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XIII, of France, and mother of Charles Emmanuel II, as Regent. It was during her regency that the Vaudois, lately depopulated by the plague, wasted by want, harassed by continued, partial, and individual persecutions, experienced something of the three scourges, from which David was required to select one,— famine, pestilence, or to flee before the enemy; and what they suffered from the latter would enable them to appreciate his wisdom in trusting in God's mercy, when he said, "Let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercies are great; and let me not fall into the hand of man." They were suddenly assailed by that barbarous inroad of perfidy and cruelty under the Marquis di Piannezza, which called forth the indignant remonstrance of all Protestant Europe, and which is especially made known to us by the heartstirring sonnet of our own immortal Bard.

It was in the year 1650, they heard to their dismay, that a Council for the propagation of faith and the extirpation of heresy, after the model of that of Rome, was established at Turin. To render it more effective, it had a male and female department; the Archbishop was at the head of the former, and the Marchioness di Piannezza of the latter. The Council commenced its operations by sending spies and missionaries into the valleys, to sow dissentions among the inhabitants; to summon the heads

of the people to Turin under vexatious charges; to bring about marriages between the Vaudois and Roman Catholics, in which case the children were required to be brought up in the Roman Catholic faith. However, as all these intrigues effected but little, a plan was in agitation to establish a number of Irish in the valleys, who had been driven from Ireland by Cromwell for their imitation of the St. Bartholomew massacre on the Protestant inhabitants. An order was issued in the winter of 1654, by Gastaldo, auditor of Lucerne, commanding the Vaudois of eight parishes, including St. Jean and La Tour, to abandon their homes within three days, or receive the Mass, under penalty of death. Deputies were sent to Turin to endeavour to obtain a mitigation of this dreadful order; and they were detained by bootless delays till the sixteenth of April, when they were made aware that the Marquis of Piannezza was already with his forces at Lucerne. On the following day he entered the valleys with an army of the Duke's, composed of 15,000 men, four French regiments, one German corps, and 1,200 Irish, (to the last of whom it was said the country had been promised,) with the ostensible view of carrying the order of Gastaldo into effect; and he commenced ravaging the parishes of St. Jean and La Tour. The Marquis then attacked those residing beyond the prescribed limits; but meet

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ing with resistance he did not expect, he had recourse to deceit and treachery. He protested he only wished to carry the order of Gastaldo into effect; and that those who were not included in that order should remain unmolested, if they would allow, in token of obedience, a few troops to be quartered in their territory for two or three days. No sooner had the confiding inhabitants acceded to these proposals, than the troops seized the points which commanded the various villages, and the whole army forming different divisions, marched against Angrogna, Villar, and Bobbi, and upon the lofty post of the Pra del Tor, the bulwark of the valleys. The inhabitants now found that they had been duped by a treacherous enemy, and fled towards the positions which still remained to them. Many, however, were induced by specious promises to return again to their homes; when on the twenty-fourth of April, a signal was given from the hill near La Tour for a general massacre. It commenced simultaneously on all the different points, and neither age nor sex were spared.

It is not my intention to dwell on the atrocities which were then perpetrated, or to shock your sensibility with details of the fiendish cruelty which probably exceeded any thing mentioned in history. Happy were those who met with a speedy death, during the first onset of

I

the soldiers. The tortures practised on the unhappy captives are illustrated, by both Leger and Morland, in six and twenty different engravings, each of which represents a new mode of death. Truly was "Babylon" now "made drunk with the blood of the saints!"

Let us take up the sympathizing and indignant language of Milton, who thus apostrophizes an avenging God:

"Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold:
E'en them, who kept thy truth so pure of old,

When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones,
Forget not; in thy book record their groans,
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold
Slain by the bloody Piemontese, 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
An hundred fold, who having learnt thy way
Early may fly the Babylonian woe!"*

This retribution was not long in overtaking many of the murderers; for the Vaudois, though broken, were not crushed, and false promises and treachery could avail no longer. The first successful exploits in opposition to these bloodhounds, were performed by the little community of Rora, composed only of twenty-five families. Their Signor, the Count Cristovel, was sent

* Sonnet xviii.

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against them with 4 or 500 soldiers; but their captain, the heroic Janavel, descried the troops from a distance, and with only seven companions took up a most advantageous position, and suddenly attacked them with such resolution and skill, that, believing they were opposed to a great number of peasantry, the enemy fled in disorder, with a loss of not less than sixty of their number. We must bear in mind that Rora is one of the most elevated hamlets; and the natural strength of their positions was the great cause (humanly speaking) of these and other wonderful exploits of the Vaudois.

Dr. Henderson, who has given a very interesting account of his visit to the valleys in 1844, thus describes the approach to Rora:-"I had almost literally to clamber from rock to rock, for the natural staircase can scarcely be regarded in any other light. The only proofs of animal agency having been at work, consist in the zigzag windings which lead from one shelf to another; and originally owe their formation to the sagacity of the mule and the ass, rather than to any effort put forth by man. The rocks covered with trees that overhung the path, seemed at times to bid defiance to all further approach. Such are the natural fortifications of Rora, to which it has more than once been indebted for its security in the time of persecution." The Marquis again had recourse to treachery, send