.

Furious at his repulse, the count La Trinita turned his arms against
the almost defenceless Valley of Rora. He ravaged it, burning its
little town, and chasing away its population of eighty families, who
escaped over the snows of the mountains to Villaro, in the Valley of
Lucerna. That valley he next entered with his soldiers, and though it
was for the moment almost depopulated, the Popish general received
so warm a welcome from those peasants who remained that, after being
again and again beaten, he was fain to draw off his men-at-arms, and
retreat to his old quarters at Cavour, there to chew the cud over his
misfortunes, and hatch new stratagems and plan new attacks, which he
fondly hoped would retrieve his disgraces.

[Illustration: VIEW IN THE VILLAGE OF ANGROGNA.]

La Trinita spent a month in reinforcing his army, greatly weakened by
the losses it had sustained. The King of France sent him ten companies
of foot, and some other choice soldiers.[71] There came a regiment
from Spain; and numerous volunteers from Piedmont, comprising many
of the nobility. From 4,000, the original number of his army, it was
now raised to 7,000.[72] He thought himself strong enough to begin a
third campaign. He was confident that this time he would wipe out the
disgrace which had befallen his arms, and sweep from the earth at once
and for ever the great scandal of the Waldenses. He again directed all
his efforts against Angrogna, the heart and bulwark of the Valleys.

It was Sunday, the 17th of March, 1561. The whole of the Vaudois
assembled in the Pra del Tor had met on the morning of that day, soon
after dawn, as was their wont, to unite in public devotion. The first
rays of the rising sun were beginning to light up the white hills
around them, and the last cadences of their morning psalm were dying
away on the grassy slopes of the Pra, when a sudden alarm was raised.
The enemy was approaching by three routes. On the ridges of the eastern
summits appeared one body of armed men; another was defiling up the
chasm, and in a few minutes would pour itself, through the gateway
already described, into the Pra; while a third was forcing itself
over the rocks by a path intermediate between the two. Instantly the
enemy was met on all the points of approach. A handful of Waldensians
sufficed to thrust back along the narrow gorge the line of glittering
cuirassed men, who were defiling through it. At the other two points,
where bastions of rock and earth had been erected, the fighting was
severe, and the dead lay thick, but the day at both places went against
the invaders. Some of the ablest captains were among the slain. The
number of the soldiers killed was so great that Count La Trinita
is said to have sat down and wept when he beheld the heaps of the
dead.[73] It was matter of astonishment at the time that the Waldenses
did not pursue the invaders, for had they done so, being so much better
acquainted with the mountain-paths, not one of all that host would have
been left alive to carry tidings of its discomfiture to the inhabitants
of Piedmont. Their pastors restrained the victorious Vaudois, having
laid it down as a maxim at the beginning of the campaign that they
would use with moderation and clemency whatever victories the “God
of battles” might be pleased to give them, and that they would spill
no blood unless when absolutely necessary to prevent their own being
shed. The number of slain Piedmontese was again out of all proportion
to those who had fallen on the other side; so much so, that it was
currently said in the cities of Piedmont that “God was fighting for the
barbets.”[74]

More deeply humiliated and disgraced than ever, La Trinita led back
the remains of his army to its old quarters. Well had it been for him
if he had never set foot within the Waldensian territory, and not less
so for many of those who followed him, including not a few of the
nobles of Piedmont, whose bones were now bleaching on the mountains of
the Vaudois. But the Popish general was slow to learn the lesson of
these events. Even yet he harboured the design of returning to assail
that fatal valley where he had lost so many laurels, and buried so
many soldiers; but he covered his purpose with craft. Negotiations
had been opened between the men of the Valleys and the Duke of Savoy,
and as they were proceeding satisfactorily, the Vaudois were without
suspicions of evil. This was the moment that La Trinita chose to attack
them. He hastily assembled his troops, and on the night of the 16th
April he marched them against the Pra del Tor, hoping to enter it
unopposed, and give the Vaudois “as sheep to the slaughter.”

The snows around the Pra were beginning to burn in the light of morning
when the attention of the people, who had just ended their united
worship, was attracted by unusual sounds which were heard to issue
from the gorge that led into the valley. On the instant six brave
mountaineers rushed to the gateway that opens from the gorge. The long
file of La Trinita’s soldiers was seen advancing two abreast, their
helmets and cuirasses glittering in the light. The six Vaudois made
their arrangements, and calmly waited till the enemy was near. The
first two Vaudois, holding loaded muskets, knelt down. The second two
stood erect, ready to fire over the heads of the first two. The third
two undertook the loading of the weapons as they were discharged.
The invaders came on. As the first two of the enemy turned the rock
they were shot down by the two foremost Vaudois. The next two of the
attacking force fell in like manner by the shot of the Vaudois in the
rear. The third rank of the enemy presented themselves only to be
laid by the side of their comrades. In a few minutes a little heap of
dead bodies blocked the pass, rendering impossible the advance of the
accumulating file of the enemy in the chasm.

Meanwhile, other Vaudois climbed the mountains that overhang the gorge
in which the Piedmontese army was imprisoned. Tearing up the great
stones with which the hill-side was strewn, the Vaudois sent them
rolling down upon the host. Unable to advance from the wall of dead in
front, and unable to flee from the ever-accumulating masses behind,
the soldiers were crushed in dozens by the falling rocks. Panic set
in: and panic in such a position was dreadful. Wedged together on the
narrow ledge, with a murderous rain of rocks falling on them, their
struggle to escape was frightful. They jostled one another, and trod
each other under foot, while vast numbers fell over the precipice, and
were dashed on the rocks or drowned in the torrent.[75] When those
at the entrance of the valley, who were watching the result, saw the
crystal of the Angrogna begin about midday to be changed into blood,
“Ah!” said they, “the Pra del Tor has been taken; La Trinita has
triumphed; there flows the blood of the Vaudois.” And, indeed, the
count on beginning his march that morning is said to have boasted that
by noon the torrent of the Angrogna would be seen to change colour;
and so in truth it did. Instead of a pellucid stream, rolling along on
a white gravelly bed, which is its usual appearance at the mouth of
the valley, it was now deeply dyed from recent slaughter. But when the
few who had escaped the catastrophe returned to tell what had that day
passed within the defiles of the Angrogna, it was seen that it was not
the blood of the Vaudois, but the blood of their ruthless invaders,
which dyed the waters of the Angrogna. The count withdrew on that same
night with his army, to return no more to the Valleys.

Negotiations were again resumed, not this time through the Count La
Trinita, but through Philip of Savoy, Count of Raconis, and were
speedily brought to a satisfactory issue. The Duke of Savoy had but
small merit in making peace with the men whom he found he could not
conquer. The capitulation was signed on the 5th of June, 1561, and
its first clause granted an indemnity for all offences. It is open
to remark that this indemnity was given to those who had suffered,
not to those who had committed the offences it condoned. The articles
that followed permitted the Vaudois to erect churches in their
Valleys, with the exception of two or three of their towns, and to
hold public worship--in short, to celebrate all the offices of their
religion. All the “ancient franchises, immunities, and privileges,
whether conceded by his Highness, or by his Highness’s predecessors,”
were renewed, provided they were vouched by public documents.[76]
Such was the arrangement that closed this war of fifteen months. The
Vaudois ascribed it in great part to the influence of the good Duchess
Margaret. The Pope designated it a “pernicious example,” which he
feared would not want imitators in those times when the love of many
to the Roman See was waxing cold. It stank in the nostrils of the
prelates and monks of Piedmont, to whom the heretics had been a free
booty. Nevertheless, Duke Emanuel Philibert faithfully maintained its
stipulations, the duchess being by his side to counteract any pressure
in the contrary direction. This peace, together with the summer that
was now opening, began to slowly efface the deep scars persecution had
left on the Valleys; and what further helped to console and reanimate
this brave but afflicted people, were the sympathy and aid universally
tendered them by Protestants abroad, in particular by Calvin and the
Elector Palatine, the latter addressing a spirited letter to the duke
on behalf of his persecuted subjects.[77]

Nothing was more admirable than the spirit of devotion which the
Vaudois exhibited all through these terrible conflicts. Their Valleys
resounded not less with the voice of prayer and praise, than with the
din of arms. Their opponents came from carousing, from blaspheming,
from murdering, to engage in battle; the Waldenses rose from their
knees to unsheathe the sword, and wield it in a cause which they firmly
believed to be that of Him to whom they had bent in supplication. When
their little army went a-field their barbes always accompanied it, to
inspirit the soldiers by suitable exhortations before joining battle,
and to moderate in the hour of victory a vengeance which, however
excusable, would yet have tarnished the glory of the triumph. When the
fighting men hastened to the bastion or to the defile, the pastors
betook themselves to the mountain’s slope, or to its summit, and
there with uplifted hands supplicated help from the “Lord, strong and
mighty, the Lord mighty in battle.” When the battle had ceased, and the
enemy were in flight, and the victors had returned from chasing their
invaders from their Valleys, the grey-haired pastor, the lion-hearted
man of battle, the matron, the maiden, the stripling, and the little
child, would assemble in the Pra del Tor, and while the setting sun was
kindling into glory the mountain-tops of their once more ransomed land,
they would raise their voices together, and sing the old war-song of
Judah, in strains so heroic that the great rocks around them would send
back the thunder of their praise in louder echoes than those of the
battle whose triumphant issue they were celebrating.

CHAPTER X.

WALDENSIAN COLONIES IN CALABRIA AND APULIA.

One day, about the year 1340, two Waldensian youths were seated in an
inn in Turin, engaged in earnest conversation respecting their home
prospects. Shut up in their valleys, and cultivating with toil their
somewhat sterile mountains, they sighed for wider limits and a more
fertile land. “Come with me,” said a stranger, who had been listening
unperceived to their discourse, “Come with me, and I will give you
fertile fields for your barren rocks.” The person who now courteously
addressed the youths, and whose steps Providence had directed to the
same hotel with themselves, was a gentleman from Calabria, at the
southern extremity of the Italian Peninsula.

On their return to the Valleys the youths reported the words of the
stranger, and the flattering hopes he had held out should they be
willing to migrate to this southern land, where skies more genial,
and an earth more fertile, would reward their labour with more
bounteous harvests. The elders of the Vaudois people listened not
without interest. The population of their Valleys had recently been
largely increased by numbers of Albigensian refugees, who had escaped
from the massacres of Innocent III. in the south of France; and the
Waldenses, feeling themselves overcrowded, were prepared to welcome
any fair scheme that promised an enlargement of their boundaries. But
before acceding to the proposition of the stranger, they thought it
advisable to send competent persons to examine this new and to them
unknown land. The Vaudois explorers returned with a flattering account
of the conditions and capabilities of the country they had been invited
to occupy. Compared with their own more northern mountains, whose
summits Winter covered all the year through with his snows, whose
gorges were swept by furious gusts, and whose sides were stripped of
their corn and vines by devastating torrents, Calabria was a land
of promise. “There are beautiful hills,” says the historian Gilles,
describing this settlement, “clothed with all kinds of fruit-trees
spontaneously springing up according to their situation--in the
plains, vines and chestnuts; on the rising ground, walnuts and every
fruit-tree. Everywhere were seen rich arable land and few labourers.” A
considerable body of emigrants set out for this new country. The young
men were accompanied to their future homes with partners. They carried
with them the Bible in the Romance version, “that holy ark of the New
Covenant, and of everlasting peace.”

The conditions of their emigration offered a reasonable security
for the free and undisturbed exercise of their worship. “By a
convention with the local seigneurs, ratified later by the King of
Naples, Ferdinand of Arragon, they were permitted to govern their own
affairs, civil and spiritual, by their own magistrates, and their own
pastors.”[78] Their first settlement was near the town of Montalto.
Half a century later rose the city of San Sexto, which afterwards
became the capital of the colony. Other towns and villages sprang
up, and the region, which before had been thinly inhabited, and but
poorly cultivated, was soon transformed into a smiling garden. The
swelling hills were clothed with fruit-trees, and the plains waved
with luxuriant crops. The Marquis of Spinello was so struck with the
prosperity and wealth of the settlements, that he offered to cede lands
on his own vast and fertile estates where these colonists might build
cities and plant vineyards. One of their towns he authorised them to
surround with a wall; hence its name, La Guardia. This town, situated
on a height near the sea, soon became populous and opulent.[79]

Towards the close of the same century, another body of Vaudois
emigrants from Provence arrived in the south of Italy. The new-comers
settled in Apulia, not far from their Calabrian brethren. Villages
and towns arose, and the region speedily put on a new face under the
improved arts and husbandry of the colonists. Their smiling homes,
which looked forth from amid groves of orange and myrtle, their
hills covered with the olive and the vine, their corn-fields and
pasture-lands, were the marvel and the envy of their neighbours.

In 1500 there arrived in Calabria yet another emigration from the
Valleys of Pragelas and Fraissinières. This third body of colonists
established themselves on the Volturata, a river which flows from the
Apennines into the Bay of Tarento. With the increase of their numbers
came an increase of prosperity to the colonists. Their neighbours,
who knew not the secret of this prosperity, were lost in wonder and
admiration of it. The physical attributes of the region occupied by the
emigrants differed in no respect from those of their own lands, both
were placed under the same sky, but how different the aspect of the one
from that of the other! The soil, touched by the plough of Vaudois,
seemed to feel a charm that made it open its bosom and yield a tenfold
increase. The vine tended by Vaudois hands bore richer clusters, and
strove in generous rivalry with the fig and the olive to outdo them in
enriching with its produce the Vaudois board. And how delightful the
quiet and order of their towns; and the air of happiness on the faces
of the people! And how sweet to listen to the bleating of the flocks
on the hills, the lowing of the herds in the meadows, the song of the
reaper and grape-gatherer, and the merry voices of children at play
around the hamlets and villages! For about 200 years these colonies
continued to flourish.

“It is a curious circumstance,” says the historian M’Crie, “that
the first gleam of light, at the revival of letters, shone on that
remote spot of Italy where the Vaudois had found an asylum. Petrarch
first acquired a knowledge of the Greek tongue from Barlaam, a monk
of Calabria; and Boccaccio was taught it from Leontius Pilatus, who
was a hearer of Barlaam, if not also a native of the same place.”[80]
Muston says that “the sciences flourished among them.”[81] The day of
the Renaissance had not yet broken. The flight of scholars, which was
to bear with it the seeds of ancient learning to the West, had not yet
taken place; but the Vaudois of Calabria would seem to have anticipated
that great literary revival. They had brought with them the Scriptures
in the Romance version. They possessed doubtless the taste and genius
for which the Romance nations were then famous; and, moreover, in their
southern settlement they may have had access to some knowledge of those
sciences which the Saracens then so assiduously cultivated; and what
so likely, with their leisure and wealth, as that these Vaudois should
turn their attention to letters as well as to husbandry, and make their
adopted country vocal with the strains of that minstrelsy with which
Provence and Dauphiné had resounded so melodiously, till its music
was quenched at once and for ever by the murderous arms of Simon de
Montfort? But here we can only doubtfully guess, for the records of
this interesting people are scanty and dubious.

These colonists kept up their connection with the mother country of the
Valleys, though situated at the opposite extremity of Italy. To keep
alive their faith, which was the connecting link, pastors were sent
in relays of two to minister in the churches of Calabria and Apulia;
and when they had fulfilled their term of two years they were replaced
by other two. The barbes, on their way back to the Valleys, visited
their brethren in the Italian towns; for at that time there were few
cities in the peninsula in which the Vaudois were not to be found.
The grandfather of the Vaudois historian, Gilles, in one of these
pastoral visits to Venice, was assured by the Waldenses whom he there
conversed with, that there were not fewer than 6,000 of their nation
in that city. Fear had not yet awakened the suspicions and kindled the
hatred of the Romanists, for the Reformation was not yet come. Nor did
the Waldenses care to thrust their opinions upon the notice of their
neighbours. Still the priests could not help observing that the manners
of these northern settlers were, in many things, peculiar and strange.
They eschewed revels and fêtes; they had their children taught by
foreign schoolmasters; in their churches was neither image nor lighted
taper; they never went on pilgrimage; they buried their dead without
the aid of the priests; and never were they known to bring a candle
to the Virgin’s shrine, or purchase a mass for the help of their dead
relatives. These peculiarities were certainly startling, but one thing
went far to atone for them--they paid with the utmost punctuality and
fidelity their stipulated tithes; and as the value of their lands was
yearly increasing, there was a corresponding yearly increase in both
the tithe due to the priest and the rent payable to the landlord, and
neither was anxious to disturb a state of things so beneficial to
himself, and which was every day becoming more advantageous.[82]

But in the middle of the sixteenth century the breath of Protestantism
from the North began to move over these colonies. The pastors who
visited them told them of the synod which had been held in Angrogna in
1532, and which had been as the “beginning of months” to the ancient
Church of the Valleys. More glorious tidings still did they communicate
to the Christians of Calabria. In Germany, in France, in Switzerland,
and in Denmark the old Gospel had blazed forth in a splendour unknown
to it for ages. The Lamp of the Alps was no longer the one solitary
light in the world: around it was a circle of mighty torches, whose
rays, blending with those of the older luminary, were combining to
dispel the night from Christendom. At the hearing of these stupendous
things their spirit revived: their past conformity appeared to them
like cowardice; they, too, would take part in the great work of the
emancipation of the nations, by making open confession of the truth.
No longer content with the mere visit of a pastor, they petitioned the
mother Church to send them one who might permanently discharge amongst
them the office of the holy ministry.[83]

There was at that time a young minister at Geneva, a native of Italy,
and him the Church of the Valleys designated to the perilous but
honourable post. His name was Jean Louis Paschale; he was a native
of Coni, in the Plain of Piedmont. By birth a Romanist, his first
profession was that of arms; but from a knight of the sword he had
become, like Loyola, though in a truer sense, a knight of the Cross.
He had just completed his theological studies at Lausanne. He was
betrothed to a young Piedmontese Protestant, Camilla Guèrina.[84]
“Alas!” she sorrowfully exclaimed, when he intimated to her his
departure for Calabria, “so near to Rome and so far from me.” They
parted, nevermore to meet on earth.

The young minister carried with him to Calabria the energetic spirit
of Geneva. His preaching was with power; the zeal and courage of the
Calabrian flock revived, and the light formerly hid under a bushel was
now openly displayed. Its splendour attracted the ignorance and awoke
the fanaticism of the region. The priests, who had tolerated a heresy
that had conducted itself so modestly, and paid its dues so punctually,
could be blind no longer. The Marquis of Spinello, who had been the
protector of these colonists hitherto, finding his kindness more than
repaid in the flourishing condition of his states, was compelled to
move against them. “That dreadful thing, Lutheranism,” he was told,
“had broken in, and would soon destroy all things.”

The marquis summoned the pastor and his flock before him. After a few
moments’ address from Paschale, the marquis dismissed the members
of the congregation with a sharp reprimand, but the pastor he threw
into the dungeons of Foscalda. The bishop of the diocese next took
the matter into his own hands, and removed Paschale to the prison of
Cosenza, where he was confined eight months.

The Pope heard of the case, and delegated Cardinal Alexandrini,
Inquisitor-General, to extinguish the heresy in the Kingdom of
Naples.[85] Alexandrini ordered Paschale to be removed from the Castle
of Cosenza, and conducted to Naples. On the journey he was subjected
to terrible sufferings. Chained to a gang of prisoners--the handcuffs
so tight that they entered the flesh--he spent nine days on the road,
sleeping at night on the bare earth, which was exchanged on his
arrival at Naples for a deep, damp dungeon,[86] the stench of which
almost suffocated him.

[Illustration: PARTING OF PASCHALE FROM HIS BETROTHED.]

On the 16th of May, 1560, Paschale was taken in chains to Rome, and
imprisoned in the Torre di Nona, where he was thrust into a cell not
less noisome than that which he had occupied at Naples.

His brother, Bartolomeo, having obtained letters of recommendation,
came from Coni to procure, if possible, some mitigation of his fate.
The interview between the two brothers, as told by Bartolomeo, was most
affecting. “It was quite hideous to see him,” says he, “with his bare
head, and his hands and arms lacerated by the small cords with which
he was bound, like one about to be led to the gibbet. On advancing to
embrace him I sank to the ground. ‘My brother,’ said he, ‘if you are a
Christian, why do you distress yourself thus? Do you know that a leaf
cannot fall to the ground without the will of God? Comfort yourself in
Christ Jesus, for the present troubles are not worthy to be compared
with the glory to come.’” His brother, a Romanist, offered him half
his fortune if only he would recant, and save his life. Even this
token of affection could not move him. “Oh, my brother!” said he, “the
danger in which you are involved gives me more distress than all that I
suffer.”[87]

He wrote to his affianced bride with a pen which, if it softened the
picture of his own great sufferings, freely expressed the affection he
bore for her, which “grows,” said he, “with that I feel for God.” Nor
was he unmindful of his flock in Calabria. “My state is this,” says
he, in a letter which he addressed to them, “I feel my joy increase
every day, as I approach nearer the hour in which I shall be offered a
sweet-smelling sacrifice to the Lord Jesus Christ, my faithful Saviour;
yea, so inexpressible is my joy that I seem to myself to be free from
captivity, and am prepared to die for Christ, and not only once, but
ten thousand times, if it were possible; nevertheless, I persevere in
imploring the Divine assistance by prayer, for I am convinced that
man is a miserable creature when left to himself, and not upheld and
directed by God.”[88]

CHAPTER XI.

EXTINCTION OF WALDENSES IN CALABRIA.

While Paschale was calmly awaiting a martyr’s death in his dungeon at
Rome, how fared it with his flock in Calabria, on whom the gathering
storm had burst in terrific violence?

When it was known that Protestant ministers had been sent from Geneva
to the Waldensian Churches in Calabria, the Inquisitor-General, as
already mentioned, and two Dominican monks, Valerio Malvicino and
Alfonso Urbino, were dispatched by the Sacred College to reduce
these Churches to the obedience of the Papal See, or stamp them out.
They arrived at San Sexto, and assembling the inhabitants, assured
them it was not intended to do them any harm, would they but dismiss
their Lutheran teachers and come to mass. The bell was rung for the
celebration of the Sacrament, but the citizens, instead of attending
the service, left the town in a body, and retired to a neighbouring
wood. Concealing their chagrin, the inquisitors took their departure
from San Sexto, and set out for La Guardia, the gates of which they
locked behind them when they had entered, to prevent a second flight.
Assembling the inhabitants, they told them that their co-religionists
of San Sexto had renounced their errors, and dutifully attended mass,
and they exhorted them to follow their good example, and return to the
fold of the Roman shepherd; warning them at the same time, that should
they refuse they would expose themselves, as heretics, to the loss of
goods and life. The poor people, taken unawares, and believing what
was told them, consented to hear mass; but no sooner was the ceremony
ended, and the gates of the town opened, than they learned the deceit
which had been practised upon them. Indignant, and at the same time
ashamed of their own weakness, they resolved to leave the place in a
body, and join their brethren in the woods, but were withheld from
their purpose by the persuasion and promises of their feudal superior,
Spinello.

The Inquisitor-General, Alexandrini, now made request for two companies
of men-at-arms, to enable him to execute his mission. The required
aid was instantly given, and the soldiers were sent in pursuit of the
inhabitants of San Sexto. Tracking them to their hiding-places, in the
thickets and the caves of the mountains, they slaughtered many of them;
others, who escaped, were pursued with bloodhounds, as if they had been
wild beasts. Some of these fugitives scaled the craggy summits of the
Apennines, and hurling down the stones on the soldiers who attempted to
follow them, compelled them to desist from the pursuit.

Alexandrini dispatched a messenger to Naples for more troops to quell
what he called the rebellion of the Vaudois. The viceroy obeyed the
summons by coming in person with an army. He attempted to storm the
fugitives, now strongly entrenched in the great mountains, whose
summits of splintered rock, towering high above the pine forests that
clothe their sides, presented to the fugitives an almost inaccessible
retreat. The Waldenses offered to emigrate; but the viceroy would
listen to nothing but their return within the pale of the Church of
Rome. They were prepared to yield their lives rather than accept peace
on such conditions. The viceroy now ordered his men to advance; but the
shower of rocks that met his soldiers in the ascent hurled them to the
bottom, a discomfited mass, in which maimed and dying were confusedly
mingled with the corpses of the slain.

The viceroy, seeing the difficulty of the enterprise, issued an edict
promising a free pardon to all bandits, outlaws, and other criminals
who might be willing to undertake the task of scaling the mountains
and attacking the strongholds of the Waldenses. In obedience to this
summons, there assembled a mob of desperadoes, who were but too
familiar with the secret paths of the Apennines. Threading their way
through the woods, and clambering over the great rocks, these assassins
rushed from every side on the barricades on the summit, and butchered
the poor Vaudois. Thus were the inhabitants of San Sexto exterminated,
some dying by the sword, some by fire, while others were torn by
bloodhounds or perished by famine.[89]

While the outlaws of the Neapolitan viceroy were busy in the mountains,
the Inquisitor-General and his monks were pursuing their work of
blood at La Guardia. The military force at their command not enabling
them to take summary measures with the inhabitants, they had recourse
to stratagem. Enticing the citizens outside the gates, and placing
soldiers in ambush, they succeeded in getting into their power
upwards of 1,600 persons.[90] Of these, seventy were sent in chains
to Montalto, and tortured, in the hope of compelling them to accuse
themselves of practising shameful crimes in their religious assemblies.
No such confession, however, could the most prolonged tortures wring
from them. “Stefano Carlino,” says M’Crie, “was tortured till his
bowels gushed out;” and another prisoner, named Verminel, “was kept
during eight hours on a horrid instrument called the _hell_, but
persisted in denying the atrocious calumny.”[91] Some were thrown from
the tops of towers, or precipitated over cliffs; others were torn with
iron whips, and finally beaten to death with fiery brands; and others,
smeared with pitch, were burned alive.

But these horrors pale before the bloody tragedy at Montalto, enacted
by the Marquis di Buccianici, whose zeal was quickened, it is said,
by the promise of a cardinal’s hat to his brother if he would clear
Calabria of heresy. One’s blood runs cold at the perusal of the deed.
It was witnessed by a servant to Ascanio Caraccioli, himself a Roman
Catholic, and described by him in a letter, which was published in
Italy, along with other accounts of the horrible transaction, and has
been quoted by M’Crie. “Most illustrious sir, I have now to inform you
of the dreadful justice which began to be executed on these Lutherans
early this morning, being the 11th of June. And, to tell you the truth,
I can compare it to nothing but the slaughter of so many sheep. They
were all shut up in one house as in a sheep-fold. The executioner
went, and bringing out one of them, covered his face with a napkin,
or _benda_, as we call it, led him out to a field near the house, and
causing him to kneel down, cut his throat with a knife. Then, taking
off the bloody napkin, he went and brought out another, whom he put to
death after the same manner. In this way the whole number, amounting
to eighty-eight men, were butchered. I leave you to figure to yourself
the lamentable spectacle, for I can scarcely refrain from tears while
I write; nor was there any person, after witnessing the execution of
one, could stand to look on a second. The meekness and patience with
which they went to martyrdom and death are incredible. Some of them at
their death professed themselves of the same faith with us, but the
greater part died in their cursed obstinacy. All the old met their
death with cheerfulness, but the young exhibited symptoms of fear. I
still shudder while I think of the executioner with the bloody knife in
his teeth, the dripping napkin in his hand, and his arms besmeared with
gore, going to the house, and taking out one victim after another, just
as a butcher does the sheep which he means to kill.”[92] Their bodies
were quartered, and stuck up on pikes along the high road leading from
Montalto to Château-Vilar, a distance of thirty-six miles.

Numbers of men and women were burned alive, many were drafted off to
the Spanish galleys, some made their submission to Rome, and a few,
escaping from the scene of these horrors, reached, after infinite toil,
their native Valleys, to tell that the once-flourishing Waldensian
colony and Church in Calabria no longer existed, and that they only had
been left to carry tidings to their brethren of its utter extermination.

Meanwhile, preparations had been made at Rome for the trial of Jean
Louis Paschale. On the 8th of September, 1560, he was brought out of
his prison, conducted to the Convent della Minerva, and cited before
the Papal tribunal. He confessed his Saviour, and, with a serenity to
which the countenances of his judges were strangers, he listened to the
sentence of death, which was carried into execution on the following
day.

Standing upon the summit of the Janiculum Mount, vast crowds could
witness the spectacle. In front the Campagna spreads out its once
glorious but now desolated bosom; and winding through it like a thread
of gold is seen the Tiber, while the Apennines, sweeping round it in
craggy grandeur, enclose it like a vast wall. Immediately beneath,
uprearing her domes and monuments and palaces, with an air that seems
to say, “I sit a queen,” is the city of Rome. Yonder, asserting an
easy supremacy amid the other fabrics of the Eternal City, is the
scarred and riven yet Titanic form of the Coliseum, with its stains of
early Christian blood not yet washed out. By its side, the partner of
its guilt and doom, lies the Palatine, once the palace of the world’s
master, now a low mound of ruins, with its row of melancholy cypresses,
the only mourners on that site of vanished glory and fallen empire.
Nearer, burning in the midday sun, is the proud cupola of St. Peter’s,
flanked on the one side by the buildings of the Inquisition, and on the
other by the huge Mole of Hadrian, beneath whose gloomy ramparts old
Tiber rolls sluggishly and sullenly along. But what shout is this which
we hear? Why does Rome keep holiday? Why do all her bells ring? Lo!
from every street and piazza eager crowds rush forth, and uniting in
one overwhelming and surging stream, they are seen rolling across the
Bridge of St. Angelo, and pressing in at the gates of the old fortress,
which are thrown wide open to admit this mass of human beings.

Entering the court-yard of the old castle, an imposing sight meets
the eye. What a confluence of ranks, dignities, and grandeurs! In
the centre is placed a chair, the emblazonry of which tells us that
it claims to rise in authority and dignity over the throne of kings.
The Pontiff, Pius IV., has already taken his seat upon it, for he has
determined to be present at the tragedy of to-day. Behind his chair, in
scarlet robes, are his cardinals and counsellors, with many dignitaries
besides in mitres and cowls, ranged in circles, according to their
place in the Papal body. Behind the ecclesiastics are seated, row on
row, the nobility and beauty of Rome. Plumes wave, stars gleam, and
seem to mock the frocks and cowls gathered near them, whose wearers,
however, would not exchange these mystic garments for all the bravery
that blazes around them. The vast sweep of the Court of St. Angelo is
densely occupied. Its ample floor is covered from end to end with a
closely-wedged mass of citizens, who have come to see the spectacle.
In the centre of the throng, rising a little way over the sea of human
heads, is seen a scaffold, with an iron stake, and beside it a bundle
of faggots.

A slight movement begins to be perceptible in the crowd beside the
gate. Some one is entering. The next moment a storm of hissing and
execration salutes the ear. It is plain that the person who has just
made his entrance is the object of universal dislike. The clank of
irons on the stone floor of the court, as he comes forward, tells how
heavily his limbs are loaded with fetters. He is still young; but
his face is pale and haggard with suffering. He lifts his eyes, and
with countenance undismayed surveys the vast assembly, and the dismal
apparatus that stands in the midst of it, waiting its victim. There
sits a calm courage on his brow; the serene light of deep, untroubled
peace beams in his eye. He mounts the scaffold, and stands beside
the stake. Every eye is now turned, not on the wearer of the tiara,
but on the man who is clad in the sanbenito. “Good people,” says the
martyr--and the whole assembly keep silence--“I am come here to die for
confessing the doctrine of my Divine Master and Saviour, Jesus Christ.”
Then turning to Pius IV. he arraigned him as the enemy of Christ,
the persecutor of his people, and the Anti-Christ of Scripture, and
concluded by summoning him and all his cardinals to answer for their
cruelties and murders before the throne of the Lamb. “At his words,”
says the historian Crespin, “the people were deeply moved, and the Pope
and the cardinals gnashed their teeth.”[93]

[Illustration: GROUP OF ROMAN PEASANTS.]

The inquisitors hastily gave the signal. The executioners came round
him, and having strangled him, they kindled the faggots, and the flames
blazing up speedily reduced his body to ashes. For once the Pope had
performed his function. With his key of fire, which he may truly claim
to carry, he had opened the celestial doors, and had sent his poor
prisoner from the dark dungeons of the Inquisition, to dwell in the
palace of the sky.

So died, or rather passed into the life eternal, Jean Louis Paschale,
the Waldensian missionary and pastor of the flock in Calabria. His
ashes were collected and thrown into the Tiber, and by the Tiber
they were borne to the Mediterranean. And this was the grave of the
preacher-martyr, whose noble bearing and undaunted courage before
the Pope himself gave added value to his splendid testimony for the
Protestant cause. Time may consume the marble, violence or war may drag
down the monumental pile;

“The pyramids that cleave heaven’s jewelled portal;
Elëan Jove’s star-spangled dome; the tomb
Where rich Mausolus sleeps--are not immortal.”[94]

But the tomb of the far-sounding sea to which the ashes of Paschale
were committed, with a final display of impotent rage, was a nobler
mausoleum than ever Rome raised to any of her Pontiffs.

CHAPTER XII.

THE YEAR OF THE PLAGUE.

Peace--Re-occupation of their Homes--Partial Famine--
Contributions of Foreign Churches--Castrocaro, Governor of
the Valleys--His Treacheries and Oppressions--Letter of
Elector Palatine to the Duke--A Voice raised for Toleration--
Fate of Castrocaro--The Plague--Awful Ravages--10,000
Deaths--Only Two Pastors Survive--Ministers come from
Switzerland, &c.--Worship conducted henceforward in French.

A whole century nearly passed away between the trampling out of the
Protestant Church in Calabria, and the next great persecution which
befel that venerable people whose tragic history we are recording.
We can touch only the more prominent of the events which fill up the
interval.

The war that La Trinita, so ingloriously for himself, had waged against
the Waldenses, ended, as we have seen, in a treaty of peace, which was
signed at Cavour on the 5th of June, 1561, between Philip of Savoy and
the deputies of the Valleys. But though the cloud had rolled past, it
had left numerous and affecting memorials of the desolation it had
inflicted. The inhabitants descended from the mountains to exchange the
weapons of war for the spade and the pruning-knife. With steps slow
and feeble the aged and the infirm were let down into the vales, to
sit once more at noon or at eve beneath the shadow of their vines and
ancestral chestnut-trees. But, alas! how often did the tear of sorrow
moisten the eye as it marked the desolation and ruin that deformed
those scenes lately so fair and smiling! The fruit-bearing trees cut
down; vineyard and corn-field marred; hamlets burned; villages, in
some cases, a heap of ruins, all testified to the rage of the enemy who
had invaded their land. Years must pass before these deep scars could
be effaced, and the beauty of their Valleys restored. And there were
yet tender griefs weighing upon them. How many were there who had lived
under the same roof-tree with them, and joined night and morning in the
same psalm, who would return no more!

Distress, bordering on famine, began to invade the Valleys. Seven
months of incessant fighting had left them no time to cultivate the
fields; and now the stock of last year’s provisions was exhausted, and
starvation stared them in the face. Before the treaty of peace was
signed, the time of sowing was past, and when the autumn came there was
scarcely anything to reap. Their destitution was further aggravated
by the fugitives from Calabria, who began about this time to arrive
in the Valleys. Escaping with nothing but their lives, they presented
themselves in hunger and nakedness. Their brethren opened their arms
to receive them, and though their own necessities were great, they
nevertheless shared with them the little they had.

The tale of the suffering now prevailing in the Valleys was known in
other countries, and evoked the sympathy of their Protestant brethren.
Calvin, with characteristic promptness and ardour, led in the movement
for their relief. By his advice they sent deputies to represent their
case to the Churches of Protestantism abroad, and collections were made
for them in Geneva, France, Switzerland, and Germany. The subscriptions
were headed by the Elector Palatine, after whom came the Duke of
Wurtemburg, the Canton of Bern, the Church at Strasburg, and others.

By-and-by, seed-time and harvest were restored in the Valleys; smiling
châlets began again to dot the sides of their mountains, and to rise
by the banks of their torrents; and the miseries which La Trinita’s
campaign had entailed upon them were passing into oblivion, when their
vexations were renewed by the appointment of a deputy-governor of their
Valleys, Castrocaro, a Tuscan by birth.

This man had served against the Vaudois as a colonel of militia under
La Trinita; he had been taken prisoner in an encounter with them, but
honourably treated, and at length generously released. He returned the
Waldenses evil for good. His appointment as Governor of the Valleys
he owed mainly to his acquaintance with the Duchess Margaret, the
protectress of the Vaudois, into whose favour he had ingratiated
himself by professing a warm affection for the men of the Valleys; and
his friendship with the Archbishop of Turin, to whom he had pledged
himself to do his utmost to convert the Vaudois to Romanism. When at
length Castrocaro arrived in the Valleys in the character of governor,
he forgot his professions to the duchess, but faithfully set about
fulfilling the promise he had made to the archbishop.

The new governor began by restricting the liberties guaranteed to
their Churches in the treaty of peace; he next ordered the dismissal
of certain of the pastors, and when their congregations refused to
comply, he began to fine and imprison the recusants. He sent false and
calumnious reports to the court of the duke, and introduced a troop
of soldiers into the country, on the pretext that the Waldenses were
breaking out into rebellion. He built the fortress of Mirabouc, at the
foot of the Col de la Croix, in the narrow gorge that leads from Bobbio
to France, to close this gate of exit from their territory, and overawe
the Valley of Lucerna. At last he threatened to renew the war unless
the Waldenses should comply with his wishes.

What was to be done? They carried their complaints and remonstrances to
Turin; but, alas! the ear of the duke and duchess had been poisoned by
the malice and craft of the governor. Soon again the old alternative
would be presented to them, the mass or death.[95]

In their extremity they sought the help of the Protestant princes of
Germany. The cry from the Alps found a responsive echo from the German
plains. The great Protestant chiefs of the Fatherland, especially
Frederick, Elector Palatine, saw in these poor oppressed herdsmen and
vine-dressers his brethren, and with zeal and warmth espoused their
cause. He indited a letter to the duke, distinguished for its elevation
of sentiment, as well as the catholicity of its views. It is a noble
defence of the rights of conscience, and an eloquent pleading in behalf
of toleration. “Let your highness,” says the Elector, “know that there
is a God in heaven, who not only contemplates the actions, but also
tries the hearts and reins of men, and from whom nothing is hid. Let
your highness take care not voluntarily to make war upon God, and not
to persecute Christ in his members.... Persecution, moreover, will
never advance the cause it pretends to defend. The ashes of the martyrs
are the seed of the Christian Church. For the Church resembles the
palm-tree, whose stem only shoots up the taller the greater the weights
that are hung upon it. Let your highness consider that the Christian
religion was established by persuasion, and not by violence; and as it
is certain that religion is nothing else than a firm and enlightened
persuasion of God, and of his will, as revealed in his Word, and
engraven in the hearts of believers by his Holy Spirit, it cannot, when
once rooted, be torn away by tortures.”[96] So did the Elector Palatine
warn the duke.

These are remarkable words when we think that they were written in the
middle of the sixteenth century. We question whether our own age could
express itself more justly on the subject of the rights of conscience,
the spirituality of religion, and the impolicy, as well as criminality,
of persecution. We sometimes apologise for the cruel deeds of Spain and
France, on the ground of the intolerance and blindness of the age. But
six years before the St. Bartholomew Massacre was enacted, this great
voice had been raised in Christendom for toleration.

What effect this letter had upon the duke we do not certainly know,
but from about this time Castrocaro moderated his violence, though he
still continued at intervals to terrify the poor people he so basely
oppressed by fulminating against them the most atrocious threats. On
the death of Emanuel Philibert, in 1580, the villainy of the governor
came to light. The young Duke Charles Emanuel ordered his arrest;
but the execution of it was a matter of difficulty, for Castrocaro
had entrenched himself in the Castle of La Torre, and surrounded
himself with a band of desperadoes, to which he had added, for his yet
greater defence, a pack of ferocious bloodhounds of unusual size and
strength.[97] A captain of his guard betrayed him, and thus as he had
maintained himself by treachery, so by treachery did his doom at last
overtake him. He was carried to Turin, where he perished in prison.[98]

Famine, persecution, war--all three, sometimes in succession and
sometimes together--had afflicted this much-enduring people, but now
they were to be visited by pestilence. For some years they had enjoyed
an unusual peace; and this quiet was the more remarkable inasmuch as
all around their mountains Europe was in combustion. Their brethren
of the Reformed Church in France, in Spain, and in Italy were falling
on the field, perishing by massacre, or dying at the stake, while
they were guarded from harm. But now a new calamity carried gloom and
mourning into their Valleys. On the morning of the 23rd of August,
1629, a cloud of unusual blackness gathered on the summit of the Col
Julien. It burst in a water-spout or deluge. The torrents rolled down
the mountain on both sides, and the villages of Bobbio and Prali,
situated the one in the southern and the other in the northern valley,
were overflown by the sudden inundation. Many of the houses were
swept away, and the inhabitants had barely time to save their lives
by flight. In September of the same year, there came an icy wind,
accompanied by a dry cloud, which scathed their Valleys and destroyed
the crop of the chestnut-tree. There followed a second deluge of rain,
which completely ruined the vintage. These calamities were the more
grievous inasmuch as they succeeded a year of partial famine. The
Vaudois pastors assembled in solemn synod, to humble themselves and to
lift up their voices in prayer to God. Little did they imagine that at
that moment a still heavier calamity hung over them, and that this was
the last time they were ever to meet one another on earth.[99]

In 1630, a French army, under Marshal Schomberg, suddenly occupied the
Valleys. In that army were many volunteers, who had made their escape
from a virulent contagious disease then raging in France. The weather
was hot, and the seeds of the pestilence which the army had brought
with it speedily developed themselves. The plague showed itself in the
first week of May in the Valley of Perosa; it next broke out in the
more northern Valley of San Martino; and soon it spread throughout
all the Valleys. The pastors met together to supplicate the Almighty,
and to concert practical measures for checking the ravages of this
mysterious and terrible scourge. They purchased medicine and collected
provisions for the poor.[100] They visited the sick, consoled the
dying, and preached in the open air to crowds, solemnised and eager to
listen.

[Illustration: INTERIOR OF ST. JOHN LATERAN, ROME.]

In July and August the heat was excessive, and the malady raged yet
more furiously. In the month of July four of the pastors were carried
off by the plague; in August seven others died; and in the following
month another, the twelfth, was mortally stricken. There remained now
only three pastors, and it was remarked that they belonged to three
several valleys--Lucerna, Martino, and Perosa. The three survivors
met on the heights of Angrogna, to consult with the deputies of the
various parishes regarding the means of providing for the celebration
of worship. They wrote to Geneva and Dauphiné requesting that pastors
might be sent to supply the place of those whom the plague had struck
down, that so the venerable Church of the Valleys, which had survived
so many calamities, might not become extinct. They also recalled
Antoine Leger from Constantinople.[101]

The plague subsided during the winter, but in spring (1631) it rose
up again in renewed force. Of the three surviving pastors, one other
died; leaving thus only two, Pierre Gilles of Lucerna, and Valerius
Gross of Martino. With the heats of the summer the pestilence waxed in
strength. Armies, going and coming in the Valleys, suffered equally
with the inhabitants. Horsemen would be seen to drop from the saddle on
the highway, seized with sudden illness. Soldiers and sutlers, struck
in by-paths, lay there infecting the air with their corpses. In La
Torre alone fifty families became extinct. The most moderate estimate
of the numbers cut off by the plague is 10,000, or from a half to
two-thirds of the entire population of the Valleys. The corn in many
places remained uncut, the grapes rotted on the bough, and the fruit
dropped from the tree. Strangers who had come to find health in the
pure mountain air obtained from the soil nothing but a grave. Towns
and villages, which had rung so recently from the sounds of industry,
were now silent. Parents were without children, and children were
without parents. Patriarchs, who had been wont with pride and joy to
gather round them their numerous grandchildren, had seen them sicken
and die, and were now alone. The venerable pastor Gilles lost his four
elder sons. Though continually present in the homes of the stricken,
and at the bedsides of the dying, he himself was spared to compile the
monuments of his ancient Church, and narrate among other woes that
which had just passed over his native land, and “part of which he had
been.”

Of the Vaudois pastors only two now remained; and ministers hastened
from Geneva and other places to the Valleys, lest the old lamp should
go out. The services of the Waldensian Churches had hitherto been
performed in the Italian tongue, but the new pastors could speak only
French. Worship was henceforward conducted in that language, but the
Vaudois soon came to understand it, their own ancient tongue being a
dialect between the French and Italian. Another change introduced at
this time was the assimilation of their ritual to that of Geneva. And
further, the primitive and affectionate name of _Barba_ was dropped,
and the modern title substituted, _Monsieur le Ministre_.[102]

CHAPTER XIII.

THE GREAT MASSACRE.

Preliminary Attacks--The Propaganda de Fide--Marchioness
de Pianeza--Gastaldo’s Order--Its Barbarous Execution--
Greater Sorrows--Perfidy of Pianeza--The Massacring
Army--Its Attack and Repulse--Treachery--The Massacre
Begins--Its Horrors--Modes of Torture--Individual
Martyrs--Leger collects Evidence on the Spot--He Appeals to
the Protestant States--Interposition of Cromwell--Mission of
Sir Samuel Morland--A Martyr’s Monument.

The first labour of the Waldenses, on the departure of the plague, was
the re-organisation of society. There was not a house in all their
Valleys where death had not been; all ties had been rent, the family
was all but extinct; but now, the destroyer being gone, the scattered
inhabitants began to draw together, and to join hand and heart in
restoring the ruined churches, raising up the fallen habitations, and
creating anew family and home.

Other events of an auspicious kind, which occurred at this time,
contributed to revive the spirits of the Waldenses, and to brighten
with a gleam of hope the scene of the recent great catastrophe. The
army took its departure, peace having been signed between the French
monarch and the duke, and the Valleys returned once more under the
dominion of the House of Savoy. A decade and a half of comparative
tranquillity allowed the population to root itself anew, and their
Valleys and mountain-sides to be brought again under tillage. Fifteen
years--how short a breathing-space amid storms so awful!

These fifteen years draw to a close; it is now 1650, and the Vaudois
are entering within the shadow of their greatest woe. The throne of
Savoy was at this time filled by Charles Emmanuel II., a youth of
fifteen. He was a prince of mild and humane disposition; but he was
counselled and ruled by his mother, the Duchess Christina, who had
been appointed regent of the kingdom during his minority. That mother
was sprung of a race which has ever been noted for its dissimulation,
its cruelty, and its bigoted devotion to Rome. She was the daughter
of Henry IV. and Mary de Medici, and granddaughter of that Catherine
de Medici whose name stands so conspicuously connected with a tragedy
which has received, as it merited, the execration of mankind--the St.
Bartholomew Massacre. The ferocious temper and gloomy superstition of
the grandmother had descended to the granddaughter. In no reign did the
tears and blood of the Waldenses flow so profusely, a fact for which
we cannot satisfactorily account, unless on the supposition that the
sufferings which now overwhelmed them came not from the mild prince who
occupied the throne, but from the cold, cruel, and bloodthirsty regent
who governed the kingdom. In short, there is reason to believe that it
was not the facile spirit of the House of Savoy, but the astute spirit
of the Medici, prompted by the Vatican, that enacted those scenes of
carnage that we are now to record.

The blow did not descend all at once; a series of lesser attacks
heralded the great and consummating stroke. Machinations, chicaneries,
and legal robberies paved the way for an extermination that was meant
to be complete and final.

First of all came the monks. Pestilence, as we have seen, visited the
Valleys in 1630. There came, however, a second plague--not this time
the pestilence, but a swarm of Capuchins. They had been sent to convert
the heretics, and they began by eagerly challenging the pastors to a
controversy, in which they felt sure of triumphing. A few attempts,
however, convinced them that victory was not to be so easily won as
they had fondly thought. The heretics made “a Pope of their Bible,”
they complained, and as this was a book which the Fathers had not
studied, they did not know where to find the passages which they
were sure would confute the Vaudois pastors; they could silence them
only by banishing them, and among others whom they drove into exile
was the accomplished Antoine Leger, the uncle of the historian. Thus
were the people deprived of their natural leaders.[103] The Vaudois
were forbidden on pain of confiscation and death to purchase or farm
lands outside their own narrow territories. Certain of their churches
were closed. Their territory was converted into a prison by an order
forbidding them to cross the frontier even for a few hours, unless on
fair-days. The wholly Protestant communes of Bobbio, Villaro, Angrogna,
and Rora were ordered to maintain each a mission of Capuchins; and
foreign Protestants were interdicted from settling in the Valleys under
pain of death, and a fine of 1,000 gold crowns upon the communes that
should receive them. This law was levelled against their pastors, who,
since the plague, were mostly French or Swiss. It was hoped that in a
few years the Vaudois would be without ministers. _Monts-de-Piété_ were
established to induce the Vaudois, whom confiscations, bad harvests,
and the billeting of soldiers had reduced to great straits, to pawn
their goods, and when all had been put in pledge they were offered
restitution in full on condition of renouncing their faith. Dowries
were promised to young maidens on the same terms.[104] These various
arts had a success surprisingly small. Some dozen of Waldensian
perverts were added to the Roman Church. It was plain that the good
work of proselytising was proceeding too slowly. More efficient
measures must be had recourse to.

The Society for the “Propagation of the Faith,” established by Pope
Gregory XV. in 1622, had already been spread over Italy and France. The
object of the society was originally set forth in words sufficiently
simple and innocent--“De Propagandâ Fide” (for the Propagation of
the Faith). Since the first institution of this society, however,
its object had undergone enlargement, or, if not its object, at all
events its title. Its first modern designation was supplemented by
the emphatic words, “et Extirpandis Hæreticis” (and the Extirpation
of Heretics). The membership of the society soon became numerous:
it included both laymen and priests; all ranks, from the noble and
the prelate to the peasant and the pauper, pressed forward to enrol
themselves in it--the inducement being a plenary indulgence to all who
should take part in the good work so unmistakably indicated in the one
brief and pithy clause, “et Extirpandis Hæreticis.” The societies in
the smaller towns reported to the metropolitan cities; the metropolitan
cities to the capital; and the capitals to Rome, where, in the words of
Leger, “sat the great spider that held the threads of this mighty web.”

In 1650 the “Council of the Propagation of the Faith” was established
at Turin. The chief councillors of state, the great lords of the
country, and the dignitaries of the Church enrolled themselves as a
presiding board. Societies of women were formed, at the head of which
was the Marchioness de Pianeza. She was the first lady at court; and
as she had not worn “the white rose of a blameless life,” she was all
the more zealous in this cause, in the hope of making expiation for the
errors of the past. She was at infinite pains to further the object
of the society; and her own eager spirit she infused into all under
her. “The lady propagandists,” says Leger,[105] “distributed the towns
into districts, and each visited the district assigned to her twice a
week, suborning simple girls, servant maids, and young children by
their flattering allurements and fair promises, and doing evil turns
to such as would not listen to them. They had their spies everywhere,
who, among other information, ascertained in what Protestant families
disagreement existed, and hither would the propagandists repair,
stirring up the flame of dissension in order to separate the husband
from the wife, the wife from the husband, the children from the
parents; promising them, and indeed giving them, great advantages,
if they would consent to attend mass. Did they hear of a tradesman
whose business was falling off, or of a gentleman who from gambling
or otherwise was in want of money, these ladies were at hand with
their _Dabo tibi_ (I will give thee), on condition of apostacy;
and the prisoner was in like manner relieved from his dungeon, who
would give himself up to them. To meet the very heavy expenses of
this proselytising, to keep the machinery at work, to purchase the
souls that sold themselves for bread, regular collections were made
in the chapels, and in private families, in the shops, in the inns,
in the gambling-houses, in the streets--everywhere was alms-begging
in operation. The Marchioness of Pianeza herself, great lady as she
was, used every second or third day to make a circuit in search of
subscriptions, even going into the taverns for that purpose.... If
any person of condition, who was believed able to contribute a coin,
chanced to arrive at any hotel in town, these ladies did not fail to
wait upon him, purse in hand, and solicit a donation. When persons of
substance known to belong to the religion [Reformed] arrived in Turin,
they did not scruple to ask money of them for the propagation of the
faith, and the influence of the marchioness, or fear of losing their
errand and ruining their affairs, would often induce such to comply.”

While busied in the prosecution of these schemes the Marchioness de
Pianeza was stricken with death. Feeling remorse, and wishing to make
atonement, she summoned her lord, from whom she had been parted many
years, to her bedside, and charged him, as he valued the repose of her
soul and the safety of his own, to continue the good work, on which her
heart had been so much set, of converting the Vaudois. To stimulate his
zeal, she bequeathed him a sum of money, which, however, he could not
touch till he had fulfilled the condition on which it was granted. The
marquis undertook the task with the utmost goodwill.[106] A bigot and a
soldier, he could think of only one way of converting the Vaudois. It
was now that the storm burst.

On the 25th of January, 1655, came the famous order of Gastaldo. This
decree commanded all the Vaudois families domiciled in the communes of
Lucerna, Fenile, Bubiana, Bricherasio, San Giovanni, and La Torre--in
short, the whole of that rich district that separates their capital
from the plain of Piedmont--to quit their dwellings within three days,
and retire into the Valleys of Bobbio, Angrogna, and Rora. This they
were to do on pain of death. They were further required to sell their
lands to Romanists within twenty days. Those who were willing to abjure
the Protestant faith were exempted from the decree.

Anything more inhuman and barbarous under the circumstances than this
edict it would not be easy to imagine. It was the depth of winter,
and an Alpine winter has terrors unknown to the winters of even more
northern regions. How ever could a population like that on which
the decree fell, including young children and old men, the sick and
bed-ridden, the blind and the lame, undertake a journey across swollen
rivers, through valleys buried in snow, and over mountains covered with
ice? They must inevitably perish, and the edict that cast them out was
but another form of condemning them to die of cold and hunger. “Pray
ye,” said Christ, when warning his disciples to flee when they should
see the Roman armies gathering round Jerusalem, “pray ye that your
flight be not in the winter.” The Romish Propaganda at Turin chose this
season for the enforced flight of the Vaudois. Cold were the icy peaks
that looked down on this miserable troop, who were now fording the
torrents and now struggling up the mountain tracks; but the heart of
the persecutor was colder still. True, an alternative was offered them;
they might go to mass. Did they avail themselves of it? The historian
Leger informs us that he had a congregation of wellnigh 2,000 persons,
and that not a man of them all accepted the alternative. “I can well
bear them this testimony,” he observes, “seeing I was their pastor for
eleven years, and I knew every one of them by name; judge, reader,
whether I had not cause to weep for joy, as well as for sorrow, when I
saw that all the fury of these wolves was not able to influence one of
these lambs, and that no earthly advantage could shake their constancy.
And when I marked the traces of their blood on the snow and ice over
which they had dragged their lacerated limbs, had I not cause to bless
God that I had seen accomplished in their poor bodies what remained of
the measure of the sufferings of Christ, and especially when I beheld
this heavy cross borne by them with a fortitude so noble?”[107]

The Vaudois of the other valleys welcomed these poor exiles, and
joyfully shared with them their own humble and scanty fare. They spread
the table for all, and loaded it with polenta and roasted chestnuts,
with the milk and butter of their mountains, to which they did not
forget to add a cup of that red wine which their valleys produce.[108]
Their enemies were amazed when they saw the whole community rise up as
one man and depart.

Greater woes trod fast upon the heels of this initial calamity. A part
only of the Vaudois nation had suffered from the cruel decree of
Gastaldo; but the fixed object of the Propaganda was the extirpation of
the entire race, and the matter was gone about with consummate perfidy
and deliberate cruelty. From the upper valleys, to which they had
retired, the Waldenses sent respectful representations to the court of
Turin. They described their piteous condition in terms so moving--and
it would have been hard to have exaggerated it--and besought the
fulfilment of treaties in which the honour and truth of the House of
Savoy were pledged, in language so temperate and just, that one would
have thought that their supplication must needs prevail. Alas, no! The
ear of their prince had been poisoned by falsehood. Even access to
him was denied them. As regarded the Propaganda, their remonstrances,
though accompanied with tears and groans, were wholly unheeded. The
Vaudois were but charming deaf adders. They were put off with equivocal
answers and delusive promises till the fatal 17th of April had arrived,
when it was no longer necessary to dissemble and equivocate.[109]

On the day above named, April 17th, 1655, the Marquis de Pianeza
departed secretly at midnight from Turin, and appeared before the
Valleys at the head of an army of 15,000 men.[110] Waldensian deputies
were by appointment knocking at the door of the marquis in Turin, while
he himself was on the road to La Torre. He appeared under the walls
of that town at eight o’clock on Saturday evening, the same 17th of
April, attended by about 300 men; the main body of his army he had left
encamped on the plain. That army, secretly prepared, was composed of
Piedmontese, comprising a good many banditti, who were promised pardon
and plunder should they behave themselves well, some companies of
Bavarians, six regiments of French, whose thirst for blood the Huguenot
wars had not been able to slake, and several companies of Irish
Romanists, who, banished by Cromwell, arrived in Piedmont dripping
from the massacre of their Protestant fellow-subjects in their native
land.[111]

The Waldenses had hastily constructed a barricade at the entrance
of La Torre. The marquis ordered his soldiers to storm it; but the
besieged resisted so stoutly that, after three hours’ fighting, the
enemy found he had made no advance. At one o’clock on the Sunday
morning, Count Amadeus of Lucerna, who knew the locality, made a
flank movement along the banks of the Pelice, stole silently through
the meadows and orchards, and, advancing from the opposite quarter,
attacked the Vaudois in the rear. They faced round, pierced the ranks
of their assailants, and made good their retreat to the hills, leaving
La Torre in the hands of the enemy. The Vaudois had lost only three
men in all that fighting. It was now between two and three o’clock on
Sunday morning, and though the hour was early, the Romanists repaired
in a body to the church and chanted a _Te Deum_.[112] The day was
Palm-Sunday, and in this fashion did the Roman Church, by her soldiers,
celebrate that great festival of love and goodwill in the Waldensian
Valleys.

The Vaudois were once more on their mountains. Their families had been
previously transported to their natural fastnesses. Their sentinels
kept watch night and day along the frontier heights. They could see the
movements of Pianeza’s army on the plains beneath. They beheld their
orchards falling by the axes, and their dwellings being consumed by the
torches of the soldiers. On Monday the 19th, and Tuesday the 20th, a
series of skirmishes took place along the line of their mountain passes
and forts. The Vaudois, though poorly armed and vastly outnumbered--for
they were but as one to a hundred--were victorious on all points. The
Popish soldiers fell back in ignominious rout, carrying wondrous tales
of the Vaudois’ valour and heroism to their comrades on the plain, and
infusing incipient panic into the camp.[113]

Guilt is ever cowardly. Pianeza now began to have misgivings touching
the issue. The recollection that mighty armies had aforetime perished
on these mountains haunted and disquieted him. He betook him to a
weapon which the Waldenses have ever been less able to cope with than
the sword. On Wednesday, the 21st, before daybreak, he announced, by
sound of trumpet at the various Vaudois entrenchments, his willingness
to receive their deputies and treat for peace. Delegates set out for
his camp, and on their arrival at head-quarters were received with
the utmost urbanity, and sumptuously entertained. Pianeza expressed
the utmost regret for the excesses his soldiers had committed, and
which had been done, he said, contrary to orders. He protested that
he had come into their valleys only to track a few fugitives who had
disobeyed Gastaldo’s order, that the higher communes had nothing to
fear, and that if they would admit a single regiment each for a few
days, in token of their loyalty, all would be amicably ended. The craft
of the man conquered the deputies, and despite the warnings of the
more sagacious, the pastor Leger in particular, the Waldenses opened
the passes of their valleys and the doors of their dwellings to the
soldiers of Pianeza.

Alas! alas! these poor people were undone. They had received under
their roof the murderers of themselves and their families. The first
two days, the 22nd and 23rd of April, were passed in comparative peace,
the soldiers eating at the same table, sleeping under the same roof,
and conversing freely with their destined victims. This interval was
needed to allow every preparation to be made for what was to follow.
The enemy now occupied the towns, the villages, the cottages, and the
roads throughout the valleys. They hung upon the heights. Two great
passes led into France: the one over the snows of the lofty Col Julien,
and the other by the Valley of Queyras into Dauphiné. But, alas! escape
was not possible by either outlet. No one could traverse the Col Julien
at this season and live, and the fortress of Mirabouc, that guarded the
narrow gorge which led into the Valley of Queyras, the enemy had been
careful to secure.[114] The Vaudois were enclosed as in a net--shut in
as in a prison.

At last the blow fell with the sudden crash of the thunderbolt. At
four o’clock on the morning of Saturday, the 24th of April, 1655,
the signal was given from the castle-hill of La Torre.[115] But who
shall rehearse the tragedy that followed? “It is Cain a second time,”
says Monastier, “shedding the blood of his brother Abel.”[116] On the
instant a thousand assassins began the work of death. Dismay, horror,
agony, woe in a moment overspread the Valleys of Lucerna and Angrogna.
Though Pandemonium had sent forth its fiends to riot in crime and revel
in blood, they could not have outdone the soldiers of the Propaganda.
Though the victims climbed the hills with what speed they could, the
murderer was on their track. The torrents as they rolled down from the
heights soon began to be tinged with blood. Gleams of lurid light burst
out through the dark smoke that was rolling through the vales, for a
priest and monk accompanied each party of soldiers, to set fire to the
houses as soon as the inmates had been dispatched. Alas! what sounds
are those that repeatedly strike the ear? The cries and groans of the
dying were echoed and re-echoed from the rocks around, and it seemed
as if the mountains had taken up a wailing for the slaughter of their
children. “Our Valley of Lucerna,” exclaims Leger, “which was like a
Goshen, was now converted into a Mount Etna, darting forth cinders and
fire and flames. The earth resembled a furnace, and the air was filled
with a darkness like that of Egypt, which might be felt, from the smoke
of towns, villages, temples, mansions, granges, and buildings, all
burning in the flames of the Vatican.”[117]

The soldiers were not content with the quick dispatch of the sword,
they invented new and hitherto unheard-of modes of torture and death.
No man at this day dare write in plain words all the disgusting and
horrible deeds of these men; their wickedness can never be all known,
because it never can be all told.

From the awful narration of Leger, we select only a few instances; but
even these few, however mildly stated, grow, without our intending
it, into a group of horrors. Little children were torn from the
arms of their mothers, clasped by their tiny feet, and their heads
dashed against the rocks; or were held between two soldiers and their
quivering limbs torn up by main force. Their mangled bodies were then
thrown on the highways or fields, to be devoured by beasts. The sick
and the aged were burned alive in their dwellings. Some had their
hands and arms and legs lopped off, and fire applied to the severed
parts to staunch the bleeding and prolong their suffering. Some were
flayed alive, some were roasted alive, some disembowelled; or tied
to trees in their own orchards, and their hearts cut out. Some were
horribly mutilated, and of others the brains were boiled and eaten by
these cannibals. Some were fastened down into the furrows of their
own fields, and ploughed into the soil as men plough manure into it.
Others were buried alive. Fathers were marched to death with the heads
of their sons suspended round their necks. Parents were compelled to
look on while their children were first outraged, then massacred,
before being themselves permitted to die. But here we must stop. We
cannot proceed farther in Leger’s awful narration. There come vile,
abominable, and monstrous deeds, utterly and overwhelmingly disgusting,
horrible and fiendish, which we dare not transcribe. The heart sickens,
and the brain begins to swim. “My hand trembles,” says Leger, “so that
I scarce can hold the pen, and my tears mingle in torrents with my ink,
while I write the deeds of these children of darkness--blacker even
than the Prince of Darkness himself.”[118]

No general account, however awful, can convey so correct an idea of the
horrors of this persecution as would the history of individual cases;
but this we are precluded from giving. Could we take these martyrs
one by one--could we describe the tragical fate of Peter Simeon of
Angrogna--the barbarous death of Magdalene, wife of Peter Pilon of
Villaro--the sad story--but no, that story could not be told--of Anne,
daughter of John Charbonier of La Torre--the cruel martyrdom of Paul
Garnier of Rora, whose eyes were first plucked out, who next endured
other horrible indignities, and, last of all, was flayed alive, and
his skin, divided into four parts, extended on the window gratings of
the four principal houses in Lucerna--could we describe these cases,
with hundreds of others equally horrible and appalling, our narrative
would grow so harrowing that our readers, unable to proceed, would turn
from the page. Literally did the Waldenses suffer all the things of
which the apostle speaks, as endured by the martyrs of old, with other
torments not then invented, or which the rage of even a Nero shrank
from inflicting:--“They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were
tempted, were slain with the sword; they wandered about in sheep-skins
and goat-skins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented (of whom the
world was not worthy); they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and
in dens, and caves of the earth.”

[Illustration: THE ENTRANCE TO LA TORRE.]

These cruelties form a scene that is unparalleled and unique in the
history of at least civilised countries. There have been tragedies in
which more blood was spilt and more life sacrificed, but none in which
the actors were so completely dehumanised, and the forms of suffering
so monstrously disgusting, so unutterably cruel and revolting. The
Piedmontese Massacres in this respect stand alone. They are more
fiendish than all the atrocities and murders before or since, and Leger
may still advance his challenge to “all travellers, and all who have
studied the history of ancient and modern pagans, whether among the
Chinese, Tartars and Turks, they ever witnessed or heard tell of such
execrable perfidies and barbarities.”

The authors of these deeds, thinking it may be that their very atrocity
would make the world slow to believe them, made bold to deny that they
had ever been done, even before the blood was well dry in the Valleys.
Pastor Leger took instant and effectual means to demonstrate the
falsehood of that denial, and to provide that clear, irrefragable, and
indubitable proof of these awful crimes should go down to posterity.
He travelled from commune to commune, immediately after the massacre,
attended by notaries, who took down the depositions and attestations
of the survivors and eyewitnesses of these deeds, in presence of the
council and consistory of the place.[119] From the evidence of these
witnesses he compiled and gave to the world a book, which Dr. Gilly
truly characterised as one of the most “dreadful” in existence.[120]
The originals of these depositions Leger gave to Sir Samuel Morland,
who deposited them, together with other valuable documents pertaining
to the Waldenses, in the Library of the University of Cambridge.

Uncontrollable grief seized the hearts of the survivors at the sight
of their brethren slain, their country devastated, and their Church
overthrown. “Oh that my head were waters,” exclaims Leger, “and mine
eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain
of the daughter of my people! Behold and see if there be any sorrow
like unto my sorrow.” “It was then,” he adds, “that the fugitives, who
had been snatched as brands from the burning, could address God in the
words of the 79th Psalm, which literally as emphatically describes
their condition:--

“‘O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritances,
Thy holy temple have they defiled;
They have laid Jerusalem on heaps.
The dead bodies of thy servants have they given
To be meat unto the fowls of heaven,
The flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth,
Their blood have they shed like water; ...
And there was none to bury them!’”[121]

When the storm had abated, Leger assembled the scattered survivors,
in order to take counsel with them as to the steps to be now taken.
It does not surprise us to find that some had begun to entertain the
idea of abandoning the Valleys altogether. Leger strongly dissuaded
them against the thought of forsaking their ancient inheritance. They
must, he said, rebuild their Zion in the faith that the God of their
fathers would not permit the Church of the Valleys to be finally
overthrown. To encourage them, he undertook to lay a representation of
their sufferings and broken condition before their brethren of other
countries, who, he was sure, would hasten to their help at this great
crisis. These counsels prevailed. “Our tears are no longer of water,”
so wrote the remnant of the slaughtered Vaudois to the Protestants of
Europe, “they are of blood; they do not merely obscure our sight, they
choke our very hearts. Our hands tremble and our heads ache by the
many blows we have received. We cannot frame an epistle answerable
to the intent of our minds, and the strangeness of our desolations.
We pray you to excuse us, and to collect amid our groans the meaning
of what we fain would utter.” After this touching introduction, they
proceeded with a representation of their state, expressing themselves
in terms the moderation of which contrasts strongly with the extent of
their wrongs. Protestant Europe was horror-struck when it heard of the
massacre.

Nowhere did these awful tidings awaken a deeper sympathy or kindle a
stronger indignation than in England. Cromwell, who was then at the
head of the State, proclaimed a fast, ordered a collection for the
sufferers,[122] and wrote to all the Protestant princes, and to the
King of France, with the intent of enlisting their sympathy and aid
in behalf of the Vaudois. One of the noblest as well as most sacred
of the tasks ever undertaken by the great poet, who then acted as the
Protector’s Latin secretary, was the writing of these letters. Milton’s
pen was not less gloriously occupied when writing in behalf of these
venerable sufferers for conscience’ sake, than when writing “Paradise
Lost.” In token of the deep interest he took in this affair, Cromwell
sent Sir Samuel Morland with a letter to the Duke of Savoy, expressive
of the astonishment and sorrow he felt at the barbarities which had
been committed on those who were his brethren in the faith. Cromwell’s
ambassador visited the Valleys on his way to Turin, and saw with his
own eyes the frightful spectacle which the region still presented.
“If,” said he, addressing the duke, the horrors he had just seen giving
point to his eloquence, and kindling his republican plainness into
Puritan fervour, “If the tyrants of all times and ages were alive
again, they would doubtless be ashamed to find that nothing barbarous
nor inhuman, in comparison of these deeds, had ever been invented by
them. In the meantime,” he continued, “the angels are stricken with
horror; men are dizzy with amazement; heaven itself appears astonished
with the cries of the dying, and the very earth to blush with the gore
of so many innocent persons. Avenge not thyself, O God, for this mighty
wickedness, this parricidal slaughter! Let thy blood, O Christ, wash
out this blood!”[123]

We have repeatedly mentioned the Castelluzzo in our narrative of this
people and their many martyrdoms. It is closely connected with the
Massacre of 1655, and as such kindled the muse of Milton. It stands at
the entrance of the Valleys, its feet swathed in feathery woods; above
which is a mass of _débris_ and fallen rocks, which countless tempests
have gathered like a girdle round its middle. From amidst these the
supreme column shoots up, pillar-like, and touches that white cloud
which is floating past in mid-heaven. One can see a dark spot on the
face of the cliff just below the crowning rocks of the summit. It would
be taken for the shadow of a passing cloud upon the mountain, were it
not that it is immovable. That is the mouth of a cave so roomy, it is
said, as to be able to contain some hundreds. To this friendly chamber
the Waldenses were wont to flee when the valley beneath was a perfect
Pandemonium, glittering with steel, red with crime, and ringing with
execrations and blasphemies. To this cave many of the Vaudois fled on
occasion of the great massacre. But, alas! thither the persecutor
tracked them, and dragging them forth rolled them down the awful
precipice.

The law that indissolubly links great crimes with the spot where they
were perpetrated, has written the Massacre of 1655 on this mountain,
and given it in eternal keeping to its rock. There is not another such
martyrs’ monument in the whole world. While the Castelluzzo stands the
memory of this great crime cannot die; through all the ages it will
continue to cry, and that cry our sublimest poet has interpreted in his
sublime sonnet:--

“Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept Thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipt stocks and stones,
Forget not: in Thy book record their groans
Who were Thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that roll’d
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To heaven. Their martyr’d blood and ashes sow
O’er all the Italian fields, where still doth sway
The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundredfold, who having learned Thy way,
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.”

CHAPTER XIV.

EXPLOITS OF GIANAVELLO--MASSACRE AND PILLAGE OF RORA.

Ascent of La Combe--Beauty and Grandeur of Valley of Rora--
Gianavello--His Character--Marquis de Pianeza--His First
Assault--Brave Repulse--Treachery of the Marquis--No Faith
with Heretics--Gianavello’s Band--Repulse of Second and
Third Attacks--Death of a Persecutor--An Army raised to
invade Rora--Massacre and Pillage--Letter of Pianeza--
Gianavello’s Heroic Reply--Gianavello renews the War--500
against 15,000--Success of the Waldenses--Horror at the
Massacre--Interposition of England--Letter of Cromwell--
Treaty of Peace.

The next tragic episode in the history of the Waldenses takes us to the
Valley of Rora. The invasion and outrages of which this valley became
the scene were contemporaneous with the horrors of the great massacre.
In what we are now to relate, feats of heroism are blended with deeds
of suffering, and we are called to admire the valour of the patriot, as
well as the patience of the martyr.

The Valley of Rora lies on the left as one enters La Torre; it is
separated from Lucerna by a barrier of mountains. Rora has two
entrances: one by a side ravine, which branches off about two miles
before reaching La Torre, and the other by crossing the Valley of
Lucerna and climbing the mountains. This last is worthy of being
briefly described. We start, let us suppose, from the town of La
Torre; we skirt the Castelluzzo on the right, which high in air hangs
its precipices, with their many tragic memories, above us. From this
point we turn to the left, descend into the valley, traverse its
bright meadows, here shaded by the vine which stretches its arms in
classic freedom from tree to tree. We cross the torrent of the Pelice
by a small bridge, and hold on our way till we reach the foot of the
mountains of La Combe, that wall in the Valley of Rora. We begin to
climb by a winding path. Pasturage and vineyard give place to chestnut
forest; the chestnut in its turn yields to the pine; and, as we mount
still higher, we find ourselves amid the naked ledges of the mountain,
with their gushing rills, margined by moss or other Alpine herbage.

An ascent of two hours brings us to the summit of the pass. We
have here a pedestal, some 4,000 feet in height, in the midst of a
stupendous amphitheatre of Alps, from which to view their glories. How
profoundly deep the valley from which we have just climbed up! A thread
of silver is now the Pelice; a patch of green a few inches square is
now the meadow; the chestnut-tree is a mere dot, hardly visible; and
yonder are La Torre and the white Villaro, so tiny that they look as if
they could be packed into a child’s toy-box.

But while all else has diminished, the mountains seem to have enlarged
their bulk and increased their stature. High above us towers the
summit of the Castelluzzo; still higher rise the rolling masses of the
Vandalin, the lower slopes of which form a vast and magnificent hanging
garden, utterly dwarfing those which were among the wonders of Babylon.
And in the far distance the eye rests on a tumultuous sea of mountains,
here rising in needles, there running off in long serrated ridges,
and there standing up in massive peaks of naked granite, wearing the
shining garments which winter weaves for the giants of the Alps.

We now descend into the Valley of Rora. It lies at our feet, a cup
of verdure, some sixty miles in circumference, its sides and bottom
variously clothed with corn-field and meadow, with vineyard and
orchard, with the walnut, the cherry, and all fruit-bearing trees,
from amid which numerous brown châlets peep out. The great mountains
sweep round the valley like a wall, and among them, pre-eminent in
glory as in stature, stands the monarch of the Cottian Alps--Monte Viso.

As among the Jews of old, so among the Waldenses, God raised up, from
time to time, mighty men of valour to deliver his people. One of the
most remarkable of these men was Gianavello, commonly known as Captain
Joshua Gianavello, a native of this same Valley of Rora. He appears,
from the accounts that have come down to us, to have possessed all the
qualities of a great military leader. He was a man of daring courage,
of resolute purpose, and of venturous enterprise. He had the faculty,
so essential in a commander, of skilful combination. He was fertile in
resource, and self-possessed in emergencies; he was quick to resolve,
and prompt to execute. His devotion and energy were the means, under
God, of mitigating somewhat the horrors of the Massacre of 1655, and
his heroism ultimately rolled back the tide of that great calamity,
and made it recoil upon its authors. It was the morning of the 24th
of April, 1655, the day which saw the butchery commenced that we have
described above. On that same day 500 soldiers were dispatched by the
Marquis de Pianeza to the Valley of Rora, to massacre its unoffending
and unsuspecting inhabitants. Ascending from the Valley of the Pelice,
they had gained the summit of the pass, and were already descending on
the town of Rora, stealthily and swiftly, as a herd of wolves might
descend upon a sheep-fold, or as, says Leger, “a brood of vultures
might descend upon a flock of harmless doves.” Happily Gianavello, who
had known for weeks before that a storm was gathering, though he knew
not when or where it would burst, was on the outlook. He saw the troop,
and guessed their errand. There was not a moment to be lost; a little
longer, and not a man would be left alive in Rora to carry tidings of
its fate to the next commune. But was Gianavello single-handed to
attack an army of 500 men? He stole up-hill, under cover of the rocks
and trees, and on his way he prevailed on six peasants, brave men like
himself, to join him in repelling the invaders. The heroic little band
marched on till they were near the troop, then hiding amid the bushes,
they lay in ambush by the side of the path. The soldiers came on,
little suspecting the trap into which they were marching. Gianavello
and his men fired, and with so unerring an aim that seven of the troop
fell dead. Then, reloading their pieces, and dexterously changing their
ground, they fired again with a like effect. The attack was unexpected;
the foe was invisible; the frightened imaginations of Pianeza’s
soldiers multiplied tenfold the number of their assailants. They began
to retreat. But Gianavello and his men, bounding from cover to cover
like so many chamois, hung upon their rear, and did deadly execution
with their bullets. The invaders left 54 of their number dead behind
them; and thus did these seven peasants chase from their Valley of Rora
the 500 assassins who had come to murder its peaceful inhabitants.[124]

That same afternoon the people of Rora, who were ignorant of the
fearful murders which were at that very moment proceeding in the
valleys of their brethren, repaired to the Marquis de Pianeza to
complain of the attack. The marquis affected ignorance of the whole
affair. “Those who invaded your valley,” said he, “were a set of
banditti. You did right to repel them. Go back to your families and
fear nothing; I pledge my word and honour that no evil shall happen to
you.”

These deceitful words did not impose upon Gianavello. He had a
wholesome recollection of the maxim enacted by the Council of
Constance, and so often put in practice in the Valleys, “No faith is
to be kept with heretics.” Pianeza, he knew, was the agent of the
“Council of Extirpation.” Hardly had the next morning broken when the
hero-peasant was abroad, scanning with eagle-eye the mountain paths
that led into his valley. It was not long till his suspicions were more
than justified. Six hundred men-at-arms, chosen with special reference
to this difficult enterprise, were seen ascending the mountain
Cassuleto, to do what their comrades of the previous day had failed
to accomplish. Gianavello had now mustered a little host of eighteen,
of whom twelve were armed with muskets and swords, and six with only
the sling. These he divided into three parties, each consisting of
four musketeers and two slingers, and he posted them in a defile,
through which he saw the invaders must pass. No sooner had the van of
the enemy entered the gorge than a shower of bullets and stones from
invisible hands saluted them. Every bullet and stone did its work. The
first discharge brought down an officer and twelve men. That volley
was succeeded by others equally fatal. The cry was raised, “All is
lost, save yourselves!” The flight was precipitate, for every bush and
rock seemed to vomit forth deadly missiles. Thus a second ignominious
retreat rid the Valley of Rora of these murderers.

The inhabitants carried their complaints a second time to Pianeza.
“Concealing,” as Leger says, “the ferocity of the tiger under the skin
of the fox,” he assured the deputies that the attack had been the
result of a misunderstanding; that certain accusations had been lodged
against them, the falsity of which had since been discovered, and now
they might return to their homes, for they had nothing to fear. No
sooner were they gone than Pianeza began vigorously to prepare for a
third attack.[125]

He organised a battalion of from 800 to 900 men. Next morning, this
host made a rapid march on Rora, seized all the avenues leading
into the valley, and chasing the inhabitants to the caves in Monte
Friolante, set fire to their dwellings, having first plundered them.
Captain Joshua Gianavello, at the head of his little troop, saw the
enemy enter, but their numbers were so overwhelming that he waited a
more favourable moment for attacking them. The soldiers were retiring,
laden with their booty, and driving before them the cattle of the
peasants. Gianavello knelt down before his hero-band, and giving
thanks to God, who had twice by his hand saved his people, he prayed
that the hearts and arms of his followers might be strengthened, to
work yet another deliverance. He then attacked the foe. The spoilers
turned and then fled up-hill, in the hope of escaping into the Valley
of the Pelice, throwing away their booty in their flight. When they
had gained the pass, and begun their descent, their flight became yet
more disastrous; great stones, torn up and rolled after them, were
mingled with the bullets, and did deadly execution upon them, while
the precipices over which they fell in their haste consummated their
destruction. The few who survived fled to Villaro.[126]

The Marquis de Pianeza, instead of seeing in these events the finger
of God, was only the more inflamed with rage, and the more resolutely
bent on the extirpation of every heretic from the Valley of Rora. He
assembled all the royal troops then under his command, or which could
be spared from the massacre in which they were occupied in the other
valleys, in order to surround the little territory. This was now the
fourth attack on the commune of Rora, but the invaders were destined
once more to recoil before the shock of its heroic defenders. Some
8,000 men had been got under arms, and were ready to march against
Rora, but the impatience of a certain Captain Mario, who had signalised
himself in the massacre at Bobbio, and wished to appropriate the
entire glory of the enterprise, would not permit him to await the
movement of the main body. He marched two hours in advance, with three
companies of regular troops, few of whom ever returned. Their ferocious
leader, borne along by the rush of his panic-stricken soldiers, was
precipitated over the edge of the rock into the stream, and badly
bruised. He was drawn out and carried to Lucerna, where he died two
days afterwards, in great torment of body, and yet greater torment of
mind. Of the three companies which he led in this fatal expedition,
one was composed of Irish, who had been banished by Cromwell, and who
met in this distant land the death they had inflicted on others in
their own, leaving their corpses to fatten those valleys which were
to have been theirs had they succeeded in purging them of heresy and
heretics.[127]

This series of strange events was now drawing to an end. The fury
of Pianeza knew no bounds. This war of his, though waged only with
herdsmen, had brought him nothing but disgrace, and the loss of his
bravest soldiers. Victor Amadeus once observed that “the skin of every
Vaudois cost him fifteen of his best Piedmontese soldiers.” Pianeza
had lost some hundreds of his best soldiers, and yet not one of the
little troop of Gianavello, dead or alive, had he been able to get into
his hands. Nevertheless, he resolved to continue the struggle, but
with a much greater army. He assembled 10,000, and attacked Rora on
three sides at once. While Gianavello was bravely combating with the
first troop of 3,000, on the summit of the pass that gives entrance
from the Valley of the Pelice, a second of 6,000 had entered by the
ravine at the foot of the valley; and a third of 1,000 had crossed the
mountains that divide Bagnolo from Rora. But, alas! who shall describe
the horrors that followed the entrance of these assassins? Blood,
burning, and rapine in an instant overwhelmed the little community. No
distinction was made of age or sex. None had pity for their tender
years; none had reverence for their grey hairs. Happy they who were
slain at once, and thus escaped horrible indignities and tortures. The
few spared from the sword were carried away as captives, and among
these were the wife and the three daughters of Gianavello.[128]

There was now nothing more in the Valley of Rora for which the
patriot-hero could do battle. The light of his hearth was quenched,
his village was a heap of smoking ruins, his fathers and brethren
had fallen by the sword; but rising superior to these accumulated
calamities, he marched his little troop over the mountains, to await on
the frontier of his country whatever opportunities Providence might yet
open to him of wielding his sword in defence of the ancient liberties
and the glorious faith of his people.

It was at this time that Pianeza, intending to deal the finishing blow
that should crush the hero of Rora, wrote to Gianavello as follows:--“I
exhort you for the last time to renounce your heresy. This is the only
hope of your obtaining the pardon of your prince, and of saving the
life of your wife and daughters, now my prisoners, and whom, if you
continue obstinate, I will burn alive. As for yourself, my soldiers
shall no longer pursue you, but I will set such a price upon your head,
as that, were you Beelzebub himself, you shall infallibly be taken; and
be assured that, if you fall alive into my hands, there are no torments
with which I will not punish your rebellion.” To these ferocious
threats Gianavello magnanimously and promptly replied: “There are no
torments so terrible, no death so barbarous, that I would not choose
rather than deny my Saviour. Your threats cannot cause me to renounce
my faith; they but fortify me in it. Should the Marquis de Pianeza
cause my wife and daughters to pass through the fire, it can but
consume their mortal bodies; their souls I commend to God, trusting
that he will have mercy on them, and on mine, should it please him that
I fall into the marquis’s hands.”[129] We do not know whether Pianeza
was capable of seeing that this was the most mortifying defeat he had
yet sustained at the hands of the peasant-hero of Rora; and that he
might as well war against the Alps themselves as against a cause that
could infuse a spirit like this into its champions. Gianavello’s reply,
observes Leger, “certified him as a chosen instrument in the hands of
God for the recovery of his country seemingly lost.”

Gianavello had saved from the wreck of his family his infant son, and
his first care was to seek a place of safety for him. Laying him on
his shoulders, he passed the frozen Alps which separate the Valley of
Lucerna from France, and entrusted the child to the care of a relative
resident at Queyras, in the Valleys of the French Protestants. With
the child he carried thither the tidings of the awful massacre of his
people. Indignation was roused. Not a few were willing to join his
standard, brave spirits like himself; and, with his little band greatly
recruited, he repassed the Alps in a few weeks, to begin his second
and more successful campaign. On his arrival in the Valleys he was
joined by Giaheri, under whom a troop had been assembling to avenge the
massacre of their brethren.

In Giaheri, Captain Gianavello had found a companion worthy of himself,
and worthy of the cause for which he was now in arms. Of this heroic
man Leger has recorded that, “though he possessed the courage of a
lion, he was as humble as a lamb, always giving to God the glory of his
victories; well versed in Scripture, and understanding controversy,
and of great natural talent.” The massacre had reduced the Vaudois
race to all but utter extermination, and 500 men were all that the two
leaders could collect around their standard. The army opposed to them,
and at this time in their Valleys, was from 15,000 to 20,000 strong,
consisting of trained and picked soldiers. Nothing but an impulse
from the God of battles could have moved these two men, with such a
handful, to take the field against such odds. To the eye of a common
hero all would have seemed lost; but the courage of these two Christian
warriors was based on faith. They believed that God would not permit
his cause to perish, or the lamp of the Valleys to be extinguished;
and, few though they were, they knew that God was able by their humble
instrumentality to save their country and Church. In this faith they
unsheathed the sword; and so valiantly did they wield it, that soon
that sword became the terror of the Piedmontese armies. The ancient
promise was fulfilled, “The people that do know their God shall be
strong and do exploits.”

We cannot go into details. Prodigies of valour were performed by this
little host. “I had always considered the Vaudois to be men,” said
Descombies, who had joined them, “but I found them lions.” Nothing
could withstand the fury of their attack. Post after post and village
after village were wrested from the Piedmontese troops. Soon the enemy
was driven from the upper valleys. The war now passed down into the
plain of Piedmont, and there it was waged with the same heroism and the
same success. They besieged and took several towns, they fought not
a few pitched battles; and in those actions they were nearly always
victorious, though opposed by more than ten times their number. Their
success could hardly be credited had it not been recorded by historians
whose veracity is above suspicion, and the accuracy of whose statements
was attested by eye-witnesses. Not unfrequently did it happen at the
close of a day’s fighting that 1,400 Piedmontese dead covered the
field of battle, while not more than six or seven of the Waldenses had
fallen. Such success might well be termed miraculous; and not only did
it appear so to the Vaudois themselves, but even to their foes, who
could not refrain from expressing their conviction “that surely God was
on the side of the Barbets.”

[Illustration: CROMWELL AND MILTON.]

While the Vaudois were thus heroically maintaining their cause by
arms, and rolling back the chastisement of war on those from whom its
miseries had come, tidings of their wrongs were travelling to all the
Protestant States of Europe. Wherever these tidings came a feeling
of horror was evoked, and the cruelty of the Government of Savoy was
universally and loudly execrated. All confessed that such a tale of
woe they had never before heard. But the Protestant States did not
content themselves with simply condemning these deeds; they judged
it to be their clear duty to move in behalf of this poor and greatly
oppressed people; and foremost among those who did themselves lasting
honour by interposing in behalf of a people “drawn unto death and
ready to perish,” was, as has already been said, England, then under
the protectorate of Cromwell. In the previous chapter mention was made
of the Latin letter, the composition of Milton, which the Protector
addressed to the Duke of Savoy. In addition, Cromwell wrote to Louis
XIV. of France, soliciting his mediation with the duke in behalf of the
Vaudois. The letter is interesting as containing the truly catholic and
noble sentiments of England, to which the pen of her great poet gave
fitting expression:--

“Most Serene and Potent King,

... “After a most barbarous slaughter of persons of both
sexes, and of all ages, a treaty of peace was concluded,
or rather secret acts of hostility were committed the more
securely under the name of a pacification. The conditions
of the treaty were determined in your town of Pinerolo:
hard conditions enough, but such as these poor people
would gladly have agreed to, after the horrible outrages
to which they had been exposed, provided that they had
been faithfully observed. But they were not observed; the
meaning of the treaty is evaded and violated, by putting
a false interpretation upon some of the articles, and
by straining others. Many of the complainants have been
deprived of their patrimonies, and many have been forbidden
the exercise of their religion. New payments have been
exacted, and a new fort has been built to keep them in
check, from whence a disorderly soldiery makes frequent
sallies, and plunders or murders all it meets. In addition
to these things, fresh levies of troops are clandestinely
preparing to march against them; and those among them who
profess the Roman Catholic religion have been advised to
retire in time; so that everything threatens the speedy
destruction of such as escaped the former massacre. I
do therefore beseech and conjure your Majesty not to
suffer such enormities, and not to permit (I will not
say any prince, for surely such barbarity never could
enter into the heart of a prince, much less of one of the
duke’s tender age, or into the mind of his mother) those
accursed murderers to indulge in such savage ferocity,
who, while they profess to be the servants and followers
of Christ, who came into the world to save sinners, do
blaspheme his name, and transgress his mild precepts, by
the slaughter of innocent men. Oh, that your Majesty,
who has the power, and who ought to be inclined to use
it, may deliver so many supplicants from the hands of
murderers, who are already drunk with blood, and thirst
for it again, and who take pleasure in throwing the odium
of their cruelty upon princes! I implore your Majesty
not to suffer the borders of your kingdom to be polluted
by such monstrous wickedness. Remember that this very
race of people threw itself upon the protection of your
grandfather, King Henry IV., who was most friendly disposed
towards the Protestants, when the Duke of Lesdiguières
passed victoriously through their country, as affording
the most commodious passage into Italy at the time he
pursued the Duke of Savoy in his retreat across the Alps.
The act or instrument of that submission is still extant
among the public records of your kingdom, in which it is
provided that the Vaudois shall not be transferred to any
other government, but upon the same condition that they
were received under the protection of your invincible
grandfather. As supplicants of his grandson, they now
implore the fulfilment of this compact.

* * * * *

“Given at our Court at Westminster, this 26th of May, 1658.”

The French King undertook the mediation, as requested by the Protestant
princes, but hurried it to a conclusion before the ambassadors from
the Protestant States had arrived. The delegates from the Protestant
cantons of Switzerland were present, but they were permitted to act
the part of onlookers simply. The Grand Monarch took the whole affair
upon himself, and on the 18th of August, 1655, a treaty of peace was
concluded of a very disadvantageous kind. The Waldenses were stripped
of their ancient possessions on the right bank of the Pelice, lying
toward the plain of Piedmont. Within the new boundary they were
guaranteed liberty of worship; an amnesty was granted for all offences
committed during the war; captives were to be restored when claimed;
and they were to be exempt from all imposts for five years, on the
ground that they were so impoverished as not to be able to pay anything.

When the treaty was published it was found to contain two clauses that
astonished the Protestant world. In the preamble the Vaudois were
styled rebels, whom it had pleased their prince graciously to receive
back into favour; and in the body of the deed was an article, which
no one recollected to have heard mentioned during the negotiations,
empowering the French to construct a fort above La Torre. This looked
like a preparation for renewing the war.

By this treaty the Protestant States were outwitted; their ambassadors
were duped; and the poor Vaudois were left as much as ever in the power
of the Duke of Savoy and of the Council for the Propagation of the
Faith and the Extirpation of Heretics.

CHAPTER XV.

THE EXILE.

After the great Massacre of 1655, the Church of the Valleys had rest
from persecution for thirty years. This period, however, can be styled
one of rest only when contrasted with the frightful storms which had
convulsed the era that immediately preceded it. The enemies of the
Vaudois still found innumerable ways in which to annoy and harass them.
Ceaseless intrigues were continually breeding new alarms, and the
Vaudois had often to till their fields and prune their vines with their
muskets slung across their shoulders. Many of their chief men were sent
into exile. Captain Gianavello and Pastor Leger, whose services to
their people were too great ever to be forgiven, had sentence of death
passed on them. Leger “was to be strangled; then his body was to be
hung by one foot on a gibbet for four-and-twenty hours; and, lastly,
his head was to be cut off and publicly exposed at San Giovanni. His
name was to be inserted in the list of noted outlaws; his houses were
to be burned.”[130] Gianavello retired to Geneva, where he continued
to watch with unabated interest the fortunes of his people. Leger
became pastor of a congregation at Leyden, where he crowned a life
full of labour and suffering for the Gospel, by a work which has laid
all Christendom under obligations to him; we refer to his _History
of the Churches of the Vaudois_--a noble monument of his Church’s
martyr-heroism and his own Christian patriotism.

Hardly had Leger unrolled to the world’s gaze the record of the last
awful tempest which had smitten the Valleys, when the clouds returned,
and were seen rolling up in dark, thunderous masses against this
devoted land. Former storms had assailed them from the south, having
collected in the Vatican; the tempest now approaching had its first
rise on the north of the Alps. It was the year 1685; Louis XIV. was
nearing the grave, and with the great Audit in view he inquired of his
confessor by what good deed as a king he might atone for his many sins
as a man. The answer was ready. He was told that he must extirpate
Protestantism in France.

The Grand Monarch, as the age styled him, bowed obsequiously before the
shaven crown of priest, while Europe was trembling before his armies.
Louis XIV. did as he was commanded; he revoked the Edict of Nantes.
This gigantic crime inflicted no less misery on the Protestants than
it brought countless woes on the throne and nation of France. But it
is the nation of the Vaudois, and the persecution which the counsel
of Père la Chaise brought upon them, with which we have here to do.
Wishing for companionship in the sanguinary work of purging France from
Protestantism, Louis XIV. sent an ambassador to the Duke of Savoy, with
a request that he would deal with the Waldenses as he was now dealing
with the Huguenots. The young and naturally humane Victor Amadeus was
at the moment on more than usually friendly terms with his subjects of
the Valleys. They had served bravely under his standard in his late war
with the Genoese, and he had but recently written them a letter of
thanks. How could he unsheathe his sword against the men whose devotion
and valour had so largely contributed to his victory? Victor Amadeus
deigned no reply to the French ambassador. The request was repeated; it
received an evasive answer; it was urged a third time, accompanied by a
hint from the potent Louis that if it was not convenient for the duke
to purge his dominions, the King of France would do it for him with an
army of 14,000 men, and would keep the Valleys for his pains. This was
enough. A treaty was immediately concluded between the duke and the
French King, in which the latter promised an armed force to enable the
former to reduce the Vaudois to the Roman obedience, or to exterminate
them.[131] On the 31st of January, 1686, the following edict was
promulgated in the Valleys:--

“I. The Vaudois shall henceforth and for ever cease and
discontinue all the exercises of their religion.

“II. They are forbidden to have religious meetings, under
pain of death, and penalty of confiscation of all their
goods.

“III. All their ancient privileges are abolished.

“IV. All the churches, prayer-houses, and other edifices
consecrated to their worship shall be razed to the ground.

“V. All the pastors and schoolmasters of the Valleys are
required either to embrace Romanism or to quit the country
within fifteen days, under pain of death and confiscation
of goods.

“VI. All the children born, or to be born, of Protestant
parents shall be compulsorily trained up as Roman
Catholics. Every such child yet unborn shall, within a week
after its birth, be brought to the curé of its parish, and
admitted of the Roman Catholic Church, under pain, on the
part of the mother, of being publicly whipped with rods,
and on the part of the father of labouring five years in
the galleys.

[Illustration: THE PASS OF PRA DEL TOR.]

“VII. The Vaudois pastors shall abjure the doctrine they
have hitherto publicly preached; shall receive a salary,
greater by one-third than that which they previously
enjoyed; and one-half thereof shall go in reversion to
their widows.

“VIII. All Protestant foreigners settled in Piedmont are
ordered either to become Roman Catholics, or to quit the
country within fifteen days.

“IX. By a special act of his great and paternal clemency,
the sovereign will permit persons to sell, in this
interval, the property they may have acquired in Piedmont,
provided the sale be made to Roman Catholic purchasers.”

This monstrous edict seemed to sound the knell of the Vaudois as a
Protestant people. Their oldest traditions did not contain a decree so
cruel and unrighteous, nor one that menaced them with so complete and
summary a destruction as that which now seemed to impend over them.
What was to be done? Their first step was to send delegates to Turin,
respectfully to remind the duke that the Vaudois had inhabited the
Valleys from the earliest times; that they had led forth their herds
upon their mountains before the House of Savoy had ascended the throne
of Piedmont; that treaties and oaths, renewed from reign to reign,
had solemnly secured them in the freedom of their worship and other
liberties; and that the honour of princes and the stability of States
lay in the faithful observance of such covenants; and they prayed him
to consider what reproach the throne and kingdom of Piedmont would
incur if he should become the executioner of those of whom he was the
natural protector. The Protestant cantons of Switzerland joined their
mediations to the intercession of the Waldenses. And when the almost
incredible edict came to be known in Germany and Holland, these
countries threw their shield over the Valleys, by interceding with the
duke that he would not inflict so great a wrong as to cast out from
a land which was theirs by irrevocable charters, a people whose only
crime was that they worshipped as their fathers had worshipped, before
they passed under the sceptre of the duke. All these powerful parties
pleaded in vain. Ancient charters, solemn treaties, and oaths, made in
the face of Europe, the long-tried loyalty and the many services of the
Vaudois to the House of Savoy, could not stay the uplifted arm of the
duke, or prevent the execution of the monstrously criminal decree. In a
little while the armies of France and Savoy arrived before the Valleys.

At no previous period of their history, perhaps, had the Waldenses
been so entirely devoid of human aid as now. Gianavello, whose stout
heart and brave arm had stood them in such stead formerly, was in
exile. Cromwell, whose potent voice had stayed the fury of the great
massacre, was in his grave. An avowed Papist filled the throne of Great
Britain. It was going ill at this hour with Protestantism everywhere.
The Covenanters of Scotland were hiding on the moors, or dying in the
Grass-market of Edinburgh. France, Piedmont, and Italy were closing in
around the Valleys; every path guarded, all their succours cut off, an
overwhelming force waited the signal to massacre them. So desperate did
their situation appear to the Swiss envoys, that they counselled them
to “transport elsewhere the torch of the Gospel, and not keep it here
to be extinguished in blood.”

The proposal to abandon their ancient inheritance, coming from such a
quarter, startled the Waldenses. It produced, at first, a division of
opinion in the Valleys, but ultimately they united in rejecting it.
They remembered the exploits their fathers had done, and the wonders
God had wrought in the mountain passes of Rora, in the defiles
of Angrogna, and in the field of the Pra del Tor, and their faith
reviving, they resolved, in a reliance on the same Almighty Arm which
had been stretched out in their behalf in former days, to defend their
hearths and altars. They repaired the old defences, and made ready for
resistance. On the 17th of April, being Good Friday, they renewed their
covenant, and on Easter Sunday their pastors dispensed to them the
Communion. This was the last time the sons of the Valleys partook of
the Lord’s Supper before their great dispersion.

Victor Amadeus II. had pitched his camp on the plain of San Gegonzo
before the Vaudois Alps. His army consisted of five regiments of
horse and foot. He was here joined by the French auxiliaries who had
crossed the Alps, consisting of some dozen battalions, the united
force amounting to between 15,000 and 20,000 men. The signal was to be
given on Easter Monday, at break of day, by three cannon-shots, fired
from the hill of Bricherasio. On the appointed morning, the Valleys
of Lucerna and San Martino, forming the two extreme opposite points
of the territory, were attacked, the first by the Piedmontese host,
and the last by the French, under the command of General Catinat, a
distinguished soldier. In San Martino the fighting lasted ten hours,
and ended in a complete repulse of the French, who retired at night
with a loss of more than 500 killed and wounded, while the Vaudois
had lost only two.[132] On the following day the French, burning with
rage at their defeat, poured a more numerous army into San Martino,
which swept along the valley, burning, plundering, and massacring, and
having crossed the mountains descended into Pramol, continuing the
same indiscriminate and exterminating vengeance. To the rage of the
sword were added other barbarities and outrages too shocking to be
narrated.[133]

The issue by arms being deemed uncertain, despite the vast disparity
of strength, treachery, on a great scale, was now had recourse to.
Wherever, throughout the Valleys, the Vaudois were found strongly
posted, and ready for battle, they were told that their brethren in the
neighbouring communes had submitted, and that it was vain for them,
isolated and alone as they now were, to continue their resistance.
When they sent deputies to head-quarters to inquire--and passes were
freely supplied to them for that purpose--they were assured that the
submission had been universal, and that none save themselves were now
in arms. They were assured, moreover, that should they follow the
example of the rest of their nation, all their ancient liberties would
be held intact.[134] This base artifice was successfully practised at
each of the Vaudois posts in succession, till at length the Valleys had
all capitulated. We cannot blame the Waldenses, who were the victims
of an act so dishonourable and vile as hardly to be credible; but the
mistake, alas! was a fatal one, and had to be expiated afterwards by
the endurance of woes a hundred times more dreadful than any they would
have encountered in the rudest campaign. The instant consequence of
the submission was a massacre which extended to all their Valleys, and
which was similar in its horrors to the great butchery of 1655. In
that massacre upwards of 3,000 perished. The remainder of the nation,
amounting, according to Arnaud, to between 12,000 and 15,000 souls,
were consigned to the various gaols and fortresses of Piedmont.[135]

We now behold these famous Valleys, for the first time in their
history, empty. The ancient lamp burns no longer. The school of the
prophets in the Pra del Tor is razed. No smoke is seen rising from
cottage, and no psalm is heard ascending from dwelling or sanctuary.
No herdsman leads forth his kine on the mountains, and no troop of
worshippers, obedient to the summons of the Sabbath-bell, climbs the
mountain paths. The vine flings wide her arms, but no skilful hand
is nigh to train her boughs and prune her luxuriance. The chestnut
tree rains its fruits, but there is no troop of merry children to
gather them, and they lie rotting on the ground. The terraces of the
hills, that were wont to overflow with flowers and fruitage, and
which presented to the eye a series of hanging gardens, now torn and
breached, shoot in a mass of ruinous rubbish down the slope. Nothing
is seen but dismantled forts, and the blackened ruins of churches and
hamlets. A dreary silence overspreads the land, and the beasts of the
field strangely multiply. A few herdsmen, hidden here and there in
forests and holes of the rocks, are now the only inhabitants. Monte
Viso, from out the silent vault, looks down with astonishment at the
absence of that ancient race over whom, from immemorial time, he had
been wont to dart his kindling glories at dawn, and let fall at eve in
purple shadows the ample folds of his friendly mantle.

We know not if ever before an entire nation were in prison at once. Yet
now it was so. All of the Waldensian race that remained from the sword
of their executioners were immured in the dungeons of Piedmont! The
pastor and his flock, the father and his family, the patriarch and the
stripling had passed in, in one great procession, and exchanged their
grand rock-walled Valleys, their tree-embowered homes, and their sunlit
peaks, for the filth, the choking air, and the Tartarean walls of an
Italian gaol. And how were they treated in prison? As the African slave
was treated on the “middle passage.” They had a sufficiency of neither
food nor clothing. The bread dealt out to them was fetid. They had
putrid water to drink. They were exposed to the sun by day and to the
cold at night. They were compelled to sleep on the bare pavement, or on
straw so full of vermin that the stone floor was preferable. Disease
broke out in these horrible abodes, and the mortality was fearful.
“When they entered these dungeons,” says Henri Arnaud, “they counted
14,000 healthy mountaineers; but when, at the intercession of the Swiss
deputies, their prisons were opened, 3,000 skeletons only crawled out.”
These few words portray a tragedy so awful that the imagination recoils
from the contemplation of it.

However, at length the persecutor looses their chains, and opening
their prison doors he sends forth these captives--the woe-worn remnant
of a gallant people. But to what are they sent forth? To people again
their ancient Valleys? To rekindle the fire on their ancestral hearths?
To rebuild “the holy and beautiful house” in which their fathers had
praised God? Ah, no! They are thrust out of prison only to be sent into
exile--to Vaudois a living death.

The barbarity of 1655 was repeated. It was in December (1686) that the
decree of liberation was issued in favour of these 3,000 men who had
escaped the sword, and now survived the not less deadly epidemic of
the prison. At that season, as every one knows, the snow and ice are
piled to a fearful depth on the Alps; and daily tempests threaten with
death the too adventurous traveller who would cross their summits. It
was at this season that these poor captives, emaciated with sickness,
weakened by hunger, and shivering from insufficient clothing, were
commanded to rise up and cross the snowy hills. They began their
journey on the afternoon of that very day on which the order arrived;
for their enemies would permit no delay. One hundred and fifty of them
died on their first march. At night they halted at the foot of the
Mont Cénis. Next morning, when they surveyed the Alps they saw evident
signs of a gathering tempest, and they besought the officer in charge
to permit them, for the sake of their sick and aged, to remain where
they were till the storm had spent its rage. With heart harder than
the rocks they were to traverse, the officer ordered them to resume
their journey. That troop of emaciated beings began the ascent, and
were soon struggling with the blinding drifts and fearful whirlwinds of
the mountain. Eighty-six of their number, succumbing to the tempest,
dropped by the way. Where they lay down, there they died. No relative
or friend was permitted to remain behind to watch their last moments or
tender them needed succour. That ever-thinning procession moved on and
on over the white hills, leaving it to the falling snow to give burial
to their stricken companions. When spring opened the passes of the
Alps, alas! what ghastly memorials met the eye of the horror-stricken
traveller. Strewed along the track were the now unshrouded corpses of
these poor exiles, the dead child lying fast locked in the arms of the
dead mother.

But why should we prolong this harrowing tale? The first company of
these miserable exiles arrived at Geneva on Christmas Day, 1686, having
spent about three weeks on the journey. They were followed by small
parties, who crossed the Alps one after the other, being let out of
prison at different times. It was not till the end of February, 1687,
that the last band of these emigrants reached the hospitable gates of
Geneva. But in what a plight! way-worn, sick, emaciated, and faint
through hunger. Of some the tongue was swollen in their mouth, and
they were unable to speak; of others the arms were bitten with the
frost, so that they could not stretch them out to accept the charity
offered to them; and some there were who dropped down and expired on
the very threshold of the city, “finding,” as one has said, “the end
of their life at the beginning of their liberty.” Most hospitable was
the reception given them by the city of Calvin. A deputation of the
principal citizens of Geneva, headed by the patriarch Gianavello, who
still lived, went out to meet them on the frontier, and taking them to
their homes, vied with each other which should show them the greatest
kindness. Generous city! If he who shall give a cup of cold water to a
disciple shall in nowise lose his reward, how much more shalt thou be
requited for this thy kindness to the suffering and sorrowing exiles of
the Saviour!

[Illustration: VIEW OF THE PROTESTANT CHURCH OF ST. JEAN, WALDENSIAN
VALLEYS.]

CHAPTER XVI.

RETURN TO THE VALLEYS.

Longings after their Valleys--Thoughts of Returning--Their
Reassembling--Cross Lake Leman--Begin their March--The
“Eight Hundred”--Cross Mont Cénis--Great Victory in the
Valley of the Dora--First View of their Mountains--Worship
on the Mountain-top--Enter their Valleys--Pass their First
Sunday at Prali--Worship.

Now we open the bright page of the Vaudois history. We have seen nearly
3,000 Waldensian exiles enter the gates of Geneva, the feeble remnant
of a population of from 14,000 to 16,000. One city could not contain
them all, and arrangements were made for distributing the expatriated
Vaudois among the Reformed cantons. The revocation of the Edict of
Nantes had a little before thrown thousands of French Protestants upon
the hospitality of the Swiss; and now the arrival of the Waldensian
refugees brought with it yet heavier demands on the public and private
charity of the cantons; but the response of Protestant Helvetia was
equally cordial in the case of the last comers as in that of the first,
and perhaps even more so, seeing their destitution was greater. Nor
were the Vaudois ungrateful. “Next to God, whose tender mercies have
preserved us from being entirely consumed,” said they to their kind
benefactors, “we are indebted to you alone for life and liberty.”

Several of the German princes opened their States to these exiles;
but the influence of their great enemy, Louis XIV., was then too
powerful in these parts to permit of their residence being altogether
an agreeable one. Constantly watched by his emissaries, and their
patrons tampered with, they were moved about from place to place. The
question of their permanent settlement in the future was beginning to
be anxiously discussed. The project of carrying them across the sea in
the ships of Holland, and planting them at the Cape, was even talked
of. The idea of being separated for ever from their native land, dearer
in exile than when they dwelt in it, gave them intolerable anguish. Was
it not possible to reassemble their scattered colonies, and marching
back to their Valleys, rekindle their ancient lamp in them? This was
the question which, after three years of exile, the Vaudois began to
put to themselves. As they wandered by the banks of the Rhine, or
traversed the German plains, they feasted their imaginations on their
far-off homes. The chestnuts shading their former abodes, the vine
bending gracefully over their portal, and the meadow in front, which
the crystal torrent kept perpetually bright, and whose murmur sweetly
blended with the evening psalm, all rose before their eyes. They never
knelt to pray but it was with their faces turned toward their grand
mountains, where slept their martyred fathers. Attempts had been made
by the Duke of Savoy to people their territory by settling in it a
mongrel race, partly Irish and partly Piedmontese; but the land knew
not the strangers, and refused to yield its strength to them. The
Vaudois had sent spies to examine its condition;[136] its fields lay
untilled, its vines unpruned, nor had its ruins been raised up; it was
almost as desolate as on the day when its sons had been driven out of
it. It seemed to them that the land was waiting their return.

At length the yearning of their heart could no longer be repressed. The
march back to their Valleys is one of the most wonderful exploits ever
performed by any people. It is famous in history by the name of “La
Rentrée Glorieuse.” The parallel event which will recur to the mind of
the scholar is, of course, the retreat of “the ten thousand Greeks.”
The patriotism and bravery of both will be admitted, but a candid
comparison will, we think, incline one to assign the palm of heroism to
the return of “the eight hundred.”

The day fixed on for beginning their expedition was the 10th of June,
1688. Quitting their various cantonments in Switzerland, and travelling
by by-roads, they traversed the country by night, and assembled at Bex,
a small town in the southern extremity of the territory of Bern. Their
secret march was soon known to the senates of Zurich, Bern, and Geneva;
and, foreseeing that the departure of the exiles would compromise them
with the Popish powers, their Excellencies took measures to prevent
it. A bark laden with arms for their use was seized on the Lake of
Geneva. The inhabitants of the Valais, in concert with the Savoyards,
at the first alarm seized the Bridge of St. Maurice, the key of the
Rhône Valley, and stopped the expedition. Thus were they, for the time,
compelled to abandon their project.

To extinguish all hopes of their return to the Valleys, they were anew
distributed over Germany. But scarcely had this second dispersion been
effected, when war broke out; the French troops overran the Palatinate,
and the Vaudois settled there, dreading, not without reason, the
soldiers of Louis XIV., retired before them, and retook the road to
Switzerland. The Protestant cantons, pitying these poor exiles, tossed
from country to country by political storms, settled them once more in
their former allotments. Meanwhile, the scenes were shifting rapidly
around the expatriated Vaudois, and with eyes uplifted they awaited the
issue. They saw their protector, William of Orange, mount the throne
of England. They saw their powerful enemy Louis XIV. attacked at once
by the emperor, and humiliated by the Dutch. They saw their own Prince
Victor Amadeus withdraw his soldiers from Savoy, seeing that he needed
them to defend Piedmont. It seemed to them that an invisible Hand was
opening their path back to their own land. Encouraged by these tokens,
they began to arrange a second time for their departure.

The place of appointed rendezvous was a wood on the northern shore of
Lake Leman, near the town of Noyon. For days before they continued to
converge, in scattered bands, and by stealthy marches, on the selected
point. On the decisive evening, the 16th of August, 1689, a general
muster took place under cover of the friendly wood of Prangins. Having
by solemn prayer commended their enterprise to God, they embarked on
the lake, and crossed by star-light. Their means of transport would
have been deficient but for a circumstance which threatened at first to
obstruct their expedition, but which, in the issue, greatly facilitated
it. Curiosity had drawn numbers to this part of the lake, and the boats
that brought hither the sight-seers furnished more amply the means of
escape to the Vaudois.

At this crisis, as on so many previous ones, a distinguished man arose
to lead them. Henri Arnaud, who was at the head of the 800 fighting men
who now set out for their native possessions, had at first discharged
the office of pastor, but the troubles of his nation compelling him to
leave the Valleys, he had served in the armies of the Prince of Orange.
Of decided piety, ardent patriotism, and of great decision and courage,
he presented a beautiful instance of the union of the pastoral and the
military character. It is hard to say whether his soldiers listened
more reverentially to the exhortations he at times delivered to them
from the pulpit, or to the orders he gave them on the field of battle.

Arriving on the southern shore of the lake, these 800 Vaudois bent
their knees in prayer, and then began their march through a country
covered with foes. Before them rose the great snow-clad mountains over
which they were to fight their way. Arnaud arranged his little host
into three companies--an advanced-guard, a centre, and a rear-guard.
Seizing some of the chief men as hostages, they traversed the Valley
of the Arve to Sallenches, and emerged from its dangerous passes
just as the men of the latter place had completed their preparations
for resisting them. Occasional skirmishes awaited them, but mostly
their march was unopposed, for the terror of God had fallen upon the
inhabitants of Savoy. Holding on their way they climbed the Haut Luce
Alp,[137] and next that of Bon Homme, the neighbouring Alp to Mont
Blanc, sinking sometimes to their middle in snow. Steep precipices
and treacherous glaciers subjected them to both toil and danger. They
were wet through with the rain, which at times fell in torrents. Their
provisions were growing scanty, but their supply was recruited by the
shepherds of the mountains, who brought them bread and cheese, while
their huts served them at night. They renewed their hostages at every
stage; sometimes they “caged”--to use their own phrase--a Capuchin
monk, and at other times an influential landlord, but all were treated
with uniform kindness.

Having crossed the Bon Homme, which divides the basin of the Arve from
that of the Isère, they descended, on Wednesday, the fifth day of their
march, into the valley of the latter stream. They had looked forward
to this stage of their journey with great misgivings, for the numerous
population of the Val Isère was known to be well armed, and decidedly
hostile, and might be expected to oppose their march, but the enemy was
“still as a stone” till the people had passed over. They next traversed
Mont Iseran, and the yet more formidable Mont Cénis, and finally
descended into the Valley of the Dora. It was here, on Saturday, the
24th of August, that they encountered for the first time a considerable
body of regular troops.

[Illustration: THE VAUDOIS CROSSING LAKE LEMAN BY NIGHT.]

As they traversed the valley they were met by a peasant, of whom they
inquired whether they could have provisions by paying for them. “Come
on this way,” said the man, in a tone that had a slight touch of
triumph in it, “you will find all that you want; they are preparing
an excellent supper for you.”[138] They were led into the defile of
Salabertrand, where the Col d’Albin closes in upon the stream of the
Dora, and before they were aware they found themselves in presence of
the French army, whose camp-fires--for night had fallen--illumined far
and wide the opposite slope. Retreat was impossible. The French were
2,500 strong, flanked by the garrison of Exiles, and supported by a
miscellaneous crowd of armed followers.

Under favour of the darkness, they advanced to the bridge which crossed
the Dora, on the opposite bank of which the French were encamped. To
the challenge, “Who goes there?” the Vaudois answered “Friends.” The
instant reply shouted out was “Kill, kill!” followed by a tremendous
fire, which was kept up for a quarter of an hour. It did no harm,
however, for Arnaud had bidden his soldiers lie flat on their faces,
and permit the deadly shower to pass over them. But now a division of
the French appeared in their rear, thus placing them between two fires.
Some one in the Vaudois army, seeing that all must be risked, shouted
out, “Courage! the bridge is won!” At these words the Vaudois started
to their feet, rushed across the bridge sword in hand, and clearing
it, they threw themselves with the impetuosity of a whirlwind upon the
enemy’s entrenchments. Confounded by the suddenness of the attack, the
French could only use the butt-ends of their muskets to parry the
blows. The fighting lasted two hours, and ended in the total rout of
the French. Their leader, the Marquis de Larrey, after a fruitless
attempt to rally his soldiers, fled wounded to Briançon exclaiming, “Is
it possible that I have lost the battle and my honour?”

Soon thereafter the moon rose and showed the field of battle to the
victors. On it, stretched out in death, lay 600 French soldiers,
besides officers; and strewn promiscuously with the fallen, all over
the field, were arms, military stores, and provisions. Thus had been
suddenly opened an armoury and magazines to men who stood much in need
both of weapons and of food. Having amply replenished themselves, they
collected what they could not carry away into a heap, and set fire
to it. The loud and multifarious noises formed by the explosions of
the gunpowder, the sounding of the trumpets, and the shouting of the
captains, who, throwing their caps in the air, exclaimed, “Thanks be
to the Lord of hosts, who hath given us the victory,” echoed like the
thunder of heaven, and reverberating from hill to hill, formed a most
extraordinary and exciting scene, such as was seldom witnessed amid
these usually quiet mountains. This great victory cost the Waldenses
only fifteen killed and twelve wounded.

Their fatigue was great, but they feared to halt on the battle-field,
and so, rousing those who had already sunk into sleep, they commenced
climbing the lofty Mont Sci. The day was breaking as they gained the
summit. It was Sunday, and Henri Arnaud, halting till all should
assemble, pointed out to them, just as they were becoming visible in
the morning light, the mountain-tops of their own land. Welcome sight
to their longing eyes! Bathed in the radiance of the rising sun, it
seemed to them, as one snowy peak began to burn after another, that the
mountains were kindling into joy at the return of their long-absent
sons. This army of soldiers resolved itself into a congregation of
worshippers, and the summit of Mont Sci became their church. Kneeling
on the mountain-top, the battle-field below them, and the solemn and
sacred peaks of the Col du Pis, the Col la Vêchera, and the glorious
pyramid of Monte Viso looking down upon them in reverent silence, they
humbled themselves before the Eternal, confessing their sins, and
giving thanks for their many deliverances. Seldom has worship more
sincere or more rapt been offered than that which this day ascended
from this congregation of warrior-worshippers gathered under the
dome-like vault that rose over them.

Refreshed by the devotions of the Sunday, and exhilarated by the
victory of the day before, the heroic band now rushed down to take
possession of their inheritance, from which the single Valley of
Clusone only parted them. It was three years and a half since they had
crossed the Alps, a crowd of exiles, worn to skeletons by sickness and
confinement, and now they were returning, a marshalled host, victorious
over the army of France, and ready to encounter that of Piedmont. They
traversed the Clusone, a plain of about two miles in width, watered by
the broad, clear, blue-tinted Germagnasca, and bounded by hills, which
offer to the eye a succession of terraces, clothed with the richest
vines, mingled with the chestnut and the apple-tree. They entered the
narrow defile of Pis, where a detachment of Piedmontese soldiers had
been posted to guard the pass, but who took flight at the approach of
the Vaudois, thus opening to them the gate of one of the grandest of
their Valleys, San Martino. On the twelfth day after setting out from
the shores of Lake Leman they crossed the frontier, and stood once
more within the limits of their inheritance. When they mustered at
Balsiglia, the first Vaudois village which they entered, in the western
extremity of San Martino, they found that fatigue, desertion, and
battle had reduced their numbers from 800 to 700.

The first Sunday after their return was passed at the village of
Prali. Of all their sanctuaries, the church of Prali alone remained
standing; of the others only the ruins were to be seen. They resolved
to commence this day their ancient and scriptural worship. Purging the
church of its Popish ornaments, one half of the little army, laying
down their arms at the door, entered the edifice, while the other half
stood without, the church being too small to contain them all. Henri
Arnaud, the soldier-pastor, mounting a table which was placed in the
porch, preached to them. They began their worship by chanting the 74th
Psalm--“O God, why hast thou cast us off for ever? Why doth thine anger
smoke against the sheep of thy pasture?” &c. The preacher then took as
his text the 129th Psalm--“Many a time have they afflicted me from my
youth, may Israel now say.” The wonderful history of his people behind
him, so to speak, and the reconquest of their land before him, must
have called up the glorious achievements of their fathers, provoking
the generous emulation of their sons. The worship was closed by these
700 warriors chanting in magnificent chorus the psalm from which their
leader had preached.

To many it seemed significant that here the returned exiles should
spend their first Sunday, and resume their sanctuary services. They
remembered how this same village of Prali had been the scene of a
horrible outrage at the time of their exodus. The Pastor of Prali, M.
Leidet, a singularly pious man, had been discovered by the soldiers
as he was praying under a rock, and being dragged forth, he was first
tortured and mutilated, and then hanged; his last words being, “Lord
Jesus, receive my spirit.” It was surely appropriate, after the silence
of three years and a half, during which the rage of the persecutor had
forbidden the preaching of the glorious Gospel, that its re-opening
should take place in the pulpit of the martyr Leidet.

CHAPTER XVII.

FINAL RE-ESTABLISHMENT IN THE VALLEYS.

The Vaudois had entered the land, but they had not yet got possession
of it. They were a mere handful; they would have to face the large and
well-appointed army of Piedmont, aided by the French. But their great
leader to his courage added faith. The “cloud” which had guided them
over the great mountains, with their snows and abysses, would cover
their camp, and lead them forth to battle, and bring them in with
victory. It was not surely that they might die in the land, that they
had been able to make so marvellous a march back to it. Full of these
courageous hopes, the “seven hundred” now addressed themselves to their
great task.

They began to climb the Col Julien, which separates Prali from the
fertile and central valley of the Waldenses, that of Lucerna. As they
toiled up and were now near the summit of the pass, the Piedmontese
soldiers, who had been stationed there, shouted out, “Come on, ye
Barbets; we guard the pass, and there are 3,000 of us!” They did come
on. To force the entrenchments and put to flight the garrison was the
work of a moment. In the evacuated camp the Vaudois found a store of
ammunition and provisions, which to them was a most seasonable booty.
Descending rapidly the slopes and precipices of the great mountain,
they surprised and took the town of Bobbio, which nestles at its foot.
Driving out the Popish inhabitants to whom it had been made over,
they took possession of their ancient dwellings, and paused a little
while to rest after the march and conflict of the previous days. Here
their second Sunday was passed, and public worship again celebrated,
the congregation chanting their psalm to the clash of arms. On the
day following, repairing to the “Rock of Sibaud,” where their fathers
had pledged their faith to God and to one another, they renewed on
the same sacred spot their ancient oath, swearing with uplifted hands
to abide steadfastly in the profession of the Gospel, to stand by one
another, and never to lay down their arms till they had re-established
themselves and their brethren in those Valleys which they believed had
as really been given to them by the God of heaven as Palestine had been
to the Jews.

Their next march was to Villaro, which is situated half-way between
Bobbio at the head and La Torre at the entrance of the valley. This
town they stormed and took, driving away the new inhabitants. But here
their career of conquest was suddenly checked. The next day, a strong
reinforcement of regular troops coming up, the Vaudois were under the
necessity of abandoning Villaro, and falling back on Bobbio.[139] The
patriot army now became parted into two bands, and for many weeks had
to wage a sort of guerilla war on the mountains. France on the one
side, and Piedmont on the other, poured in soldiers, in the hope of
exterminating this handful of warriors. The privations and hardships
which they endured were as great as the victories which they won in
their daily skirmishes were marvellous. But though always conquering,
their ranks were rapidly thinning. What though a hundred of the
enemy were slain for one Waldensian who fell? The Piedmontese could
recruit their numbers, the Vaudois could not add to theirs. They had
now neither ammunition nor provisions, save what they took from their
enemies; and, to add to their perplexities, winter was near, which
would bury their mountains beneath its snows, and leave them without
food or shelter. A council of war was held, and it was ultimately
resolved to repair to the Valley of Martino, and entrench themselves on
La Balsiglia.

This brings us to the last heroic stand of the returned exiles. But
first let us sketch the natural strength and grandeur of the spot on
which that stand was made. The Balsiglia is situated at the western
extremity of San Martino, which in point of grandeur yields to few
things in the Waldensian Alps. It is some five miles long by about two
in width, having as its floor the richest meadow-land; and for walls,
mountains superbly hung with terraces, overflowing with flower and
fruitage, and protected above with splintered cliffs and dark peaks. It
is closed at the western extremity by the naked face of a perpendicular
mountain, down which the Germagnasca is seen to dash in a flood of
silver. The meadows and woods that clothe the bosom of the valley are
seamed by a broad line of white, formed by the torrent, the bed of
which is strewn with so many rocks that it resembles a continuous river
of foam.

Than the clothing of the mountains that form the bounding walls of
this valley nothing could be finer. On the right, as one advances
upwards, rises a succession of terraced vineyards, finely diversified
with cornfields and knolls of rock, which are crowned with cottages or
hamlets, looking out from amid their rich embowerings of chestnut and
apple-tree. Above this fruit-bearing zone are the grassy uplands, the
resort of herdsmen, which in their turn give place to the rocky ridges
that, in wavy and serrated lines, run off to the higher summits, which
recede into the clouds.

On the left the mountain-wall is more steep, but equally rich in its
clothing. Swathing its foot is a carpeting of delicious sward. Trees,
vast of girth, part, with their over-arching branches, the bright
sunlight. Higher up are fields of maize and forests of chestnut; and
higher still is seen the rock-loving birch, with its silvery stem and
graceful tresses. Along the splintered rocks above runs a bristling
line of firs, forming mighty _chevaux-de-frise_.

Towards the head of the valley, near the vast perpendicular cliff
already mentioned, which shuts it in on the west, is seen a glorious
assemblage of mountains. One mighty cone uplifts itself above and
behind another, till the last and highest buries its top in the rolling
masses of cloud, which are seen usually hanging like a canopy above
this part of the valley. These noble _aiguilles_, four in number, rise
feathery with firs, and remind one of the fretted pinnacles of some
colossal cathedral. This is La Balsiglia. It was on the terraces of
this mountain that Henri Arnaud, with his patriot-warriors, pitched his
camp, amid the dark tempests of winter, and the yet darker tempests
of a furious and armed bigotry. The Balsiglia shoots its gigantic
pyramids heavenward, as if proudly conscious of having once been the
resting-place of the Vaudois ark. It is no castle of man’s erecting; it
had for its builder the Almighty Architect himself.

It only remains, in order to complete this picture of a spot so famous
in the wars of conscience and liberty, to say that behind the Balsiglia
on the west rises the lofty Col du Pis. It is rarely that this mountain
permits to the spectator a view of his full stature, for his dark sides
run up and bury themselves in the clouds. Face to face with the Col
du Pis, stands on the other side of the valley the yet loftier Mont
Guinevert, with, most commonly, a veil of cloud around him, as if he
too were unwilling to permit to the eye of visitor a sight of his
stately proportions. Thus do these two Alps, like twin giants, guard
this famous valley.

[Illustration: VIEW IN THE VILLAGE OF SAN LAURENZO, ANGROGNA.]

It was on the lower terrace of this pyramidal mountain, the Balsiglia,
that Henri Arnaud--his army now, alas! reduced to 400--sat down.
Viewed from the level of the valley, the peak seems to terminate in a
point, but on ascending, the top expands into a level grassy plateau.
Steep and smooth as escarped fortress, it is unscalable on every side
save that on which a stream rushes past from the mountains. The skill
of Arnaud enabled him to add to the natural strength of the Vaudois
position the defences of art. They enclosed themselves within earthen
walls and ditches; they erected covered ways; they dug out some
four-score cellars in the rock, to hold provisions, and they built
huts as temporary barracks. Three springs that gushed out of the rock
supplied them with water. They constructed similar entrenchments on
each of the three peaks that rose above them, so that if the first were
taken they could ascend to the second, and so on to the fourth. On the
loftiest summit of the Balsiglia, which commanded the entire valley,
they placed a sentinel, to watch the movements of the enemy.

Only three days elapsed till four battalions of the French army
arrived, and enclosed the Balsiglia on every side. On the 29th of
October, an assault was made on the Vaudois position, which was
repulsed with great slaughter of the enemy, and the loss of not one man
to the defenders. The snows of early winter had begun to fall, and the
French general thought it best to postpone the task of capturing the
Balsiglia till spring. Destroying all the corn which the Vaudois had
collected and stored in the villages, he began his retreat from San
Martino, and, taking laconic farewell of the Waldenses, he bade them
have patience till Easter, when he would again pay them a visit.[140]

All through the winter of 1689-90, the Vaudois remained in their
mountain fortress, resting after the marches, battles, and sieges of
the previous months, and preparing for the promised return of the
French. Where Henri Arnaud had pitched his camp, there had he also
raised his altar, and if from that mountain-top was pealed forth the
shout of battle, from it ascended also, morning and night, the prayer
and the psalm. Besides daily devotions, Henri Arnaud preached two
sermons weekly, one on Sunday and another on Thursday. At stated times
he administered the Lord’s Supper. Nor was the commissariat overlooked.
Foraging parties brought in wine, chestnuts, apples, and other fruits,
which the autumn, now far advanced, had fully ripened. A strong
detachment made an incursion into the French valleys of Pragelas and
Queyras, and returned with salt, butter, some hundred head of sheep,
and a few oxen. The enemy, before departing, had destroyed their stock
of grain, and as the fields were long since reaped, they despaired of
being able to repair their loss. And yet bread to last them all the
winter through had been provided, in a way so marvellous as to convince
them that He who feeds the fowls of the air was caring for them. Ample
magazines of grain lay all around their encampment, although unknown as
yet to them. The snow that year began to fall earlier than usual, and
it covered up the ripened corn, which the Popish inhabitants had not
time to cut when the approach of the Vaudois compelled them to flee.
From this unexpected store-house the garrison drew as they had need.
Little did the Popish peasantry, when they sowed the seed in spring,
dream that Vaudois hands would reap the harvest.

Corn had been provided for them, and, to Vaudois eyes, provided almost
as miraculously as was the manna for the Israelites, but where were
they to find the means of grinding it into meal? At almost the foot of
the Balsiglia, on the stream of the Germagnasca, is a little mill.
The owner, M. Tron-Poulat, three years before, when going forth into
exile with his brethren, threw the mill-stone into the river; “for,”
said he, “it may yet be needed.” It was needed now, and search being
made for it, it was discovered, drawn out of the stream, and the mill
set a-working. There was another and more distant mill at the entrance
of the valley, to which the garrison had recourse when the immediate
precincts of the Balsiglia were occupied by the enemy and the nearer
mill was not available. Both mills exist to this day; their roofs
of brown slate may be seen by the visitor, peering up through the
luxuriant foliage of the valley, the wheel motionless, it may be, and
the torrent which turned it shooting idly past in a volley of spray.

With the return of spring, the army of France and Piedmont reappeared.
The Balsiglia was now completely invested, the combined force amounting
to 22,000 in all--10,000 French and 12,000 Piedmontese. The troops
were commanded by the celebrated De Catinat, lieutenant-general of
the armies of France. The “four hundred” Waldenses looked down from
their “camp of rock” on the valley beneath them, and saw it glittering
with steel by day and shining with camp-fires by night. Catinat never
doubted that a single day’s fighting would enable him to capture the
place; and that the victory, which he looked upon as already won, might
be duly celebrated, he ordered four hundred ropes to be sent along with
the army, in order to hang at once the four hundred Waldenses; and he
had commanded the inhabitants of Pinerolo to prepare _feux-de-joie_ to
grace his return from the campaign. The head-quarters of the French
were at Great Passet--so called in contradistinction to Little Passet,
situated a mile lower in the valley. Great Passet counts some thirty
roofs, and is placed on an immense ledge of rock that juts out from
the foot of Mont Guinevert, some 800 feet above the stream, and right
opposite the Balsiglia. On the flanks of this rocky ledge are still
to be seen the ruts worn by the cannon and baggage-waggons of the
French army. There can be no doubt that these marks are the memorials
of the siege, for no other wheeled vehicles ever were seen in these
mountains.[141]

Having reconnoitred, Catinat ordered the assault (1st May, 1690).
Only on that side of Balsiglia where a stream trickles down from the
mountains, and which offers a gradual slope, instead of a wall of
rock as everywhere else, could the attack be made with any chance of
success. But this point Henri Arnaud had taken care to fortify with
strong palisades. Five hundred picked men, supported by seven thousand
musketeers, advanced to storm the fortress.[142] They rushed forward
with ardour; they threw themselves upon the palisades; but they found
it impossible to tear them down, formed as they were of great trunks,
fastened by mighty boulders. Massed behind the defence were the
Vaudois, the younger men loading the muskets, and the veterans taking
steady aim, while the besiegers were falling in dozens at every volley.
The assailants beginning to waver, the Waldensians made a fierce sally,
sword in hand, and cut in pieces those whom the musket had spared. Of
the five hundred picked soldiers only some score lived to rejoin the
main body, which had been spectators from the valley of their total
rout. Incredible as it may appear, we are nevertheless assured of it
as a fact, that not a Vaudois was killed or wounded: not a bullet had
touched one of them. The fireworks which Catinat had been so provident
as to bid the men of Pinerolo get ready to celebrate his victory were
not needed that night.

Despairing of reducing the fortress by other means, the French now
brought up cannon, and it was not till the 14th of May that all was
ready, and that the last and grand assault was made. Across the ravine
in which the conflict we have just described took place, an immense
knoll juts out, at an equal level with the lower entrenchments of the
Waldenses. To this rock the cannons were hoisted up to play upon the
fortress.[143] Never before had the sound of artillery shaken the rocks
of San Martino. It was the morning of Whit-Sunday, and the Waldenses
were preparing to celebrate the Lord’s Supper, when the first boom from
the enemy’s battery broke upon their ear.[144] All day the cannonading
continued, and its dreadful noises, re-echoed from rock to rock, and
rolled upwards to the summits of the Col du Pis and the Mont Guinevert,
were still further heightened by the thousands of musketeers who were
stationed all round the Balsiglia. When night closed in the ramparts
of the Waldenses were in ruins, and it was seen that it would not be
possible longer to maintain the defence. What was to be done? The
cannonading had ceased for the moment, but assuredly the dawn would see
the attack renewed.

Never before had destruction appeared to impend so inevitably over the
Vaudois. To remain where they were was certain death, yet whither could
they flee? Behind them rose the unscalable precipices of the Col du
Pis, and beneath them lay the valley swarming with foes. If they should
wait till the morning broke it would be impossible to pass the enemy
without being seen; and even now, although it was night, the numerous
camp-fires that blazed beneath them made it almost as bright as day.
But the hour of their extremity was the time of God’s opportunity.
Often before it had been seen to be so, but perhaps never so strikingly
as now. While they looked this way and that way, but could discover no
escape from the net that enclosed them, the mist began to gather on the
summits of the mountains around them. They knew the old mantle that was
wont to be cast around their fathers in the hour of peril. It crept
lower and yet lower on the great mountains. Now it touched the supreme
peak of the Balsiglia.

Will it mock their hopes? Will it only touch, but not cover, their
mountain camp? Again it is in motion; downward roll its white fleecy
billows, and now it hangs in sheltering folds around the war-battered
fortress and its handful of heroic defenders. They dared not as yet
attempt escape, for still the watch-fires burned brightly in the
valley. But it was only for a few minutes longer. The mist kept its
downward course, and now all was dark. A Tartarean gloom filled the
gorge of San Martino.

At this moment, as the garrison stood mute, pondering whereunto these
things would grow, Captain Poulat, a native of these parts, broke
silence. He bade them be of good courage, for he knew the paths, and
would conduct them past the French and Piedmontese lines, by a track
known only to himself. Crawling on their hands and knees, and passing
close to the French sentinels, yet hidden from them by the mist, they
descended frightful precipices, and made their escape. “He who has
not seen such paths,” says Arnaud in his _Rentrée Glorieuse_, “cannot
conceive the danger of them, and will be inclined to consider my
account of the march a mere fiction. But it is strictly true; and I
must add, the place is so frightful that even some of the Vaudois
themselves were terror-struck when they saw by daylight the nature of
the spot they had passed in the dark.” When the day broke, every eye in
the plain below was turned to the Balsiglia. That day the four hundred
ropes which Catinat had brought with him were to be put in requisition,
and the _feux-de-joie_ so long prepared were to be lighted at Pinerolo.
What was their amazement to find the Balsiglia abandoned! The Vaudois
had escaped and were gone, and might be seen upon the distant
mountains, climbing the snows, far out of the reach of their would-be
captors. Well might they sing--

“Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers.
The snare is broken, and we are escaped.”

There followed several days, during which they wandered from hill to
hill, or lay hid in woods, suffering great privations, and encountering
numerous perils. At last they succeeded in reaching the Pra del Tor. To
their amazement and joy, on arriving at this celebrated and hallowed
spot, they found deputies from their prince, the Duke of Savoy, waiting
them with an overture of peace. The Vaudois were as men that dreamed.
An overture of peace! How was this? A coalition, including Germany,
Great Britain, Holland, and Spain, had been formed to check the
ambition of France, and three days had been given to Victor Amadeus to
say to which side he would join himself--the Leaguers or Louis XIV. He
resolved to break with Louis and take part with the coalition. In this
case, to whom could he so well commit the keys of the Alps as to his
trusty Vaudois? Hence the overture that met them in the Pra del Tor.
Ever ready to rally round the throne of their prince the moment the
hand of persecution was withdrawn, the Vaudois closed with the peace
offered them. Their towns and lands were restored; their churches
were reopened for Protestant worship; their brethren still in prison at
Turin were liberated, and the colonists of their countrymen in Germany
had passports to return to their homes; and thus, after a dreary
interval of three and a half years, the Valleys were again peopled with
their ancient race, and resounded with their ancient songs. So closed
that famous period of their history, which, in respect of the wonders,
we might say the miracles, that attended it, we can compare only to
the march of the chosen people through the wilderness to the Land of
Promise.

[Illustration: CHURCH OF CHABAS, THE OLDEST IN THE VALLEYS.]

CHAPTER XVIII.

CONDITION OF THE WALDENSES FROM 1690.

Annoyances--Burdens--Foreign Contributions--French Revolution--
Spiritual Revivals--Felix Neff--Dr. Gilly--General Beckwith--
Oppressed Condition previous to 1840--Edict of Carlo Alberto--
Freedom of Conscience--The Vaudois Church, the Door by which
Religious Liberty Entered Italy--Their Lamp Kindled at
Rome.

With this second planting of the Vaudois in their Valleys, the period
of their great persecutions may be said to have come to an end. Their
security was not complete, nor their measure of liberty entire. They
were still subject to petty oppressions; enemies were never wanting to
whisper things to their prejudice; little parties of Jesuits would from
time to time appear in their Valleys, the forerunners, as they commonly
found them, of some new and hostile edict; they lived in continual
apprehension of having the few privileges which had been conceded to
them swept away; and on one occasion they were actually threatened with
a second expatriation. They knew, moreover, that Rome, the real author
of all their calamities and woes, still meditated their extermination,
and that she had entered a formal protest against their rehabilitation,
and given the duke distinctly to understand that to be the friend of
the Vaudois was to be the enemy of the Pope.[145] Nevertheless their
condition was tolerable compared with the frightful tempests which had
darkened their sky in previous eras.

The Waldenses had everything to begin anew. Their numbers were thinned;
they were bowed down by poverty; but they had vast recuperative power;
and their brethren in England and Germany hastened to aid them in
reorganising their Church, and bringing once more into play that whole
civil and ecclesiastical economy which the “exile” had so rudely broken
in pieces. William III. of England incorporated a Vaudois regiment
at his own expense, which he placed at the service of the duke, and
to this regiment it was mainly owing that the duke was not utterly
overwhelmed in his wars with his former ally, Louis XIV. At one point
of the campaign, when hard pressed, Victor Amadeus had to sue for the
protection of the Vaudois, on almost the very spot where the deputies
of Gianavello had sued to him for peace, but had sued in vain.

In 1692 there were twelve churches in the Valleys; but the people were
unable to maintain a pastor to each. They were ground down by military
imposts. Moreover, a peremptory demand was made upon them for payment
of the arrears of taxes which had accrued in respect of their lands
during the three years they had been absent, and when to them there
was neither seedtime nor harvest. Anything more extortionate could
not be imagined. In their extremity, Mary of England, the consort of
William III., granted them a “Royal Subsidy,” to provide pastors and
schoolmasters, and this grant was increased with the increased number
of parishes, till it reached the annual sum of £550. A collection which
was made in Great Britain at a subsequent period (1770) permitted
an augmentation of the salaries of the pastors. This latter fund
bore the name of the “National Subsidy,” to distinguish it from the
former, the “Royal Subsidy.” The States-General of Holland followed
in the wake of the English sovereign, and made collections for
salaries to schoolmasters, gratuities to superannuated pastors, and
for the founding of a Latin school. Nor must we omit to state that the
Protestant cantons of Switzerland appropriated bursaries to students
from the Valleys at their academies--one at Basle, five at Lausanne,
and two at Geneva.[146]

The policy of the Court of Turin towards the Waldenses changed with
the shiftings in the great current of European politics. At one
unfavourable moment, when the influence of the Vatican was in the
ascendant, Henri Arnaud, who had so gloriously led back the Israel of
the Alps to their ancient inheritance, was banished from the Valleys,
along with others, his companions in patriotism and virtue, as now in
exile. England, through William, sought to draw the hero to her own
shore, but Arnaud retired to Schoenberg, where he spent his last years
in the humble and affectionate discharge of the duties of a pastor
among his expatriated countrymen, whose steps he guided to the heavenly
abodes, as he had done those of their brethren to their earthly land.
He died in 1721, at the age of four-score years.

The century passed without any very noticeable event. The spiritual
condition of the Vaudois languished. The year 1789 brought with it
astounding changes. The French Revolution rung out the knell of the old
times, and introduced, amidst those earthquake-shocks that convulsed
nations, and laid thrones and altars prostrate, a new political age.
The Vaudois once again passed under the dominion of France. There
followed an enlargement of their civil rights, and an amelioration
of their social condition; but, unhappily, with the friendship of
France came the poison of its literature, and Voltairianism threatened
to inflict more deadly injury on the Church of the Alps than all
the persecutions of the previous centuries. At the Restoration
the Waldenses were given back to their former sovereign, and with
their return to the House of Savoy they returned to their ancient
restrictions, though the hand of bloody persecution could no more be
stretched out.

The time was now drawing near when this venerable people was to obtain
a final emancipation. That great deliverance rose on them, as day rises
on the earth, by slow stages. The visit paid them by the apostolic
Felix Neff, in 1808, was the first dawning of their new day. With him
a breath from heaven, it was felt, had passed over the dry bones. The
next stage in their resurrection was the visit of Dr. William Stephen
Gilly, in 1828. He cherished, he tells us, the conviction that “this
is the spot from which it is likely that the great Sower will again
cast his seed, when it shall please him to permit the pure Church of
Christ to resume her seat in those Italian States from which Pontifical
intrigues have dislodged her.”[147] The result of Dr. Gilly’s visit was
the erection of a college at La Torre, for the instruction of youth
and the training of ministers, and an hospital for the sick; besides
awakening great interest on their behalf in England.[148]

After Dr. Gilly there stood up another to befriend the Waldenses,
and prepare them for their coming day of deliverance. The career of
General Beckwith is invested with a romance not unlike that which
belongs to the life of Ignatius Loyola. Beckwith was a young soldier,
and as brave, and chivalrous, and ambitious of glory as Loyola. He had
passed unhurt through battle and siege. He fought at Waterloo till the
enemy was in full retreat, and the sun was going down. But a flying
soldier discharged his musket at a venture, and the leg of the young
officer was hopelessly shattered by the bullet. Beckwith, like Loyola,
passed months upon a bed of pain, during which he drew forth from his
portmanteau his neglected Bible, and began to read and study it. He had
lain down, like Loyola, a knight of the sword, and like him he rose up
a knight of the Cross, but in a truer sense.

One day in 1827 he paid a visit to Apsley House, and while he waited
for the duke, he took up a volume which was lying on the table. It
was Dr. Gilly’s narrative of his visit to the Waldenses. Beckwith
felt himself drawn irresistibly to a people with whose wonderful
history this book made him acquainted for the first time. From that
hour his life was consecrated to them. He lived among them as a
father--as a king. He devoted his fortune to them. He built schools,
and churches, and parsonages. He provided improved schoolbooks, and
suggested better modes of teaching. He strove above all things to
quicken their spiritual life. He taught them how to respond to the
exigencies of modern times. He specially inculcated upon them that
the field was wider than their Valleys; and that they would one day
be called to arise and to walk through Italy, in the length of it and
in the breadth of it. He was their advocate at the court of Turin;
and when he had obtained for them the possession of a burying-ground
outside their Valleys, he exclaimed, “Now they have got infeftment of
Piedmont, as the patriarchs did of Canaan, and soon all the land will
be theirs.”[149]

But despite the efforts of Gilly and Beckwith, and the growing spirit
of toleration, the Waldenses continued to groan under a load of
political and social disabilities. They were still a proscribed race.

The once goodly limits of their Valleys had, in later times, been
greatly contracted, and like the iron cell in the story, their
territory was almost yearly tightening its circle round them. They
could not own, or even farm, a foot-breadth of land, or practise any
industry, beyond their own boundary. They could not bury their dead
save in their Valleys; and when it chanced that any of their people
died at Turin or elsewhere, their corpses had to be carried all the
way to their own graveyards. They were not permitted to erect a
tombstone above their dead, or even to enclose their burial-grounds
with a wall. They were shut out from all the learned and liberal
professions--they could not be bankers, physicians, or lawyers. No
avocation was left them but that of tending their herds and pruning
their vines. When any of them emigrated to Turin, or other Piedmontese
town, they were not permitted to be anything but domestic servants.
There was no printing-press in their Valleys--they were forbidden to
have one; and the few books they possessed, mostly Bibles, catechisms,
and hymn-books, were printed abroad, chiefly in Great Britain; and
when they arrived at La Torre, the Moderator had to sign before the
Reviser-in-Chief an engagement that not one of these books should be
sold, or even lent, to a Roman Catholic.[150]

[Illustration: TOMB OF GENERAL BECKWITH.]

They were forbidden to evangelise or make converts. But though fettered
on the one side they were not equally protected on the other, for the
priests had full liberty to enter their Valleys, and proselytise;
and if a boy of twelve or a girl of ten professed willingness to
enter the Roman Church, they were to be taken from their parents,
that they might with the more freedom carry out their intention. They
could not marry save among their own people. They could not erect a
sanctuary save on the soil of their own territory. They could take
no degree at any of the colleges of Piedmont. In short, the duties,
rights, and privileges that constitute _life_ they were denied. They
were reduced as nearly as was practicable to simple existence, with
this one great exception--which was granted them not as a right, but
as a favour--namely, the liberty of Protestant worship within their
territorial limits.

The Revolution of 1848, with trumpet-peal, sounded the overthrow
of all these restrictions. They fell in one day. The final end of
Providence in preserving that people during long centuries of fearful
persecutions now began to be seen. The Waldensian Church became the
door by which freedom of conscience entered Italy. When the hour came
for framing a new constitution for Piedmont, it was found desirable
to give standing-room in that constitution to the Waldenses, and this
necessitated the introduction into the edict of the great principle of
freedom of worship as a right. The Waldenses had contended for that
principle for ages--they had maintained and vindicated it by their
sufferings and martyrdoms; and therefore they were necessitated to
demand, and the Piedmontese Government to grant, this great principle.
It was the only one of the many new constitutions framed for Italy
at that same time in which freedom of conscience was enacted. Nor
would it have found a place in the Piedmontese constitution, but for
the circumstance that here were the Waldenses, and that their great
distinctive principle demanded legal recognition, otherwise they would
remain outside the constitution. The Vaudois alone had fought the
battle, but all their countrymen shared with them the fruits of the
great victory. When the news of the Statuto of Carlo Alberto reached La
Torre there were greetings on the streets, psalms in the churches, and
blazing bonfires at night on the crest of the snowy Alps.

At the door of her Valleys, with lamp in hand, its oil unspent and
its light unextinguished, is seen, at the era of 1848, the Church of
the Alps, prepared to obey the summons of her heavenly King, who has
passed by in earthquake and whirlwind, casting down the thrones that
of old oppressed her, and opening the doors of her ancient prison.
She is now to go forth and be “The Light of all Italy,”[151] as Dr.
Gilly, thirty years before, had foretold she would at no distant day
become. Happily not all Italy as yet, but only Piedmont, was opened to
her. She addressed herself with zeal to the work of erecting churches
and forming congregations in Turin and other towns of Piedmont. Long
a stranger to evangelistic work, the Vaudois Church had time and
opportunity thus given her to acquire the mental courage and practical
habits needed in the novel circumstances in which she was now placed.
She prepared evangelists, collected funds, organised colleges and
congregations, and in various other ways perfected her machinery in
anticipation of the wider field that Providence was about to open to
her.

It is now the year 1859, and the drama which had stood still since 1849
begins once more to advance. In that year France declared war against
the Austrian occupation of the Italian peninsula. The tempest of battle
passes from the banks of the Po to those of the Adige, along the
plain of Lombardy, rapid, terrible, and decisive as the thunder-cloud
of the Alps, and the Tedeschi retreat before the victorious arms of
the French. The blood of the three great battles of the campaign was
scarcely dry before Austrian Lombardy, Modena, Parma, Tuscany, and
part of the Pontifical States had annexed themselves to Piedmont, and
their inhabitants had become fellow-citizens of the Waldenses. With
scarcely a pause there followed the brilliant campaign of Garibaldi in
Sicily and Naples, and these rich and ample territories were also added
to the now magnificent kingdom of Victor Emmanuel. The whole of Italy,
from the Alps to Etna, the “States of the Church” excepted, now became
the field of the Waldensian Church. Nor was this the end of the drama.
Another ten years pass away: France again sends forth her armies to
battle, believing that she can command victory as aforetime. The result
of the brief but terrible campaign of 1870, in which the French Empire
disappeared and the German uprose, was the opening of the gates of
Rome. And let us mark--for in the little incident we hear the voice of
ten centuries--in the first rank of the soldiers whose cannon had burst
open the old gates, there enters a Vaudois colporteur with a bundle of
Bibles. The Waldenses now kindle their lamp at Rome, and the purpose of
the ages stands revealed!

THE END.

CASSELL, PETTER, GALPIN & CO., BELLE SAUVAGE WORKS, LONDON, E.C.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Petrus Damianus, _Opusc._, p. 5. Allix, _Churches
of Piedmont_, p. 113. M’Crie, _Hist. of Reform. in
Italy_, p. 2.

[2] Recent German criticism refers the _Nobla Leyçon_ to a
later date, but still one anterior to the Reformation.

[3] The new and elegant temple of the Waldenses now rises
near the foot of the Castelluzzo.

[4] This short description of the Waldensian valleys is
drawn from the author’s personal observations.

[5] This disproves the charge of Manicheism brought
against them by their enemies.

[6] Sir Samuel Morland gives the _Nobla Leyçon_ in full in
his _History of the Churches of the Waldenses_. Allix
(chap. 18) gives a summary of it.

[7] The _Nobla Leyçon_ has the following passage:--“If
there be an honest man, who desires to love God
and fear Jesus Christ, who will neither slander,
nor swear, nor lie, nor commit adultery, nor kill,
nor steal, nor avenge himself of his enemies, they
presently say of such a one he is a Vaudés, and worthy
of death.”

[8] See a list of numerous heresies and blasphemies
charged upon the Waldenses by the Inquisitor
Reynerius, who wrote about the year 1250, and
extracted by Allix (chap. 22).

[9] _The Romaunt Version of the Gospel according to John,
from MS. preserved in Trinity College, Dublin, and in
the Bibliothèque du Roi, Paris._ By William Stephen
Gilly, D.D., Canon of Durham, and Vicar of Norham.
Lond., 1848.

[10] Stranski, _apud_, Lenfant’s _Concile de Constance_,
quoted by Count Valerian Krasinski in his _History of
the Rise, Progress, and Decline of the Reformation
in Poland_, vol. i., p. 53; Lond., 1838. Illyricus
Flaccius, in his _Catalogus Testium Veritatis_
(Amstelodami, 1679), says: “Pars Valdensium in
Germaniam transiit atque apud Bohemos, in Polonia ac
Livonia sedem fixit.” Leger says that the Waldenses
had, about the year 1210, Churches in Slavonia,
Sarmatia, and Livonia. (_Histoire Générale des Eglises
Evangéliques des Vallées du Piedmont ou Vaudois_, vol.
ii., pp. 336, 337; 1669.)

[11] M’Crie, _Hist. Ref. in Italy_, p. 4.

[12] Compare Antoine Monastier, _History of the Vaudois
Church_, p. 121 (Lond., 1848), with Alexis Muston,
_Israel of the Alps_, p. 8 (Lond., 1852).

[13] Monastier, _Hist. Vaudois Church_, p. 123.

[14] Monastier, p. 123.

[15] _Ibid._

[16] Monastier, p. 123.

[17] _Histoire Générale des Eglises Evangéliques des
Vallées de Piedmont, ou Vaudoises._ Par Jean Leger.
Part ii., pp. 6, 7. Leyden, 1669. Monastier, pp. 123,
124.

[18] The bull is given in full in Leger, who also says
that he had made a faithful copy of it, and lodged
it with other documents in the University Library of
Cambridge. (_Hist. Gén. des Eglises Vaud._, part ii.,
pp. 7-15.)

[19] Muston, _Israel of the Alps_, p. 10.

[20] Leger, livr. ii., p. 7.

[21] Leger, livr. ii., p. 26

[22] Monastier, p. 128.

[23] Muston, p. 20.

[24] Muston, part ii., p. 234.

[25] Monastier, p. 129.

[26] Monastier, p. 130.

[27] Monastier, pp. 133-4.

[28] Monastier, p. 134.

[29] The Author was shown this pool when he visited the
chasm. None of the Waldensian valleys is better
illustrated by the sad, yet glorious, scenes of their
martyrdom than this Valley of Angrogna. Every rock in
it has its story. As you pass through it you are shown
the spot where young children were dashed against the
stones--the spot where men and women, stripped naked,
were rolled up as balls, and precipitated down the
mountain, and where, caught by the stump of tree,
or projecting angle of rock, they hung transfixed,
enduring for days the agony of a living death. You are
shown the entrance of caves, into which some hundreds
of the Vaudois having fled, their enemies, lighting a
fire at the mouth of their hiding place, ruthlessly
killed them all. Time would fail to tell even a tithe
of what has been done and suffered in this famous pass.

[30] Muston, p. 11.

[31] Leger, livr. ii., p. 26.

[32] _Ibid._

[33] Leger and Gilles say that it was Philip VII. who put
an end to this war. Monastier says they “are mistaken,
for this prince was then in France, and did not begin
to reign till 1496.” This peace was granted in 1489.

[34] Monastier, _Hist. of the Vaudois_, p. 138.

[35] Monastier, _Hist. of the Vaudois_, p. 138.

[36] Gilles, p. 30. Monastier, p. 141.

[37] Ruchat, tom. iii., pp. 176, 557.

[38] _Hist. of the Vaud._, p. 146.

[39] It is entitled, says Leger, “_A Brief Confession of
Faith made by the Pastors and Heads of Families of
the Valleys of Piedmont_.” “It is preserved,” he
adds, “with other documents, in the Library of the
University of Cambridge.” (_Hist. des Vaud._, livr.
i., p. 95.)

[40] Gilles, p. 40. Monastier, p. 146.

[41] George Morel states, in his _Memoirs_, that at this
time there were more than 800,000 persons of the
religion of the Vaudois. (Leger, _Hist. des Vaudois_,
livr. ii., p. 27.) He includes, of course, in this
estimate the Vaudois in the Valleys, on the plain of
Piedmont, in Naples and Calabria, in the South of
France, and in the countries of Germany.

[42] Leger, livr. ii., p. 27.

[43] Monastier, p. 153.

[44] Leger, livr. ii., p. 29.

[45] Leger, livr. ii., p. 29. Monastier, p. 168,

[46] Leger, livr. ii., p. 28.

[47] Muston, _Israel of the Alps_, chap. 8.

[48] Leger, livr. ii., p. 29.

[49] Monastier, chap. 19, p. 172. Muston, chap. 10., p. 52.

[50] Leger, livr. ii., p. 29.

[51] “First, we do protest before the Almighty and All-just
God, before whose tribunal we must all one day appear,
that we intend to live and die in the holy faith,
piety, and religion of our Lord Jesus Christ, and
that we do abhor all heresies that have been, and
are, condemned by the Word of God. We do embrace the
most holy doctrine of the prophets and apostles, as
likewise of the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds; we do
subscribe to the four Councils, and to all the ancient
Fathers, in all such things as are not repugnant to
the analogy of faith.” (Leger, livr. ii., pp. 30-1.)

[52] See in Leger (livr. ii., pp. 30-1) the petition of the
Vaudois presented “Au Sérènissime et très-Puissant
Prince, Philibert Emmanuel, Duc de Savoye, Prince de
Piémont, nôtre très-Clement Seigneur” (To the Serene
and most Mighty Prince, Philibert Emmanuel, Duke of
Savoy, Prince of Piedmont, our most Gracious Lord).

[53] See in Leger (livr. ii., p. 32), “A la très-Vertueuse
et très-Excellente Dame, Madame Marguerite de France,
Duchesse de Savoye et de Berry”--“the petition of
her poor and humble subjects, the inhabitants of the
Valleys of Lucerna and Angrogna, and Perosa and San
Martino, and all those of the plain who call purely
upon the name of the Lord Jesus.”

[54] Muston, p. 68.

[55] Muston, p. 72.

[56] Muston, p. 69. Monastier, p. 178.

[57] Muston, p. 70. Monastier, pp. 176-7.

[58] Muston, p. 71. Monastier, pp. 177-8.

[59] Muston, p. 72. Monastier, p. 182.

[60] Letter of Scipio Lentullus, Pastor of San Giovanni.
(Leger, _Hist. des Eglises Vaud._, livr. ii., p. 35.)

[61] So says the Pastor of Giovanni, Scipio Lentullus, in
the letter already referred to. (Leger, livr. ii., p.
35.)

[62] Letter of Scipio Lentullus. (Leger, livr. ii., p. 35.)
Muston, pp. 73-4.

[63] Leger, livr. ii., p. 35. Monastier, pp. 184-5.

[64] Leger, livr. ii., p. 35.

[65] Muston, p. 77. Monastier, pp. 186-7.

[66] Muston, p. 78.

[67] Monastier, p. 188. Muston, p. 78.

[68] Muston, pp. 78-9.

[69] Monastier, p. 190. Muston, p. 80.

[70] Monastier, p. 191.

[71] Leger, part ii., p. 36. Gilles, chap. 25.

[72] _Ibid._, part ii., p. 37.

[73] Muston, p. 83.

[74] _Ibid._ Monastier, p. 194.

[75] Leger, part ii., p. 37. Muston, p. 85.

[76] The Articles of Capitulation are given in full in
Leger, part ii., pp. 38-40.

[77] Leger, part ii., p. 41.

[78] Muston, p. 37.

[79] Leger, part ii., p. 333.

[80] M’Crie, _Italy_, pp. 7, 8.

[81] Muston, _Israel of the Alps_, p. 38.

[82] Perrin, _Histoire des Vaudois_, p. 197. Monastier, pp.
203-4.

[83] Muston, p. 38. Monastier and M’Crie say that the
application for a pastor was made to Geneva, and
that Paschale set out for Calabria, accompanied by
another minister and two schoolmasters. It is probable
that the application was made to Geneva through the
intermediation of the home Church.

[84] M’Crie, p. 324.

[85] Monastier, p. 205.

[86] M’Crie, p. 325.

[87] M’Crie, pp. 325-7.

[88] _Ibid._, pp. 326-7.

[89] Leger, part ii., p. 333. M’Crie, p. 303. Muston, p. 41.

[90] Monastier, p. 206.

[91] M’Crie, p. 304.

[92] Pantaleon, _Rerum in Eccles. Gest. Hist._, _ff._
337-8. De Porta, tom. ii., pp. 309, 312--_ex_ M’Crie,
pp. 305-6.

[93] Crespin, _Hist. des Martyrs_, pp. 506-16. Leger, part
i., p. 204, and part ii., p. 335.

[94] _Sextus Propertius_ (Cranstoun’s translation), p. 119.

[95] Muston, chap. 16. Monastier, chap. 21.

[96] See the letter in full in Leger, part i., pp. 41-5.

[97] Muston, p. 98.

[98] Monastier, p. 222.

[99] Muston, p. 111.

[100] Monastier, p. 241.

[101] Muston, pp. 112-3. Antoine Leger was uncle of Leger
the historian. He had been tutor for many years in the
family of the Ambassador of Holland at Constantinople.

[102] Monastier, chap. 18. Muston pp. 242-3.

[103] Muston, p. 126.

[104] Muston, p. 129.

[105] Leger, part ii., chap. 6, pp. 72-3.

[106] Muston, p. 130.

[107] Leger, part ii., chap. 8, p. 94.

[108] Monastier, p. 265.

[109] Leger, part ii., pp. 95-6.

[110] _Ibid._, part iv., p. 108.

[111] Monastier, p. 267.

[112] Muston, p. 135.

[113] Leger, part ii., pp. 108-9.

[114] Leger, part ii., p. 110.

[115] So says Leger, who was an eye-witness of these
horrors.

[116] Monastier, p. 270.

[117] Leger, part ii., p. 113.

[118] Leger, part ii., p. 111.

[119] Leger, part ii., p. 112.

[120] The book is that from which we have so largely
quoted, entitled _Histoire Générale des Eglises
Evangéliques des Vallées de Piémont ou Vaudoises_.
Par Jean Leger, Pasteur et Modérateur des Eglises des
Vallées, et depuis la violence de la Persécution,
appelé à l’Eglise Wallonne de Leyde. A. Leyde, 1669.

[121] Leger, part ii., p. 113.

[122] The sum collected in England was, in round
numbers, £38,000. Of this, £16,000 was invested,
on the security of the State, to pension pastors,
schoolmasters, and students in the Valleys. This
latter sum was appropriated by Charles II., on the
pretext that he was not bound to implement the
engagements of a usurper.

[123] _The History of the Evangelical Churches of the
Valleys of Piedmont_: containing a most exact
Geographical Description of the place, and a faithful
Account of the Doctrine, Life, and Persecutions of the
ancient Inhabitants, together with a most naked and
punctual Relation of the late bloody Massacre, 1655.
By Samuel Morland, Esq., His Highness’ Commissioner
Extraordinary for the Affairs of the said Valleys.
London, 1658.

[124] Leger, part ii., chap. 11, p. 186.

[125] Leger, part ii., pp. 186-7.

[126] Leger, part ii., p. 187. Muston, pp. 146-7.

[127] Leger, part ii., p. 188. Muston, pp. 148-9.

[128] Leger, part ii., p. 189. Monastier, p. 277.

[129] Leger, part ii., p. 189.

[130] Leger, part ii., p. 275.

[131] Monastier, p. 311.

[132] Monastier, p. 317. Muston, p. 199.

[133] Muston, p. 200.

[134] Muston, p. 202.

[135] Monastier, p. 320.

[136] Monastier, p. 336.

[137] So named by the author of the _Rentrée_, from the
village at its foot, but which without doubt, says
Monastier (p. 349), “is either the Col Joli (7,240
feet high) or the Col de la Fénêtre, or Portetta, as
it was named to Mr. Brockedon, who has visited these
countries, and followed the same road as the Vaudois.”

[138] Monastier, p. 352.

[139] Monastier, p. 356.

[140] Monastier, pp. 364-5.

[141] The Author was conducted over the ground, and had all
the memorials of the siege pointed out to him by two
most trustworthy and intelligent guides--M. Turin,
then Pastor of Macel, whose ancestors had figured in
the “Glorious Return;” and the late M. Tron, Syndic
of the Commune. The ancestors of M. Tron had returned
with Henri Arnaud, and recovered their lands in the
Valley of San Martino, and here had the family of M.
Tron lived ever since, and the precise spots where the
more memorable events of the war had taken place had
been handed down from father to son.

[142] Monastier, pp. 369, 370.

[143] Cannon-balls are occasionally picked up in the
neighbourhood of the Balsiglia. In 1857 the Author was
shown one in the Presbytère of Pomaretto, which had
been dug up a little before.

[144] Monastier, p. 371.

[145] Monastier, p. 389. The Pope, Innocent XII.,
declared (19th August, 1694) the edict of the duke
re-establishing the Vaudois null and void, and
enjoined his inquisitors to pay no attention to it in
their pursuit of the heretics.

[146] Muston, pp. 220-1. Monastier, pp. 388-9.

[147] _Waldensian Researches_, by William Stephen Gilly,
M.A., Prebendary of Durham; p. 158; Lond., 1831.

[148] So deep was the previous ignorance respecting this
people, that Sharon Turner, speaking of the Waldenses
in his _History of England_, placed them on the shores
of Lake Leman, confounding the Valleys of the Vaudois
with the Canton de Vaud.

[149] The Author may be permitted to bear his personal
testimony to the labours of General Beckwith for the
Waldenses, and through them for the evangelisation of
Italy. On occasion of his first visit to the Valleys
in 1851, he passed a week mostly in the society of
the general, and had details from his own lips of
the methods he was pursuing for the elevation of the
Church of the Vaudois. All through the Valleys he was
revered as a father. His common appellation among them
was “The Benefactor of the Vaudois.”

[150] _General Beckwith: his Life and Labours_, &c. By J.
P. Meille, Pastor of the Waldensian Church at Turin.
P. 26. Lond., 1873.

[151] “Totius Italiæ lumen.”

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