were despatched to solicit aid and advice from the church of Geneva and the Protestant cantons of Switzerland.  The intelligence alarmed the Marquess of Pianeze, the chief minister of the duke; who, to suppress the nascent confederacy, marched from Turin with an armed force, reduced La Torre, into which the insurgents had thrown a garrison of six hundred men, and, having made an offer of pardon to all who should submit, ordered his troops to fix their quarters in Bobbio, Villaro, and the lower part of Angrogna.  It had previously been promised[a] that they should be peaceably received; but the inhabitants had already retired to the mountains with their cattle and provisions; and the soldiers found no other accommodation than the bare walls.  Quarrels soon followed between the parties; one act of offence was retaliated with another; and the desire of vengeance provoked a war of extermination.  But the military were in general successful; and the natives found themselves compelled to flee to the summits of the loftiest mountains, or to seek refuge in the valleys of Dauphine, among a people of similar habits and religion.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Siri, xv. 827-833.  It would be a difficult task to determine by whom, after the reduction of La Torre, the first blood was wantonly drawn, or to which party the blame of superior cruelty really belongs.  The authorities on each side are interested, and therefore suspicious; the provocations alleged by the one are as warmly denied by the other; and to the ravages of the military in Angrogna and Lucerna, are opposed the massacres of the Catholics in Perousa and San Martino.  In favour of the Vaudois may be consulted Leger, Histoire Generale des Eglises Evangeliques, &c. (he was a principal instigator of these troubles); Stouppe, Collection of the several papers sent to his highness, &c.  London, 1655; Sabaudiensis in Reformatam Religionem Persecutionis Brevis Narratio, Londini, 1655; Morland, 326-384, and the papers in Thurloe, iii. 361, 384, 412, 416, 430, 444, 459, 538.  Against them—­A Short and Faithful Account of the late Commotions &c., with some reflections on Mr. Stouppe’s Collected Papers, 1655; Morland, 387-404; Siri, xv. 827-843, and Thurloe, iii. 413, 464, 475, 490, 502, 535, 535, 617, 626, 656.]

[Sidenote a:  A.D. 1656.  April 7.]

Accounts of these transactions, but accounts teeming with exaggeration and improbabilities, were transmitted to the different Protestant states by the ministers at Geneva.  They represented the duke of Savoy as a bigoted and intolerant prince; the Vaudois as an innocent race, whose only crime was their attachment to the reformed faith.  They implored the Protestant powers to assume the defence of their persecuted brethren, and called for pecuniary contributions to save from destruction by famine the remnant which had escaped the edge of the sword.[1] In England the cause was advocated[a] by the press and from the pulpit; a solemn fast was kept, and the passions of the people were roused to enthusiasm.  The ministers in a body waited on Cromwell to recommend the Vaudois to his protection; the armies in Scotland and Ireland presented addresses, expressive of their readiness to shed their blood in so sacred a cause; and all classes of men, from the highest to