10.9.2010 VAUDOIS VII - THE PIEDMONTESE EASTER, OR THE MASSACRES OF 1655

taken from 'the israel of the alps', history of the waldenses by alexis muston, vol. 1
337.1...'all the means hitherto employed to destroy the vaudois having proved insufficient, others were devised; for the avowed object of the Propaganda, officially established at turin (by the roman church), and extended over the whole of piedmont, was the extirpation of heretics. whatever might be the reasons to which recourse was had for the institution or justification of the violent proceedings now to be considered, this avowed object was their real cause.

charles emmanuel II was a prince of much clemency and goodness and with much that was noble in his character. the vau allowed themselves to be drawn into unaccustomed murmurings and even reprehensible doings, under the excitement of a system of incessant provocations and wrongs to which they were subjected unknown to their sovereign, by the jesuits, the capuchins and the Propaganda. but again it must be said, that neither the intentions of the duke, nor the doings of the vau, were the cause of the massacres of 1655. the spirit of popery alone excited that storm. but how was the duke induced to favour it?

it has already been said, that the council de propaganda fide et extirpandis haereticis was composed of the highest personages of the court. its meetings were held in the palace of the archbishop of turin. other councils established in the provinces sent in their reports to it. these reports were invariably hostile to the vau. their immemorial residence at saint john, at briqueras, at bubiano and at campillon, was represented as if they had made new encroachments; their appeals to their ancient privileges as acts of resistance to the recent decrees of gastaldo, himself a member of this council. other reports, founded upon these, were presented to the sovereign by ministers who also formed part of this council of extirpation and of death.

it is a fact honourable to the duke of savoy, that he did not consent at that time to adopt any new measure more severe than preceding ones, but confined himself solely to giving gastaldo orders that the edict of 15th may, 1650, should be put into execution-an edict which indeed had, since that time, been suspended and legally abrogated by late ratifications of the ancient privileges, but which was still valid as to certain reserved articles, and was far exceeded by the pressing and almost universal demands of the public fanaticism, then clamouring for the complete annihilation of the vau. as to the military operations which followed, the duke had the responsibility of them without directing them and we shall soon also see by what combinations of insidious and perfidious intrigues both the inhabitants of the valleys and the duke of savoy were deceived. the former fell by thousands in a frightful carnage; the latter was rejected by indignant europe from amongst the number of civilized princes; and the cause of all this was rome-alone remaining barbarous, persecuting and savage, in the midst of civilization.

gastaldo, the duke's special lieutenant in the vau valleys, having been ordered to see that the people complied with the requirements of the edict of 15th may, 1650, issued, on the 25th of january, 1655, an edict, bearing that all protestant heads of families settled in the communes of lucerna and lucernette, fenil and campillon, bubiano and briqueras, st. segont, st. john and la tour, should remove to the communes of bobi, villar, angrogna and rora-the only communes of the valley in which his royal highness was disposed to tolerate their religion-and that within the space of three days, under pain of death and confiscation of goods. moreover, they were bound to sell their lands within the twenty days following, at least unless they would consent to become catholics. finally, it was ordained that the catholic worship should be celebrated in all the protestant communes, whilst the vau were prohibited from offering any molestation; and the penalty of death was denounced against any one who should dissuade a protestant from becoming a catholic. all these provisions show plainly enough in what spirit and under what influence this edict was conceived.

gastaldo, however, who was authorized by his instructions to banish all the vau families resident within the prohibited communes, confined himself to demanding, in the first instance, the removal of their heads. the vau obeyed. all the heads of families against whom these requirements were directed retired into the higher parts of the valley. a petition was addressed to the sovereign. he seemed disposed to clemency. the count christopher of lucerna interceded for the oppressed people.
'i would willingly allow them to reside at st. john and at la tour..if they, on their part, would consent to retire from the other localities nearer to the plain, for their adversaries will not leave me in peace without having obtained some satisfaction.

meanwhile, the propaganda bestirred itself. in place of the duke's being told that the vau were perfectly ready to obey, he was told that they were in a state of rebellion, and had already assassinated the priest of fenil. their deputies arrived at turin, and we not received. the court remitted them to the council of the propaganda, saying that they would have to deal with it. this council likewise refused to receive them on account of their being protestants and ordained them to have their petition presented by a popish procurator. they chose one named gibelino, who was introduced into the hall of deliberation. the council was sitting, the archbishop  presiding; and the humble procurator of the vau was obliged to present their petition on his knees. the reply of the council was, that they must send other deputies, authorized to make suitable engagements in name of all the people.

these new representatives arrived at turin on the 12th of february, but their mandate bore that they should subscribe nothing contrary to the concessions or priileges of their constituents. they wer

moderation of language sometimes proceeds from hardness of heart. perverse sentiments permit a man to be more master of himsef than generous sentiments do. it will soon appear that these observations are not incorrect in reference to the marquis of pianesse, whose conduct has suggested them. he had, moreover, studied in the school of jesuitism and its atrocities sanctioned the course which he pursued-perfidious but polished-cruel but devout-shrinking from no means of attaining an object. ..

at last, in the beginning of april, 1655, a third vau deputation, composed of two deputies only, repaired to turin, furnished with a general mandate by which
they were authorized to
accept all the conditions which it might please his royal highness to impose,
provided always that their liberty of conscience was untouched;
and, in the event of its being menaced,
they wer to demand,
in name of all their brethren,
permission to retire from the dominions of his royal highness.

this was to state the question courageously and unambiguously.
it did not shrink from its difficulties.
the answer must needs be decisive.

the marquis of pianesse was commissioned to make it. after some delays he fixed a day for an audience. it was the 17th of april, 1655.
the deputies proceeded  to the palace;
they were told to come back at a later hour.
they came back;
his excellency was not yet visible.
they presented themselves a third time,
and were put off a day or two.
'what can be the meaning of this? said the deputies, full of impatience and anxiety.
they were but too soon informed.

on the evening previous to the day which had been assigned to them for an audience, namely, on the 16th of april, at nightfall the marquis of pianesse had quitted turin to join the armed force which awaited him on the road to the vau valleys; and next day, whilst the commissioners, men of candour and integrity, were confidently waiting to see him at his mansion, pianesse, in whom jesuitism
(note: the practice of casuistry, equivocation and craft)
had extinguished at once nobility of blood and the honor of the soldier, was already on the verge of their country, at the head of troops intended for the extermination of their people.

these troops were numerous. besides those which were already quartered in the district, there was the regiment of grancey, commanded by the first captain, dupeitbourg, quartered at pignerol. there were also the regiment of the city, commanded by galeazzo; that of chablais, commanded by the prince of montafon and that of st. damian, commanded by an officer of that name. the marquis of pianesse had the general command of all the assembled forces.

on the 17th of april, he sent a messenger to la tour to require the vau to provide lodging and entertainment for 800 infantry, and 300 cavalry, whose cantonment in their commune had been appointed by his royal highness.
'how can his royal highness command us to find lodging for his soldiers, in a place where, by his last edict, we ourselves are prohibited from dwelling, replied the vau.
'then why are you here?, retorted the messenger.
'we are here on our business, said they,
but we have removed our residence to within the appointed limits.
the messenger therefore returned without having accomplished anything. towards evening, the marquis of pianesse, after having passed, without resistance, the line of briqueras, feni, campillon, bubiano, and st. john, from which the vau had retire, arrive under the walls of la tour with the regiments of the city and of st. damian.

it may readily be supposed that his concentration of troops upon the valleys,
the avowed designs of the propaganda,
the high position of those who were engaged in its course,
the general excitement of popular fanaticism,
the warnings of their friends and
the threats of their adversaries,
must have revealed to the vau, clearly enough, the hostile intentions entertained against them.
they know not, however, how far it was necessary for them to be upon their guard,
or how far they might trust to the good faith of their sovereign.
no official prosecution had been directed against them;
they had obeyed the edict of the 25th of january,
whilst they protested against it,
and had sent deputies for the purpose of obtaining its revocation;
and these commissioners were still at turin.
on the one hand the vau could not overlook the violent projects of the propaganda, but on the other there was room for doubt if the duke of savoy would become the instrument and accomplice of that body.

what were they to do?
they betook themselves to prayer;
they consulted their pastors;
they wrote to geneva;
the general voice recommended them to take measures of self-defence;
but uncertainty as to the future prevented the concerting of any plan.
they perceived that a storm was coming;
but could they foresee the extent of the calamities with which they were to be overwhelmed?
if they had foreseen them,
all hesitation would have disappeared,
and the vigour of an unanimous resistance would have proved itself equal to the maintenance of their despised rights.
but in indecision and ignorance-desirous of obeying the commands of their sovereign, which enjoined them to provide quarters for troops-made anxious, and with good reason, by seeing at the head of these troops, one of the leaders of the propaganda, who had vowed their destruction-neither daring to comply with confidence nor to resist with vigour, they took only half measures, insufficient on either view of the case. janavel alone had, in the month of february, raised a small company of resolute defenders, in the anticipation, which events too well justified, that the anterior measures already adopted were only the prelude to a terrible persecution. but he was then regarded by his compatriots as too exclusive and too violent.

it has just been stated that the marquis of pianesse had appeared on the 17th of april, at evening, under the walls of la tour. it was a saturday, there was fine moonlight-the whole army of the duke of savoy halted in the plain, which extends from les appiots to pra la fera and les eyrals. the commander in chief caused the vau to be summoned to provide quarters. they being only some 300 or 400 in the town, replied that
it was impossible for them to furnish quarters,
that no preparation had been made, and
that they requested time to reflect and to consider the matter.

delay was absolutely refused-
they were told that they must immediately receive the troops;
and , in case of refusal, the troops would seize by force the posts demanded.
hereupon the vau entrenched themselves behind bastions erected in haste.
the entrance of la tour, opposite to the bridge of angrogna, was closed with barricades.
this barrier arrested the enemy, and was thickly covered with defenders.
it was near ten oclock at night.
the marguis of pianesse caused the attack to be commenced,
the vau made a valiant resistance.
after three hours' fighting the assailants had still obtained no advantage.
but towards on oclock in the morning, count amadeus of lucerna, who knew the locality, put himself at the head of the regiment de villa, commanded by galeazzo;
and whilst the rest of the troops continued to give employment to the besieged, this regiment  turned the town on the side of the pelis,
ascended by the the meadows and gardens which extend upon that side,
and,following the steps of its guide, penetrated to the centre of la tour, in the street of les bruns, and assailed the defenders of the barricade in the rear.
the vau now abandoned the barricade, wheeled about, forced their way through the ranks of these new comers, who vainly pursued after them and retired to the heights.

about two oclock in the morning the catholics being victorious and masters of the place, repaired in a body to the church of the mission, sung the te deum laudamus and exclaimed on all hands,
hurrah for the holy roman church!
and hurrah for the holy faith!
and woe to the barbets! (this name of barbets, given in derision to the vau, is probably derived from that of their pastors, anciently called barbas.)
in this affair the vau had only three killed and a few wounded. about 5 oclock in the morning the marquis of pianesse arrived, with all his nobility, and took his quarters in the mission buildings.

it was then sunday morning-palm sunday, the beginning of holy week.the spirit of antichrist burned to signalize these christian festivals by a grand massacre of christians. on that same sunday, there3e3fore, immediately after mass, the catholic soldiers, conducted by mario, the commandant of bagnola, set out by way of worldly deversion, or by way of preparation for the approaching easter, to give chase to the heretics; that is to say, to kill, by shooting with their muskets, all the vau whom they met, hiding themselves in order to take them by surprise, and burning the houses whose owners they had but to flight or killed.

in the evening additional troops still arrived. on monday, the 19th, the army, according to leger's account, already consisted of nearly 15,000 men.  it was no longer possible to doubt that the old project of the extermination of the vau, so long cherished, matured and loudly avowed  by the more zealous representatives of the romish church, was at last to be put in execution. it was thus that popery prepared to celebrate the easter of 1655.

the vau, beholding from the heights of angrogna and le taillaret, the devastation and conflagration which were already spread over the plain, took measures of defence. they placed sentinels at the advanced points, and defensive parties at the most important passes. but they were ill armed and ill organized; besides they could not believe in the perfidies of which they became the victims.

on the morning after palm sunday (monday, the 19th of april 1655) the troops of the marquis of pianesse attacked these poor moutaineers, at once by the heights of la tour, saint john, angrogna, and briqueras. the vau contented themselves with defending their positions.
they were one against a hundred;
but a powerful aid sustained them-
their confidence in God.
all these attacks were repulsed:
the enemy could not drive them from one of their entrenchments. the campaign began, therefore, with a victory on their side. could they foresee that it was to terminate in such great calamities?

on tuessday, the 20th..only two attacks were made-the one directed against the vau of st. john, entrenched at castellus, the other against those of taillaret. both resulted, a second time, in the success of the vau. the first was repulsed, with great success, by captain jayer. the second was not less fatal to the assailants; for the vau lost only two men, in an action in which they killed fifty of their enemies. leger, who relates these particulars, was himself in that engagement.

the marquis of pianesse-seeing the considerable forces at his disposal give way as before a superior force in attacking these advantageous and well guarded posts.though it necessary to have recourse to means which but too often proved successful against the vau, because they were ingnorant of the way of using them; but which have never been more skillfully employed than in the church of rome, and have contributed to it a part of its poser. he had recourse to perfidy. on the morning of the following day..the 21st, two hours before sunrise, he sent to all the entrenchments of the vau, clarions and heralds, to inform them that he was ready to receive deputies, in order to treat of an accommodation, in name of his royal highness the duke of savoy.

the deputies of all the communes of the valley repaired to his presence;
he welcomed them graciously,
conversed with them till mid day,
gave them an excellent dinner,
testified the best disposition towards the vau, and
assured them that it had never been his intention to disquiet them in any way.
gastaldo's edict, he added (that of the 25th of jan.), had reference only to those dwelling in the low country, who must, indeed, be contented to return to the mountains; but as to the communes of the upper valleys they had positively nothing to fear.
he seemed much vexed at the excesseds which his soldiers had already committed;
laaid the blame upon the difficulty of causing discipline to be observed by so great a number of troops; expressed his fear of not being able to restrain them and his desire to send them away; and
spole of the embarrassment which their number caused him, and
of the advantage which there would be in scattering them.
'you may render a service to your country and to me, he added in conclusion, by engaging your respective communes, each to receive and to lodge only one of the regiments which have been sent hither.  by thus receiving them without resistance, not only will the localities which shall receive them be secure from all violence, but it may be also that the prince, touched with this proof of conficence, will display less rigour in the exclusion pronounced against the towns of the plain.

the deputies promised to exert themselves, as much as they could, in favour of so good a design. leger and janavel opposed to it a vain but inflexible resistance. the communes consented to receive the soldiers of the marquis of pianesse; and that very evening they took possession of all the passes, installed themselves in all the hamlets; and, in spite of the formal order to conduct themselves with prudence, did not even wait until next day without massacring a few heretics.

it was this which betrayed them. in their eagerness to obtain possession of the strongest positions of our mountains, whilst two regiments pursued the ordinary route of villar and bobi, and a third that of angrogna, a special detachment began to ascend the hills of cham la rama and of coste roussine, in order to arrive sooner at pra du tour. this detachment, on its way, set fire to the scattered houses of le taillaret; the smoke was seen and the cries of the fugitives and shouts of the persecutors were heard from the colette of rora, on which a fire was immediately kindled as a signal of distress. it was immediately perceived from all the heights of angrogna, whicher the greater part of the refugees from the plain had retired, who had been compelled to quit bubiano, campillon, etc, in consequence of the edict of gastaldo of 25th feb.  the people of angrogna themselves, also, soon saw the rapid march of the invading detachment, which, directing its course towards the pra du tour, triumphantly descended by the slope of the mountain. ther soon appeared, besides, near the gates of angrogna and the pausa dei morts, the regiment of grancey, which alone had been expected. then, perceiving the treachery, they kindled in their turn their signal of distress, and the cries-
'to perouse! to perouse! to the vachere!
every one save himself!
there are the traitors!
God help us!
let us fly!-
were raised, and ran along, spreading like an electric flame over the vast flank of these mountains, from which the men, in a condition to carry arms, retired in haste to the heights of the vachere and thence by the valley of pramol, to those of perouse and pragela, which then appertained to france.

on the side of bobi the alarm was less prompt, for the regiments of bagnola and petitbourg (of which the former was to be quartered at bobi and the latter at le villar) arrived peaceably by the ordinary road. apprehension was excited when the soldiers, instead of remaining at bobi, were seenato ascend to sarcena and ville neuve; victims had already been slaughtered as they came, but the knowledge of these isolated murders could not spread and the officers everywhere manifested an intention to maintain a severe discipline amongst their troops.

even at angrogna, where they found only some women, old men and children-feeble guardians of their deserted houses-they at first abstained from any excess. de pianesse contented himself with taking up his position there, and giving rest to his troops, without seeming to think of remaining in the place more than two or three days, according to the terms of his agreement with the deputioes. thus seeking to gain the confidence of the vau women and children, these new comers persuaded them to recall their husbands and brothers who had taken flight, protesting that no harm would be done to them. some of them came back, to their cost...

from the head of the valley downwards, in villages and hamlets, on the highways and rocks, the propaganda, by the help of the bad faith which its church authorizes, had now introduced its soldiers or posted its assassins. accordingly the vaeil was raised. on saturday, easter eve (24th april, 1655), at four oclock in the morning, the signal for a general massacre of the va was given to these..troops, from the summit of the castle of la tour.

the soldiers, appized beforehand, had risen early; they were fresh and active; they had slept under the roofs of those whose throats they were to cut. those whom the vau had received, lodged and fed with such confidence, who ought to have protected them were now at the same moment throughout the whole valley, and with the same fanaticism, transformed into base assassins, rome carries off the palm for conversins of this kind.

and now, how can we give an idea of the horrors which ensued?
it would be necessary to be able, with one glance, to include at once the whole country,
to penetrate into all apartments,
to be present at all executions,
to distinguish in this vast voice of anguish and desolation,
each particular cry of a heart or of a living being torn in pieces.
little children, leger says, were torn from the arms of their mothers,
dashed against the rocks, and
cast carelessly away.
the sick or the aged,
both men and women,
were either burned in their houses,
or hacked in pieces;
or mutilated,
half mudered, and
flayed alive,
they were exposed in a dying state to the heat of the sun,
or to flames,
or to ferocious beasts;
others were tied,
in a state of nakedness,
into the form of balls,
the head bettween the laegs,
and in this state were rolled down the precipices.
some of them,
torn and bruised by the rocks from which they had rebounded,
remained suspended from some projecting rock
or the branch of some tree,
and still groaned forty eight hours afterwards.
women and young girls were violated,
empaled,
set up naked upon pikes at the corners of the roads,
buried alive,
roasted upon lances,
and cut in pieces by these soldiers of the faith
as by cannibals:
then, after the massacre, the children which had survived it, and were found wandering in the woods,
were carried away;
or children were forcibly taken from what remained of their afflicted family,
to be conveyed into the dwellings of these butchers,
and into monasteries,,
like lambs taken to the slaughter house;
and finally, the massacre and the removeal of children were succeeded by conflagration
the monks, the propagandists, and the zealous catholics running from house to house with resinous torches or incendiary projectiles and ravaging, in the midst of the fires, these villages now filled with corpeses.

'two of the most infuriated of these fire raisers, says a work of the period,
were a priest and a monk of the order of st francis, who marched about, escorted by troops; and if there was any hidden cottage which hd not fallen into their hands on the firs occasion, they might be seen repassing on the morrow; and to finish their work the priest had only to discharge his carabine, loaded with an artificial fire, which stuck to the walls.
let the reader imagine these mad wretches running about amongst the burning houses, urging on the carnage and destruction, and these mountains resounding with the fall of ruins, of avalanches, of rocks and of living bodies cast down the precipices!

such was the frightful, unparalleled, unprecedented scene which was then presented in these regions of despair.
'and let it not be said, adds the historian leger,
that i exaggerate things upon account of the persecutions which i myself personally have endured; i have travelled from one neighborhookd to another to collect the authentic testimonies of the survivors, who deponed what things they had seen before two notaries who accompanied me.
in some places fathers had seen their children town through the midst by strength of men's arms,
or cut through with swaords;
in other places mothers had seen their daughters forced or murdered in their presence.
doughters had witnessed the mutilation of the living bodies of their fathers;
brothers had seen the mouths of their brothers filled with powder,
to which the persecutors set fire,
making the head fly in pieces;
pregnant women had been ripped up,
and the fruit of their womb had been seen taken living from their bowels.
what shall i say?
o my God! the pen falls from my hands.
dead bodies lay scattered about or were planted upon stakes;
portions of children,
torn in quarters,
had been flung into the middle of the road;
brains were plastered against the rocks;
trunks of human bodies were to be seen destitute of arms and limbs,
or bodies were to be seen destitute of arms and limbs,
or bodies half flayed,
or with the eyes torn out of the head,
or the nails torn off the toes;
others were fastened to trees with the chest opened,
and without heart or lungs;
here might be seen bodies of women still more horribly mutilated;
there graves scarcely fille up,
where the earth still seemed to give forth the groans of the unhappy victims who had been buried alive;
everywhere misery, terror, desolation, and death!
these are the things which i can tell!

the universal destruction of the vau houses by fire followed the massacre of their inhabitants.
in many hamlets, the witness of the martyrs proceeds, not one single cottage remained standing, so that the beautiful valley of lucerna then presented only the aspect of a burning furnace, where cries, which became more and more unfrequent, attested that a people had lived!

leger adds after this a long series of notarial depositions, giving the particulars of martyrdoms of which there had been eywitnesses, the horrors which were committed in the face of the sun, the names of the victims, and the vauntings of their butchers. i shall not copy thhe representation of these frightful scenes. why shoud we stay to contemplate individual maryrdoms when we see an entire people suffer martyrdom at once?

all these noble and courageous persons, thus put to dath, migh have saved their lieve by abjuring their religion; and the torments inflicted upon many of them were still prolonged in prison without making them yield. then years, twenty years afterwards, there were still in the galleys of the sovereign, galley slaves who were martyrs. in the dugeons of villefanche and of turin there were forgotten victims whose tortures, firmness and joyful death, heaven alone could know.

however, there were also numerous abjurations in the vau valleys. originating, as they did, under the impression of terror and despair, every one can appreciate their value. a deed obtained by violence is considered as null in law. will it be so before the supreme tribunal? it is not for us to resolve that question, but rather to render homage to those who have persevered with unshaken fidenlity in the manifestation of their faith.

poor michelin of bobi (whose son was then pastor at angrogna), after being treated in a way the most ignominious and painful that can be imagined, having survived these sufferings, was cast into the prisons of turin. all means possible were employed to make him abjure, but all without success. one day there descended into his dungeon tow ministers of his own church, the one named peter gros, and the other francis aghit. did they come to encourage him or to partake his sufferings? ...they came, driven on by the hideous hand of popery, to persuade the prisoner also to follow their example, and to abjure his religion. the surprise which poor michelin felt was so cruel, the shock so great, and the wound so deep, that it caused his death. these two pastors afterwards returned to the protestant church, but the old man of bobi had not made his religion a garment...he had made it his life..

other prisoners also died, rather than abjure. james and david prins of le villar, of the hamlet of la baudena, were committed to the prisons of lucerna; and there, says leger, they having resisted all solicitations to apostasy, with which they were plied by the monks
'their arms were flayed from the shoulder to the elbow, the skin being cut into stripes, which were left attached by the upper end and which thus rested loosely on the quick flesh; the rest of the arm was flayed in the same manner, from the elbow to the hands and their thighs down to the knee, as also their legs, from where the garter is tied to the ancle; and in this state they were left to die.
these stripes of skin, to remain hanging in this way, must have been torn off and raised from the flesh from their lower extremity upwards...

'i cannot refrain from remarking here, adds the historian, that there were six brothers of these princes, and that they had married six sisters, and all of them had numbers of children and that they lived together without having ever made any division of their property and without the slightest discord having ever been observed in that family. it was composed of more than forty persons, each of whom had his own department of labour; some in the work of the vineyards and cultivation of the fields-others in the care of the meadows, or in that of the flocks. the eldest of the brothers and his wife, who was also the eldest of the sisters, were like the father and mother of the whole family.
yet these patriarchal scenes,so worthy of respect, so beautiful, so simple, and so christian...(were destroyed)...

it was from the steeple of a catholic church that the signal of st. bartholemew's day was given
(note: a massacre of over 3000 huguenots (a member of the reformed or calvinistic communion of france in the 16th and 17th centuries) in paris, instigated by catherine demedicis and begun on st. bartholomews's) day, august 24, 1572, which resulted in up to 70,000 huguenots' deaths)

it was from the minsters
(a church actually or originally connected with a monastic establishment: any large or important church, as a cathedral)
of palermo that the sicilian vespers
(a general massacre of the french in sicily by the local population, begun at the sound of the vesper bell on easter monday, 1282) sounded;
it was from an edifice which bore the name of the virgin mary
(the fort of la tour was named the fort of saint mary)
that the signal was given for the piedmontese easter, the frightful celebration of which filled the vau valleys with tears and blood.

many persons, even amongst those who had been chosen to serve as the instruments of this work of extermination, reprobated it with horror and refused to have any part in it. of this number was the first captain of the regiment of grancey, m. du petitbourg, of whom we have already spoken. when he knew to what employment his troops were destined, he refused to conduct them to that disgraceful massacre, and resigned his command. the court of savoy having caused a sort of apology to be afterwards written, in which all the odium of these events was cast upon the leaders of the french army, the commandant, du petitbourg, published a declaration, by which he disclaimed all participation in the barbarities committed, and at the same time attested the reality of them in a manner which puts it beyond all doubt, and with extracts made without alteration from this document, i ..conclude this chapter.

'i, the seigneur du petitbourg, first captain of the regiment of grancey, in command of the regiment, having been ordered by the prince thomas to go to join the marquis of pianesse, and to receive orders from him at la tour,...i have been witness of many deeds of great violence and extreme cruelty, committed by the outlaws of piedmont
(notes: outlaws and volunteers of every condition had been invited to the standard. the irish assassins, driven from their native country by cromwell and received in piedmont, distinguished themselves by their savage ferocity in these cruel massacres.)
and by the soldiers, on persons of every age, sex and condition, whom i saw massacred, dismembered, hanged, burned, and violated; and of many frightful conflagrations...i saw the order that every one must be killed. as for his(the marquis of pianesse's) protesting that no one was ever touched except in battle, nor the least outrage committed against persons unable to bear arms, i maintain that this is not the case, and that i with my own eyes saw men murdered in cold blood and women, aged men, and little children miserably put to death...
so that i positively affirm and protest before God that none of the cruelties above mentioned were executed by my orders; on the contrary, seeing that i could do nothing to prevent them, i was constrained to retire, and to renounce the command of the regiment, that i might not be present at such wicked actions.-done at pignerol, this 27th of november, 1655.  signed, du petitbourg
(this declaration was made and signed before witnesses..)

i must now proceed to relate how the vau were enabled to recover from such an extermination. (see VAUDOIS VIII)  ezekiel saw the dry bones restored to life by the breath of the Lord and becoming a people; and if we see a people die who are animated by the Spirit of God, it can only be to obtain a life more perfect and more happy than this earthly life. but the vau were to recover possession of their country...