p. 512 | The Missionary by S. N. Haskell

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Nov 15, 1883

The Missionary.

By S. N. Haskell

The Waldenses in Exile.

AFTER the great massacre we have described, which took place in 1655, there was a comparative rest for this people for about thirty years. After some changes in the Government it was finally decided, in about 1686, to exterminate them. The substance of the edict which was then issued, was forbidding them to have any religious meetings, under penalty of death and the confiscation of all their goods. All their houses of worship were to be razed to the ground; all their pastors and school-masters were to quit the valleys within fifteen days, or embrace Romanism, under the pain of death and the confiscation of goods. All the children of Protestant parents must be trained up as Roman Catholics, and should, within a week after their birth, be brought to the curé of the parish, and admitted to the Roman Catholic Church under pain on the part of the mother of being publicly whipped with rods, and on the part of the father of laboring five years in the galleys.

This monstrous edict sounded to the Vaudois people a death-note. To carry out this edict there was an army of nearly 20,000 men raised, and entered the valleys. The day was appointed for the attack. Having but a short time in which to prepare, the Waldenses resorted to their strongholds, to fit themselves to resist the best they could. To mention the persecutions that came upon them, and the victories which at times they gained, would be simply to repeat much that has been written: Oftentimes God would fight for them, and in some battles there would be hundreds of French killed, and only a few of the Waldenses. This massacre extended to all their valleys, and was similar in its horrors to the great butchery of 1655. Upwards of 3,000 perished; and the remainder, said to be between 12,000 and 15,000 more, were consigned to the various gaols and fortresses of Piedmont. What gave their enemies great advantage over them were the intrigues they planned. Notwithstanding this, from time to time God blessed them when they fought in him.

But by the deceptions practiced, the plots laid by their enemies, the Waldenses were too often overcome. At one time in particular, when the French found them in their strongholds, and it seemed impossible to conquer them unless they could be allured from their position, deputies were sent to their companies in the various valleys, who represented to them that their brethren in other localities had surrendered, and were not engaged in fighting any more, but that an alliance had been formed. They also stated to them that if they would submit, as their brethren had, that all their ancient liberties would be granted them. This proved to be successful in leading them to surrender, thinking it would bring them liberty; consequently there was a general surrender. But it was a base artifice, which succeeded in bringing this innocent people into the hands of their cruel persecutors. The mistake was a fatal one, and their sufferings can never be told. The recording angel has written it all.

Now, for the first time in the history of these famous valleys they became empty of this people. That lamp burned no longer in this portion of the country. No smoke is seen rising from cottage, and no psalm is heard ascending from dwelling or sanctuary. No herdsman is seen leading his flock; no Sabbath bell to lead these people over the winding paths upon the mountains; but the valleys are deserted by the people whom God had so richly blest in times past. Wylie says: "We know not if ever before an entire nation were in prison at once. Yet now it was so. All the Waldensian race that remained from the sword of their executioners were immured in the dungeons of Piedmont! The pastor and his flock, the father and his family, the patriarch and the stripling, had passed in, in one great procession, and exchanged their grand rock-walled valleys, their tree-embowered homes, and their sunlit peaks, for the filth, the choking air, and the Tartarean walls of an Italian gaol. And how were they treated in prison? As the African slave was treated on the middle-passage. They had neither food nor clothing. Bread was dealt out to them that was fetid. Putrid water was given

them to drink. They were exposed to the sun by day, and the cold at night."

There were at this time, it is said, 14,000 healthy men and women who entered these prisons; but while in there they suffered such inhuman treatment that disease broke out in these horrible places, and when the prisons were opened, 3,000 skeletons only crawled out. Henri Arnaud describes it as follows: "When they entered these dungeons they counted 14,000 healthy mountaineers; but when at the intercession of the Swiss deputies, their prisons were opened, 3,000 skeletons only crawled out." It was simply a repetition of the barbarity of 1655. They appealed to the other nations who interested themselves in their behalf, and when the prison doors were opened they were a set of poor captives, emaciated with sickness, weakened by hunger, shivering from insufficient clothing, simply commanded to rise up and cross the snowy mountains. One hundred and fifty of them, it is said, died on the first day's march. At night they halted at the foot of Mount Cenis. In the mountain they besought the officer in charge to permit them, for the sake of their sick and aged, and in view of a terrible tempest that was then arising, to remain where they were.

But no mercy was shown them. There was no alternative. It was to leave their native land in the midst of a terrible winter, and travel through the storms, or have their lives taken. Strewed all along the track there lay unburied corpses of these poor exiles. The dead child could be seen locked in the arms of its mother. The aged lying by the side of rocks. Their journey continued for three weeks. In small parties they crossed the Alps, one after another, and it was not until the end of February, 1687, that the last band of these emigrants reached the hospitable gates of Geneva. But the plight that they were in, language cannot describe. Some had their tongues so swollen that they could not speak: Others had their arms bitten by frost, and were unable to stretch out their hands to receive the charity that was offered to them by sympathizing friends. But what was the end of their life, was the beginning of their liberty. The city of Calvin received them most hospitably. The people tried to outdo one another in caring for this stricken company. They felt that it was doing for the Saviour in the person of his saints.