and bring them to account.  Blake fulfilled his mission with his usual precision and success.  His first call of any importance was on the Grand Duke of Tuscany, formerly so much in the good graces of the Commonwealth (Vol.  IV. pp. 483-485), but whom Cromwell, after looking more into matters, had found culpable.  Blake’s demands were for heavy money-damages on account of English ships taken by Prince Rupert in 1650, and sold in Tuscan ports, and also on account of English ships ordered out of Leghorn harbour in March 1653, so that they fell into the hands of the Dutch.  There was the utmost consternation among the Tuscans, and the alarm extended even to Rome, inasmuch as some of Rupert’s prizes had been sold in the Papal States.  A disembarcation of the English heretics and even their march to Rome did not seem impossible; and Tuscans and Romans were greatly relieved when the Grand Duke paid L60,000 and the Pope 20,000 pistoles (L14,000), and Blake retired.  His next call was at Tunis, where there were accounts with the Dey.  That Mussulman having pointed to his forts, and dared Blake to do his worst, there was a tremendous bombardment on the 3rd of April, 1655, reducing the forts to ruins, followed by the burning of the Dey’s entire war-squadron of nine ships.  This sufficed not only for Tunis, but also for Tripoli and Algiers.  All the Moorish powers of the African coast gave up their English captives, and engaged that there should be no more piracy upon English vessels.  Malta, Venice, Toulon, Marseilles, and various Spanish ports were then visited for one reason or another; and in the autumn of 1655 Blake was still in the Mediterranean for ulterior purposes, understood between him and Cromwell.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Guizot, II. 186-198, with, documents in Appendix; Godwin, IV. 187-188; Whitlocke.  IV., 206-207.]

While Blake was in the Mediterranean, one Italian potentate did a sudden act of infamy, which resounded through Europe, and for which Cromwell would fain have clutched him by the throat in his own inland capital.  This was Carlo Emanuele II., Duke of Savoy and Prince of Piedmont.

In the territories of this young prince, in the Piedmontese valleys of Luserna, Perosa, and San Martino, on the east side of the Cottian Alps, lived the remarkable people known as the Vaudois or Waldenses.  From time immemorial these obscure mountaineers, speaking a peculiar Romance tongue of their own, had kept themselves distinct from the Church of Rome, maintaining doctrines and forms of worship of such a kind that, after the Lutheran Reformation, they were regarded as primitive Protestants who had never swerved from the truth through the darkest ages, and could therefore be adopted with acclamation into the general Reformed communion.  The Reformation, indeed; had penetrated into their valleys, rendering them more polemical for their faith, and more fierce against the Church of Rome, than they had been before.  They had experienced persecutions