United States or Romania ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
They pulled down the popish church at Rora, reduced the village to ashes, and brought away much spoil. However, as soon as the Piedmontese soldiers were able to cover the mountains with troops they retaliated by setting on fire the Vaudois asylum at Serre de Cruel.
Still such was the spirit engendered by popish fanaticism, that a most frightful conspiracy to murder the defenceless Vaudois women and children of San Giovanni and La Torre, while their fathers and brothers were all away guarding the frontiers, was concocted.
The people are also more scattered, and even poorer than they are on the Italian side of the Alps. Then the climate is much more severe, from the greater elevation of the sites of most of the Vaudois villages; so that when pastors were induced to settle there, the cold, and sterility, and want of domestic accommodation, soon drove them away.
Nor is it without great weight, as the historian Leger observes, that not one of the Dukes of Savoy or their ministers ever offered the slightest contradiction to the oft-reiterated assertions of the Vaudois, when petitioning for liberty of conscience, "We are descendants," said they, "of those who, from father to son, have preserved entire the apostolical faith in the valleys which we now occupy."
Javanel then went to rejoin a party of the men whom he had posted at the "Gates of Angrogna" to defend the pass up the valley; and again he fell upon the enemy engaged in attempting to force a passage there, and defeated them with heavy loss. Such are among the exciting events which have occurred in this one locality in connection with the Vaudois struggle for country and liberty.
The book excited much interest, not only in England, but in other countries; and a movement was shortly after set on foot for the relief and assistance of the Vaudois.
They mentioned, too, with peculiar emphasis, the year of the last great massacre of their brethren. The memory of that transaction, I feel assured, will perish only with the Vaudois race.
Three French regiments, supported by a regiment of dragoons, opened the attack in front; Colonel de Parat, who commanded the leading regiment, saying to his soldiers as they advanced, "My friends, we must sleep to-night in that barrack," pointing to the rude Vaudois fort on the summit of the Balsille.
The fief of Chaudane en Valloires was the patrimony of the Rapins, which they long continued to hold. In 1692 the descendants of the family endeavoured to prove, from the numerous titles which they possessed, that they had been nobles for eight or nine hundred years. The home of the Rapins was situated in the country of the Vaudois.
A painful foreboding of suffering filled the minds of the Vaudois as soon as they heard of the revocation of the edict of Nantes; but they were not prepared for the actual severity of the edict of January 30th, 1686, which forbade, under pain of death, all religious services except the Romish, and ordered the destruction of their temples, the banishment of their ministers and schoolmasters, and the baptism and education of their children henceforth in the false creed of Rome.
Word Of The Day