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We see at this moment two armies on the march to attack the
Christians inhabiting the Cottian and Dauphinese Alps. The sword now unsheathed
is to be returned to its scabbard only when there breathes no longer in these
mountains a single confessor of the faith condemned in the bull of Innocent
VIII. The plan of the campaign was to attack at the same time on two opposite
points of the great mountain-chain; and advancing, the one army from the
south-east, and the other from the north-west, to meet in the Valley of
Angrogna, the centre of the territory, and there strike the final blow. Let us
follow first the French division of this host, that which is advancing against
the Alps of Dauphine.
This portion of the crusaders was led by a daring and cruel
man, skilled in such adventures, the Lord of La Palu. He ascended the mountains
with his fanatics, and entered the Vale of Loyse, a deep gorge overhung by
towering mountains. The inhabitants, seeing an armed force twenty times their
own number enter their valley, despaired of being able to resist them, and
prepared for flight. They placed their old people and children in rustic carts,
together with their domestic utensils, and such store of victuals as the urgency
of the occasion permitted them to collect, and driving their herds before them,
they began to climb the rugged slopes of Mount Pelvoux, which rises some six
thousand feet over the level of the valley. They sang canticles as they climbed
the steeps, which served at once to smooth their rugged path, and to dispel
their terrors. Not a few were overtaken and slaughtered, and theirs was perhaps
the happier lot.
About half-way up there is an immense cavern, called
Aigue-Froid, from the cold springs that gush out from its rocky walls. In front
of the cavern is a platform of rock, where the spectator sees beneath him only
fearful precipices, which must be clambered over before one can reach the
entrance to the grotto. The roof of the cave forms a magnificent arch, which
gradually subsides and contracts into a narrow passage, or threat, and then
widens once more, and forms a roomy hall of irregular form. Into this grotto, as
into an impregnable castle, did the Vaudois enter. Their women, infants, and old
men, they placed in the inner hall; their cattle and sheep they distributed
along the lateral cavities of the grotto. The able-bodied men posted themselves
at the entrance. Having barricaded with huge stones both the doorway of the cave
and the path that led to it, they deemed themselves secure. They had provisions
to last, Cataneo says in his Memoirs, "two years;" and it would cost them little
effort to hurl headlong down the precipices any one who should attempt to scale
them in order to reach the entrance of the cavern.
But a device of their pursuer rendered all these precautions
and defences vain. La Palu ascended the mountain on the other side, and
approaching the cave from above, let down his soldiers by ropes from the
precipice overhanging the entrance to the grotto. The platform in front was thus
secured by his soldiers. The Vaudois might have cut the ropes, and dispatched
their foes as they were being lowered one by one, but the boldness of the
manoeuvre would seem to have paralysed them. They retreated into the cavern to
find in it their grave. La Palu saw the danger of permitting his men to follow
them into the depths of their hiding-place. He adopted the easier and safer
method of piling up at its entrance all the wood he could collect and setting
fire to it. A huge volume of black smoke began to roll into the cave, leaving to
the unhappy inmates the miserable alternative of rushing out and falling by the
sword that waited for them, or of remaining in the interior to be stifled by the
murky vapour [Monstier, p. 128]. Some rushed out, and were massacred; but the
greater part remained till death slowly approached them by suffocation. "When
the cavern was afterwards examined," says Muston, "there were found in it 400
infants, suffocated in their cradles, or in the the arms of their dead mothers.
Altogether there perished in this cavern more than 3,000 Vaudois, including the
entire population of Val Loyse. Cataneo distributed the property of these
unfortunates among the vagabonds who accompanied him, and never again did the
Vaudois Church raise its head in these blood-stained valleys" [Muston, p.
20].
The terrible stroke that fell on the Vale of Loyse was the
shielding of the neighbouring valleys of Argentiere and Fraissiniere. Their
inhabitents had been destined to destruction also, but the fate of their
co-religionists taught them that their only chance of safety lay in resistance.
Accordingly, barricading the passes of their valleys, they showed such a front
to the foe when he advanced, that he deemed it prudent to turn away and leave
them in peace. This devastating tempest now swept along to discharge its
violence on other valleys. "One would have thought," to use the words of Muston,
"that the plague had passed along the track over which its march lay: it was on
the inquisitors."
A detachment of the French army struck across the Alps in a
south-east direction, holding their course toward the Waldensian Valleys, there
to unite with the main body of the crusaders under Cataneo. They slaughtered,
pillaged, and burned as they went onward, and at last arrived with dripping
swords in the Valley of Pragelas.
The Valley of Pragelas, where we now see these assassins,
sweeps along, from almost the summit of the Alps, to the south, watered by the
rivers Clusone and Dora, and opens on the great plain of Piedmont, having
Pinerolo on the one side and Susa on the other. It was then and long after under
the dominion of France. "Prior to the revocation of the Edict of Nantes," says
Muston, "the Vaudois of these valleys [that is, Pragelas, and the lateral vales
branching out from it] possessed eleven parishes, eighteen churches, and
sixty-four centres of religious assembling, where worship was celebrated morning
and evening, in as many hamlets. It was in Laus, in Pragelas, that was held the
famous synod where, 200 years before the Protestant Reformation, 140 Protestant
pastors assembled, each accompanied by two or three lay deputies; and it was
from the Val di Pragelas that the
Gospel of God made its way into France prior to the fifteenth
century" [Muston, part ii., p. 234].
This was the valley of Pragelas which had been the scene of
the terrible tragedy of Christmas, 1400. Again terror, mourning, and death were
carried into it. The peaceful inhabitants, who were expecting no such invasion,
were busy reaping their harvests, when the horde of assassins burst upon them.
In the first panic they abandoned their dwellings and fled. Many were overtaken
and slain; hamlets and whole villages were given to the flames; nor could the
caves in which multitudes sought regufe afford any protection. The horrible
barbarity of the Val Loyse was repeated in the Valley of Pragelas. Combustible
materials were piled up and fires kindled at the mouths of these hiding-places;
and when extinguished, all was silent within. Folded together in one motionless
heap lay mother and babe, patriarch and stripling; while the fatal smoke, which
had cast them into that deep sleep, was eddying along the roof, and slowly
making its exit into the clear sunlit summer sky. But the course of this
destruction was stayed. After the first surprise the inhabitants took heart, and
turning upon their murderers drove them from their valley, exacting a heavy
penalty in the pursuit for the ravages they had committed in it.
We now turn to the Piedmontese portion of this army. It was
led by the Papal legate, Cataneo, in person. It was destined to operate against
those valleys in Piedmont which were the most ancient seat of these
religionists, and were deemed the stronghold of the Vaudois heresy. Cataneo
repaired to Pinerolo, which adjoins the frontier of the doomed territory. Thence
he dispatched a band of preaching monks to convert the men of the Valleys. These
missionaries returned without having, so far as appears made a single convert.
The legate now put his soldiers in motion. Traversing the glorious plain, the
Clusone gleaming out through rich corn-fields and vineyards on their left, and
the mighty rampart of the hills, with their chestnut forests, their pasturages
and snows, rising grandly on their right, and turning round the shoulder of the
copse-clad Bricherasio, this army, with another army of pillagers and
cut-throats in its rear, advanced up the long avenue that leads to La Torre, the
capital of the Valleys, and sat down before it. They had come against a simple,
unarmed people, who knew how to tend their vines, and lead their herds to
pasture, but were ignorant of the art of war. It seemed as if the last hour of
the Waldensian race had struck.
Seeing this mighty host before their Valleys, the Waldenses
sent off two of their patriarchs to request an interview with Cataneo, and turn,
if possible, his heart to peace. Jolin Campo and John Desiderio were dispatched
on this embassy. "Do not condemn us without hearing us," said they, "for we are
Christians and faithful subjects; and our Barbes are prepared to prove, in
public or in private, that our doctrines are conformable to the Word of God ...
Our hope in God is greater than our desire to please men; beware how you draw
down upon yourselves His anger by persecuting us; for remember that, if God so
wills it, all the forces you have assembled against us will nothing
avail."
These were weighty words, and they were meekly spoken, but as
to changing Cataneo’s purpose, or softening the hearts of the ruffian-host which
he led, they might as well have been addressed to the rocks which rose around
the speakers. Nevertheless, they fell not to the ground.
Cataneo, believing that the Vaudois herdsmen would not stand
an hour before his men-at-arms, and desirous of striking a finishing blow,
divided his army into a number of attacking parties, which were to begin the
battle on various points at the same time. The folly of extending his line so as
to embrace the whole territory led to Cataneo’s destruction; but his strategy
was rewarded with a few small successes at first.
One troop was stationed at the entrance of the Val Lucerna;
we shall follow its march till it disappears on the mountains which it hopes to
conquer, and then we shall return and narrate the more decisive operations of
the campaign under Cataneo in the Val Angrogna.
The first step of the invaders was to occupy the town of La
Torre, situated on the angle formed by the junction of the Val Lucerna and the
Val Angrogna, the silver Pelice at its feet and the shadow of the Castelluzzo
covering it. The soldiers were probably spared the necessity or denied the
pleasure of slaughter, the inhabitants having fled to the mountains. The valley
beyond La Torre is too open to admit of being defended, and the troop advanced
along it unopposed. Than this theatre of war nothing in ordinary times is more
peaceful, nothing more grand. A carpet of rich meadows clothes it from side to
side; fruitful trees fleck it with their shadows; the Pelice waters it; and on
either hand is a wall of mountains, whose sides display successive zones of
festooned vines, golden grain, dark chestnut forests, and rich pasturages. Over
these are hung stupendous battlements of rock; and above all, towering high in
air, are the everlasting peaks in their robes of ice and snow. But the
sublimities of nature were nothing to men whose thoughts were only of
blood.
Pursuing their march up the valley, the soldiers next came to
Villaro. It is situated about midway between the entrance and head of Lucerna,
on a ledge of turn in the side of the great mountains, raised some 200 feet
above the Pelice, which flows past at about a quarter of a mile’s distance. The
troop had little difficulty in taking possession. Most of the inhabitants,
warned of the approach of danger, had fled to the Alps. What Cataneo’s troops
inflicted on those who had been unable to make their escape, no history records.
The half of Lucerna, with the towns of La Torre and Villaro and their hamlets,
was in the occupation of Cataneo’s soldiers; their march so far had been a
victorious one, though certainly not a glorious one, such victories as they had
gained being only over unarmed peasants and bed-rid women.
Resuming their march the troop came next to Bobbio. The name
of Bobbio is not unknown in classic story. It nestles at the base of gigantic
cliffs, where the lofty summit of the Col la Croix points the way to France, and
overhangs a path which apostolic feet may have trodden. The Pelice is seen
foreing its way through the dark gorges of the mountains in a thundering
torrent, and meandering in a flood of silver along the valley.
At this point the grandeur of the Val Lucerna attains its
height. Let us pause to survey the scene that must here have met the eyes of
Cataneo’s soldiers, and which, one would suppose, might have turned them from
their cruel purpose. Immediately behind Bobbio shoots up the "Barion,"
symmetrical as Egyptian obelisk, but far taller and more massive. Its summit
rises 3,000 feet above the roof of the little town. Compared with this majestic
monolith the proudest monument of Europe’s proudest capital is a mere toy. Yet
even the Barion is but one item in this assemblage of glories. Overtopping it
behind, and sweeping round the extremity of the valley, is a glorious
amphitheatre of crags and precipices, enclosed by a background of great
mountains, some rounded like domes, others sharp as needles; and rising out of
this sea of hills, are the grander and loftier forms of the Alp des Rousses and
the Col de Malaure, which guard the gloomy pass that winds its way through
splintered rocks and under overhanging precipices, till it opens into the
valleys of the French Protestants, and lands the traveller on the plains of
Dauphine. In this unrivalled amphitheatre sits Bobbio, in summer buried in
blossoms and fruit, and in winter wrapped in the shadows of its great mountains,
and the mists of their tempests. What a contrast between the still repose and
grand sublimity of nature and the dreadful errand on which the men now pressing
forward to the little town are bent! To them nature speaks in vain! they are
engrossed with but one thought.
The capture of Bobbio—an easy task—put the soldiers in
possession of the entire Valley of Lucerna; its inhabitants had been chased to
the Alps, or their blood mingled with the waters of their own Pelice. Other and
remoter expeditions were now projected. Their plan was to traverse the Col
Julien, sweep down on the Valley of Prali, which lies on the north of it,
chastise its inhabitants, pass on to the Valleys of San Martino and Perosa, and
pursuing the circuit of the Valleys, and clearing the ground as they went onward
of its inveterate heresy, at least of its heretics, join the main body of
crusaders, who, they expected, would by this time have finished their work in
the Valley of Angrogna, and all together celebrate their victory. They would
then be able to say that they had gone the round of the Waldensian territory,
and had at last effected the long-meditated work, so often attempted, but
hitherto in vain, of the utter extirpation of its heresy. But the war was
destined to have a very different termination.
The expedition across the Col Julien was immediately
commenced. A corps of 700 men was detached from the army in Lucerna for this
service [Monastier, p. 129]. The ascent of the mountain opens immediately on the
north side of Bobbio. We see the soldiers toiling upwards on the track, which is
a mere foot-path formed by the herdsmen. At every short distance they pass the
thick-planted chalets and hamlets sweetly embowered amid mantling vines, or the
branches of the apple and cherry tree, or the goodlier chestnut; but the
inhabitants have fled. They have now reached a great height on the mountainside.
Beneath is Bobbio, a speck of brown. There is the Valley of Lucerna, a ribbon of
green, with a thread of silver woven into it, and lying along amid masses of
mighty rocks. There, across Lucerna, are the great mountains that enclose the
Valley of Rora, standing up in the silent sky; on the right are the spiky crags
that bristle along the Pass of Miraboue, that leads to France, and yonder in the
east is a glimpse of the far-extending Plains of Piedmont.
But the summit is yet a long way off, and the soldiers of the
Papal legate, bearing their weapons, to be employed, not in venturesome battle,
but in cowardly massacre, toil up the ascent. As they gain on the mountian, they
look down on pinnacles which half an hour before had looked down on them. Other
heights, tall as the former, still rise above them; they climb to these airy
spires, which in their turn sink beneath their feet. This process they repeat
again and again, and at last they come out upon the downs that clothe the
shoulders of the mountain. Now it is that the scene around them becomes one of
stupendous and inexpressible grandeur. Away to the east, now fully under the
eye, is the plain of Piedmont, green as meadow, and level as ocean. At their
feet yawn gorges and abysses, while spiky pinnacles peer up from below as if to
buttress the mountain. The horizon is filled with Alpine peaks, conspicuous
among which, on the east, is the Col la Vechera, whose snow-clad summit draws
the eye to the more than classic valley over which it towers, where the Barbes
in ancient days were wont to assemble in synod, and whence their missionaries
went forth, at the peril of life, to distribute the Scriptures and sow the seed
of the Kingdom. It was not unmarked, doubtless, by this corps, forming, as they
meant it should do, the terminating point of their expedition in the Val di
Angrogna. On the west, the crowning glory of the scene was Monte Viso, standing
up in bold relief in the ebon vault, in a robe of silver. But in vain had Nature
spread out her magnificence before men who had neither eyes to see nor hearts to
feel her glory.
Climbing on their hands and knees the steep grassy slope in
which the pass terminates, they looked down from the summit on the Valley of
Prali, at that moment a scene of peace. Its great snow-clad hills, conspicuous
among which is the Col d’Abries, kept guard around it. Down their sides rolled
foaming torrents, which, uniting in the valley, flowed along in a full and rapid
river. Over the bosom of the plain were scattered numerous hamlets. Suddenly on
the mountains above had gathered this flock of vultures that with greedy eyes
were looking down upon their prey. Impatient to begin their work, the 700
assassins rushed down on the plain.
The troop had reckoned that, no tidings of their approach
having reached this secluded valley, they would fall upon its unarmed peasants
as falls the avalanche, and crush them. But it was not to be so. Instead of
fleeing, panic-struck, as the invaders expected, the men of Prali hastily
assembled, and stood to their defence. Battle was joined at the hamlet of
Pommiers. The weapons of the Vaudois were rude, but their trust in God, and
their indignation at the cowardly and bloody assault, gave them strength and
courage. The Piedmontese soldiers, wearied with the rugged, slippery tracks they
had traversed, fell beneath the blows of their opponents. Every man of them was
cut down with the exception of one ensign.* Of all the 700, he alone survived.
During the carnage, he made his escape, and ascending the banks of a mountain
torrent, he crept into a cavity which the summer heats had formed in a mass of
snow. There he remained hid for some days; at last, cold and hunger drove him
forth to cast himself upon the mercy of the men of Prali. They were generous
enough to pardon this solitary survivor of the host that had come to massacre
them. They sent him back across the Col Julien, to tell those from whom he had
come that the Vaudois had courage to fight for their hearths and altars, and
that of the army of 700 which they had sent to slay them, he only had escaped to
carry tidings of the fate which had befallen his companions.
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