This plot was afterwards more fully proved by two officers in De Grancé's army,* and its details were lodged with the other MSS. by Leger, in the Cambridge library.
* One named De Petit Bourg.
A year had scarcely elapsed when another motive was added to the zealous labours of the propaganda, which was the wish of establishing in the valleys those Irish whom Cromwell had banished in consequence of the massacres they had committed among their Protestant countrymen.
This eager desire to obtain possession of the valleys, and all that the Vaudois possessed in them, excited a series of intrigues, which ended in an order to Gastaldo, auditor of Luzerne, to enjoin and command the Vaudois inhabitants of Briqueiras, S. Second, Bubiana, Fenil, Campillon, Luzerne, St. Jean, and La Tour, to abandon those places within three days, or receive the mass, under pain of death and confiscation of their property.
What makes this step still more cruel and unjust, if possible, is, that it took place in the winter of 1654, when Charles Emanuel II. had, by an edict of 3rd December, just confirmed all their privileges, &c.* In this, and in the one of the preceding year, they were mentioned as faithful and obedient subjects; nay more, at the very time the lawyers were employed in verifying the original charters, the last decree was about to be enrolled, and the sum of money exacted on these occasions had long been paid.
It will easily be imagined that no time was lost in sending deputies to Turin, and trying every means to obtain a mitigation of this dreadful sentence. These deputies were amused by an affected deliberation on their petition, and were referred sometimes from the Duke to his mother, sometimes from the Duchess to the Marquis di Pianezza, and from him to the Propaganda, till they received information on the 16th of April (though they were promised a final audience on the 17th) that the Marquis was already at Luzerne with his forces, and that they had better provide for their own safety.
Thus, by a series of base treachery, duplicity, and cruelty, was the way prepared for those dreadful massacres, which have cast so foul a stain on the reign of Charles Emanuel the Second.**
* This seems to have been necessary every new reign, these
confirmations being personal acts of the sovereign.—T.
** Which excited the compassionate muse of Milton.—T.