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.