History of the Waldenses continued; including a narrative of the sanguinary proceedings of the Catholics against them in Poland.
A.D. 1658
- . . . For, by a false interpretation of every article [of the terms of the most cruel treaty], and by one subterfuge or other, their real meaning is eluded, and faith violated. Multitudes are ejected from their ancient possessions, many prohibited the exercise of their religion; new payments are exacted; a new fort is built for the purpose of placing a yoke upon them, out of which the soldiers sally forth, plundering and putting to death all they meet. Besides which, new forces are of late privately prepared against them, and those who profess the Romish religion among them are directed to withdraw for a time; so that everything seems again to portend the slaughtering of those miserable creatures who escaped the former butchery — a thing which I entreat and beseech your majesty that you will not suffer to be done; nor permit, I do not say any prince — for such enormous cruelty cannot enter into the heart of any prince, much less can it befall the tender age of that prince, or the mind of his mother, — what those most savage murderers, to exercise such a license of outrageous tyranny: Men who, while they profess themselves the servants of Christ, and followers of him who came into the world to save sinners, at the same time abuse his merciful name and meek precepts, to perpetrate the most cruel massacres on innocent persons. . . .
- Given at our court at Westminster, May 26, 1658.
The number of the Waldenses that fell in the massacre of Piedmont, in 1655, is estimated by contemporary writers at more than six thousand. In consequence, however, of the humane interference of our own and other protestant states, the residue, as hath been already stated, availed themselves of the treaty that was signed by the Duke of Savoy, on the 9th of August, 1655, to return to their dwellings. But their enemies were by no means satisfied with the measure of calamity which they had dealt out towards them. In the year 1668, they again came forward with fire and sword, and the atrocities of 1655 were once more in preparation to be reacted. . . The Waldenses, however, persevered, and though subject to innumerable contumelies and very injurious treatment, which the rancor of the council for propagating the faith was continually inflicting upon them, they bore up until the year 1672, when an event transpired that afforded them an opportunity, in a very signal manner, of evincing their loyalty, and of rendering essential services to their sovereign and their country.
A. D. 1672
In the year last mentioned [1672], a war broke out between the Duke of Savoy and the Genoese. The army of the former was commanded by the Marquis of Pionessa, son of the nobleman of that name who nearly thirty years before had taken so active a part in the massacre of the Waldenses. Under his management the war with Genoa proved most unpropitious, inasmuch that the affairs of the Duke of Savoy were brought to the brink of ruin, and, as Bishop Burnet assures us, the duke was so displeased with his conduct that he never would forgive him, but a little before his death actually enjoined it upon his mother never to employ him again! . . . It was in this critical juncture of their national affairs that the Waldenses forgetting all that was past, voluntarily came forward to enroll themselves in their sovereign’s cause, and entered into the war with such zeal and courage that they soon retrieved the fallen fortunes of their country and brought the war to a speedy and successful termination. Their loyal and disinterested behavior on this occasion, sensibly affected the mind of their prince. In scrupulous conformity with the tenor of these letters the duke continued, to the time of his death, which happened in 1675, to favor the Waldenses with tokens of his kindness; and, even after his decease, the duchess, his widow, followed his example, treating them with great gentleness and goodness; and, in the year 1679, she pledged herself, in a letter to the Swiss Cantons, dated 28th January, to maintain the Waldenses in the undisturbed exercise of their religious privileges. . .
AD 1686
On the 31st of January 1686, they were amazed at the publication of an order from the Duke of Savoy, forbidding his subjects the exercise of the protestant religion upon pain of death: the confiscation of their goods; the demolition of their churches; and the banishment of their pastors. All infants born from that time, were to be baptized and brought up in the Roman Catholic religion, under the penalty of their fathers being condemned to the galleys!
In short, the duke was too far engaged — the troops which he had raised, at a great expense, were already in motion — that the edict could not be revoked without wounding his royal highness’s reputation — that he was forced to see it executed for very cogent reasons, on which the ambassadors might make their own reflections. He added that the grants of 1655 and 1664 [two peace treaties], were a mere toleration, and that the Waldenses had no positive right to exercise their religious profession — that sovereigns do no injustice in refusing to allow more than one religion in a country, and that the Swiss Cantons themselves justified the conduct of his royal highness, by not enduring Roman Catholics among them.
And the elders of the church of Villeseche wrote to the ambassadors, who were yet at Turin upon the point of their departing, a letter dated the 20th of April, wherein they declared to them, that they would execute the edict, and entreated them, for that reason to procure for them a safe conduct, and time to provide for their retreat. One of the ambassadors took the pains to go to the camp to demand a safe conduct; but they denied it, under pretense that they had not desired it in time. It was always too soon or too late, and the time was never convenient to grant safe conducts. In the meantime the Duke of Savoy arrived at the camp some days after the publication of the edict, hoping probably he might strike terror into the Waldenses by his presence, and force them to accept of the conditions that he had imposed on them. He had made a review of his troops, and of those of France that were encamped on the plain at the foot of the Alps; his own army was composed of his family, all the cavalry and infantry, and the militia of Mondovi, of Barjes, of Bagnols, with a great number of foreigners.
. . . the French being enraged with what had passed before St. Germain, were not content merely to burn, ravish, and pillage, but they massacred without distinction of age or sex, with unparalleled fury all that could not escape their barbarous cruelty. . . . Catinat having ravaged all the country of Rioclaret after a most horrid manner, left some troops in the Valley of St. Martin, traversed with the body of his army the mountains that separate this valley from that of Perouse, and encamped without any opposition, in the community of Pramol in the Valley of Perouse; the soldiers notwithstanding put to the edge of the sword all that fell into their hands, without respect to women or children, to the aged or the sick. In the meantime the detachment that Melac commanded, having encamped one night on the eminences of the Valley of St. Martin, entered through divers passages into that valley, unknown to any but the inhabitants of the country. Wherever he passed he left the marks of an unheard of cruelty, and joined the main body of the army that was encamped at Pramol. I shall not here give an account of the atrocities that were exercised on these and many other occasions: it will be sufficient to relate, in the sequel, some instances whereby one may judge of the rest.
The army of the duke of Savoy having rendezvoused at the plain of St. John the 22d of April, was, the next day, divided into several bodies, to attack different entrenchments that the Waldenses had made in the Valleys of Lucerne and Angrogne. Don Gabriel . . . sent them a note written and signed with his own hand in the name of his royal highness, to this effect, “Lay down your arms immediately, and submit yourselves to his royal highness’s clemency; in so doing, assure yourselves that he will pardon you, and that your persons and those of your wives and children shall not be touched.” An assurance of this nature might give full satisfaction to the Waldenses for the security of their lives and liberties. For, besides that this promise was made in the name and on the part of the duke; on the other hand, though it had been made only by Don Gabriel and the general officers, it ought not to be less inviolable. The Waldenses, therefore, laid down their arms, relying on his promise, and the greatest part of them went and surrendered themselves to their enemies believing that they should be quickly released. But all those that yielded themselves into their hands, were made prisoners, and carried to the city of Lucerne, under pretense of leading them to his royal highness to make their submissions. Their enemies also seized all the posts that the Waldenses possessed in the community of Angrogne; they were not content to plunder, to pillage, and to burn the houses of these poor people, but they also caused a great number of the Waldenses of every age and sex to be put to the sword; they ravished abundance of women and virgins, and, in fine, committed actions so barbarous and brutal, that they are enough to strike horror into the minds of all that have any shame or sense of humanity left.
The Marquis de Parella, who commanded this body of the army. . . He assured them to this effect, on the word and honor of a gentleman, that if they would deliver themselves into his hands, their persons, and those of their wives and children, should be preserved harmless; that they might carry away with them whatever they chose, without fear of having any thing taken away from them. . . The Waldenses that were in the field and in the tower surrendered themselves upon the credit of these promises, but they were no better performed than the other: for their enemies were no sooner entered within the bounds of the tower, than not only all that belonged to the Waldenses was given up to the plunder of the soldiers and of the banditti of Mondovi, their mortal enemies, who enriched themselves with their spoils; but those poor people, the greatest part of whom consisted of old men, sick persons, and of women and children, were made prisoners, with some ministers who were among them, and all hurried along so violently, that those who, through age or infirmity, could not march as fast as the soldiers would have them, had their throats cut, or were flung headlong down precipices.
This officer, who was very well known to the Waldenses, repeated to them the assurances of peace, and caused the men to be put in one quarter, and the women and children in another. The French troops being arrived at the same time, told the men that they had orders to lead them to their own houses, and caused them to march four by four. These poor people being forced to leave their wives and their daughters exposed to the discretion of the soldiers, were conducted, not to their houses, as they had been told, but to Don Gabriel, who was encamped on the mountain of Vachiere, and he gave orders for them to be conveyed to Lucerne as prisoners of war! In the meantime the females were subjected to all the abominable treatment that the rage and lust of brutish soldiers could invent. Not satisfied with plundering them of their property, these barbarians violated the persons of both married women and maidens, in a manner that modesty forbids our relating; and several were put to death merely for resisting in defense of their honor.
But I must not prosecute this melancholy narrative more in detail, though what has now been laid before the reader can only be considered as a sample of the harvest. Dreadful as were the proceedings which took place in the massacre in 1655, as detailed in a former section of this work, they do not appear by any means to have surpassed in enormity the cruelties inflicted upon the Waldenses in 1686. Those who deny the existence of the devil and his agency in prompting the human race to destroy one another, if they would account for the infernal cruelties that are related to have been now inflicted by the Catholics on the poor Waldenses, simply on the principle of human depravity, must necessarily entertain a much worse opinion of human nature than the writer of these pages has yet been able to bring himself to adopt. He can, indeed, admit much that militates against the dignity of human nature in its lapsed state; but he can only account for the monstrous cruelties that were perpetrated on a class of his fellow-creatures, the most harmless and inoffensive that ever inhabited the earth, on the principle of the active agency of “the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience” — he who was “a murderer from the beginning” — that old serpent, which is the devil and Satan” — the grand adversary of God and man. The present was his hour and the power of darkness; but to return from this digression. The armies of France and Savoy, having inhumanely butchered a multitude of the Waldenses, committed more than twelve thousand of them to prison, and dispersed two thousand of their children among the Catholics; concluding that their work was accomplished, they caused all their property to be confiscated. And thus were the Valleys of Piedmont depopulated of their ancient inhabitants, and the light of the glorious gospel extinguished in a country where, for many preceding centuries, it had shone with resplendent luster.
But a bare recital of the miseries which the prisoners had suffered during their confinement, is sufficient to sicken the heart. More than ten thousand persons were distributed among fourteen prisons or castles in Piedmont. They were fed for months upon bread and water — the former, in which were often found lime, glass, and filth of various kinds, was so bad as scarcely to deserve the name; while the latter, in many instances brought from stagnant pools, was scarcely fit for the use of cattle. Their lodging was upon bricks or filthy straw. The prisons were so thronged that, during the heat of the summer months, they became intolerable, and deaths were daily taking place. Want of cleanliness necessarily engendered diseases among them — they became annoyed with vermin, which prevented their sleep either by night or day. Many women in child-bearing were lost for want of the care and comforts necessary to such a situation, and their infants shared the same fate.
Here, however, I think I may pause and draw this narrative towards a conclusion, which I shall do by offering a few obvious reflections on the whole of this interesting history. And the first thing that suggests itself is, that, however we may be inclined to blame the conduct of the Duke of Savoy, that of Louis XIV who compelled him to these sanguinary proceedings, is entitled to our chief condemnation. Referring to this final extirpation of the Waldenses from Piedmont, our countryman, Dr. Burnet, who was then making the tour of the Continent, has the following remarks, in a letter, which he dates from Turin, to a friend in this country: “I will not engage,” says he, “in a relation of this last affair of the Valleys of Piedmont; for I could not find particulars enough to give you that so distinctly as you might probably desire it. It was all over long before I came to Turin; but this I found, that all the court were ashamed of the matter; and they took pains with strangers, not without some affectation, to convince them that the duke was, with great difficulty, forced into it — that he was long pressed to it, by repeated entreaties, from the court of France — that he excused himself from complying therewith, representing to the court of France the constant fidelity of the Waldenses ever since the last edict of pacification, and their great industry, so that they were the most profitable subjects that the duke had, and that the body of men which they had given his father in the last war with Genoa, had done great service, for it had saved the whole army. But all these excuses were unavailable; for, the court of France having broken its own faith which had been pledged to heretics, and therein manifested how true a respect it paid to the council of Constance, now wished to engage other princes to follow this new pattern of fidelity which it had set the world. So the duke was not only pressed to extirpate the heretics of those Valleys, but he was also threatened that if he would not do it, the king would send his own troops to extirpate heresy, for he would not only not suffer it in his own kingdom, but he would even drive it out of his neighborhood. He who told me all this, knowing of what country I was, added, that probably the French monarch might very soon send similar messages to some others of his neighbors?
But what shall we say of the court of Rome, the great moving spring in all this machinery of complicated villainy: that “holy mother church,” which kept the conscience of Louis XIV and of the other crowned heads who, from time to time, obsequiously lent their aid to massacre the Waldenses? I trust I may be permitted, without arrogance, on this occasion, to adopt the language of an unknown writer, who reviewed the first edition of this history. “The narrative which we have been perusing,” said this liberal and enlightened critic, “leaves on the mind impressions of the utmost detestation for the spiritual tyranny exercised by the court of Rome. Providence never made use of so terrible a scourge to chastise mankind. No power ever outraged the interests of society, the principles of justice, and the claims of humanity, to the same extent. Never did the world behold such blasphemy, profligacy, and wantonness, as in the proceedings of this spiritual domination. It held the human mind in chains, visited with exemplary punishment every inroad on the domains of ignorance, and sunk nations into a state of stupidity and imbecility. Its prescriptions, massacres, and murders, and all the various forms which its cruelties assumed; the miseries which it heaped on the objects of its vengeance; its merciless treatment of them, and the grasp of its iron sway, seemed at one time to leave no room to hope for the liberation of the human race; and surely nothing can appear more hideous than this power in its true colors: it leaves the mind full of horror, at its cruelties.” In all this I have the happiness to agree; and though I have rarely ventured to express myself in terms so forcible as this writer has done, I have no hesitation of saying in the words of an apostle — “THIS WITNESS IS TRUE.”
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