We have now the agreeable task of recording the bounties of the United
Provinces, ever celebrated for their philanthropy. No sooner had they
received information of the disaster in the valleys, than they wrote
to the courts of England, France, and Turin, as well as to the Swiss
cantons, and deputed M. Van Ommeren, a deputy of the States General, to
confer with the Swiss cantons, and to carry their joint complaints to
the Duke of Savoy. In the mean while a general fast, and the order
for collections in every town and village, seconded the zeal of
the government, and Amsterdam was distinguished by its generous
contributions, which furnished our ancestors with the means of
rebuilding their houses, and churches, and recultivating their land.
From the Swiss cantons M. Van Ommeren went to Geneva, to confer with the
British envoys, Morland, Pell, and Douning; and thence to Paris, where
he urged the king to take into consideration the complaints of the
Vaudois against the treaty of Pignerol, just concluded, and in which he
had appeared in the character of a mediator, by means of his minister M.
Servient. A person of confidence (M. de Bais, marechal de camp) was in
consequence sent to inquire into the truth of the facts. He obtained
at a meeting of the principal Vaudois, at La Tour, in March, 1656, a
justificatory recital of the complaints of the valleys, a letter to the
king of France, and another to M. Le Serdigences, governor of Dauphine,
with which he sought redress at the court of Turin; but his object was
defeated by the agents of the Propaganda, who so contrived to disguise
the truth, that he seemed suddenly to have lost all that insight into
the affairs of the Vaudois, which he had obtained by his visit to the
valleys. The king of France was, however, so touched by the letter of
the Vaudois that he was about again to intercede, when the intrigues of
the same agents had the effect of convincing him that the statements of
the Vaudois were without foundation.