"Moreover, I suppose that there are near eight thousand faithful souls inhabiting in this place. But among the men, who are bred up to endure labor, seeing they have from their childhood been inured to husbandry, you will find very few who know how to engage in combat. From hence it comes to pass that very few of them are ready upon any urgent occasion to defend themselves against public injuries. Yea, and the valleys themselves lie so remote from each other, that they cannot help one another till it be too late. And although these towns and villages have their counts or lords, yet the Duke of Savoy is lord over them all.
"This duke, before he came from Nice into Piedmont, diligently took order with those counts and lords of places, that they should admonish the inhabitants to submit to him and the Pope; that is, that, casting off their ministers, they should admit Popish preachers and the abominable mass. Whereupon our people sent petitions unto the prince, beseeching him that he would take it in good part if they were resolved rather to die than to lose the true religion of Jesus Christ.... but they shall be ready to amend their errors, if any there were, in case it should be manifested to them out of the word of God, to which alone they are to submit in this business; and as to what concerneth them in matters of behavior and tributes, and other things due both to him and their other lords, that he would send and make diligent inquiry whether they have at any time committed any offence, that so due punishment may be inflicted on them, because he should assuredly know they are willing to approve themselves with due reverence most obedient to him in all things.
"These petitions came to the hand of the prince, but availed nothing with him, who was become a sworn enemy with Antichrist against Christ. Thereupon he sent forth edicts, declaring that those who should be present at the sermons of the ministers of the valley?, if but once, should be fined at one hundred crowns, and if a second time, then they should be condemned to the galleys forever. Orders also were given to a certain judge to ride circuit up and down to put the penalties in execution, and to bind Christians and imprison them. The lords also and magistrates of places had the same power given them, and at length the godly were by this most impotent prince utterly given up to be plundered by all sorts of villains, and afflicted with most grievous calamities.
"He sent also a certain collateral judge of his own, first to Carignan, there to act inhuman butchery upon the faithful ones of Christ; whereupon he caused one Marcellinus, and Joan his wife, he being a Frenchman, but she a woman of Carignan, to be burnt alive with fire, four days after they had been apprehended. But in this woman God was pleased to manifest an admirable example of constancy; for, as she was led to execution, she exhorted her husband, saying, 'Well done, my brother, be of good courage; this day doubtless we shall enter together into the joys of heaven.' Some few days after this, there was apprehended also one John Carthignan, an honest, plain man, and truly religious, who, after three days of imprisonment, endured the torments of fire with very great constancy. Who is able to reckon up the several incursions, slaughters, plunders and innumerable miseries, wherewith this most savage generation of men did daily afflict all pious men, because, being exhorted by their ministers to patience, they took no course to defend themselves against injuries! Not long after also they apprehended one John, a Frenchman, and a minister, at a town called St. Germano, and, carrying him to a certain abbey near Pinerolo, there burnt him alive, who left a noble example of Christian constancy. The like was done also to the minister of the town of Maine, who was put to death at Susa by a slow fire, while he in the mean time stood as it were immovable, and not being touched with any sense of so incredible a cruelty, having his eyes fixed upon heaven, breathed out his happy soul.
"Therefore, when things were come to this pass, and these miseries were increased every day more and more, and seeing that the patience and extreme misery of our people could not in any measure allay the fury and rage of these most merciless brutes, they at length resolved by force, as well as they could, to free themselves and their wives and children from that barbarous usage. And although some of our ministers declared it was not well done, yet no admonitions could keep the people from resolving to defend themselves by arms. Hereupon it came to pass that, several encounters falling out, there fell within a few days about sixty of the plunderers. When news hereof was brought to the tyrant, he commanded his men to forbear, and sent two of his noblemen that so they might bring matters to an accommodation with our people; but when it was perceived that all their drift was that our ministers might be cast out and the Pope received, the people would by no means yield to it Wherefore, when the prince came into Piedmont, and resided at Versello, about the kalends of November, 1660, with intent to destroy all in the valleys by fire and sword, he sent an army of about four thousand foot and two hundred horse, under the command of the duke [count] de la Trinite."
The writer then relates the submissions made by certain deputies whom the Vaudois sent to the duke.
"These false brethren, in design to serve their own private ends, persuaded the people, though almost all the ministers cried out against it, that too easily giving credit to the most false promises of their enemies, laying down their arms, and sending deputies to the prince to promise obedience, they might, for sixteen thousand crowns, redeem both themselves and their religion. As soon as all these things were yielded to and promised by the too credulous people, through a vain hope of obtaining peace and religion, and when our deputies arrived at Versello, they were thence carried by the Lord de la Trinite to a certain cloister, there to abide for two months' space, (to the end there might be time for collecting the moneys,) and at length, casting themselves down at the feet of the prince and of the Pope's legate, (who were both there, attended by a great number of the nobility, and men of inferior rank,) they were constrained to supplicate the prince first, then the Pope's legate, that they would take pity on the people from whom they were sent, and to promise them, by an oath, that they would be ready to do all things that should be commanded by them.
"The prince therefore growing confident upon this most solemn promise, immediately sent persons to command our people to receive and embrace that horrid idol of the mass; whereupon, considering the inconstancy of their deputies, and the deceit or rather extreme perfidiousness of the tyrants being discovered, they plainly refused to yield that those things should be ratified which their deputies had unadvisedly transacted, through their own levity, not with the consent of people.... Then the tyrant, as soon as he came to understand this, was much more inflamed than ever before with anger, or rather outrageous fury, against our people; and, collecting a rabble of an army, he gave command to the Lord de la Trinite to waste and destroy all by fire and sword, without any regard of sex or age. Hereupon houses were every where set on fire, nor is there any kind of mischief which was not acted by those most wretched villains; by which means they forced our people, with their wives and children, to have recourse to the more craggy places of the mountains; a thing very lamentable to be seen. For, at the very first assault, they were in a manner astonished, because, being spoiled both of their arms and goods, living in extreme want of all things, they did not see by what means they might be able to undergo so great and troublesome a war.
"But at length, taking heart and trusting in the mercy and help of God, of the goodness of their cause, and being confident, because of the impiety and treachery of their adversaries, they resolved once again to defend themselves. To this end they appointed their guards and garrisons, fortified several places, blocked up passages, and were wholly resolute upon this point, to die rather than they would in any measure obey a perfidious and wicked prince in so abominable a matter. But what need many words? Things were come to such a pass, that in several fights above nine hundred of the enemy were slain, whereas, on our side, hardly fifteen were wanting."
Such was the spirit of Popery during Brownson's thousand years of remarkable intellectual and literary activity! Do you, Americans, wish that the next thousand years of your existence as a nation should be distinguished by a similar intellectual preeminence in mental activity and Christian literature? But, continues Brownson, in his Review of January, 1845, all these things were altered. What things does Brownson mean? The universities? or the remarkable activity of Popish minds between the sixth and sixteenth centuries? Who denies the former? No one who is acquainted with history, or who knows that the world, a large portion of which was then under Popish dominion, needed to be purified from the idolatrous and disastrous doctrines of Popery. The insolence of Brownson is assuredly unequalled. Either that, or his ignorance of history, is unpardonable. "At the period of the English Revolution," says this consummate hypocrite, Brownson, "the mass of the English people were buried in the grossest ignorance. Even long after, when the Wesleys first started, they talked of the ignorance even of the people of London, as they would of the South Sea Islanders." This, as we say up here in New Hampshire, beats all. Was it not about this very period that the world gave birth to the illustrious Milton? Was it not at this period that Dryden was born? Was it not at this period that the brightest lights of literature that ever illumined the world were shining in all their glory? I might here give as many names of illustrious men and illustrious minds as ever adorned humanity; men whose lives were an honor, not only to science, but to religion, to Christianity, and true piety. Did not Erasmus live before the English Reformation? Was he grossly ignorant? Did not Luther live before the Reformation? Neither of those were Papists, but they knew Papist doctrines so well as to break loose from them and appeal to the Christian world to rise as one man and pull down and raze to the ground Popish universities and colleges, as calculated only to cover the world with darkness, by substituting the legends of monks for true science, and the decretals of Popes for the Word of God.