ld not meet in their churches;
but in their caverns and mountain dells they cried to the Lord for
deliverance from their great distress, and for strength to remain faithful
under persecution. The Lord heard their cry; but the church of the valleys
was destined to pass through such a sea of suffering, inflicted in the name
of the holy Catholic church, as would have made many a pagan persecutor
blush with shame. At four o'clock in the morning of Easter-eve, on a signal
given from the top of Castelluzzo, Pianezza's troops rose to slaughter the
persons under whose roofs they had slept, and of whose food they had
partaken the night before. Surely a religion which thus degrades men into
monsters should have few apologists in our day. The mind recoils from the
enumeration of the horrors of that "bloody Easter." Human depravity, goaded
on by every motive which spiritual wickedness could suggest, celebrated
such a carnival as must have staggered even a Nero. Men, women, and
children were torn limb from limb, after suffering every possible outrage
and indecency. Some were rolled from their native rocks to afford merriment
to their butchers. Others were impaled on the trees by the wayside.
Neither age nor sex hindered this work of brutality; and it is even said
that not only did the wretches burn the living bodies of their victims, but
also regaled themselves with their flesh, yea, in the presence of their
suffering fellows! When these pious soldiers of holy church could no longer
slay the Vaudois they burnt their houses and farm buildings, and destroyed
their vineyards, with the fruit-trees and other products of the soil.

Nor was Pianezza content with these horrible proceedings at La Torre and
its immediate vicinity. On the evening of the same day, Saturday, April
24th, Rora was attacked by five hundred men, the day after by a larger
body, the next day by more soldiers still--all in vain. A fourth attack,
like the others, was successfully repelled by their noble captain,
Janavello, who, with a very small body of helpers, inflicted terrible loss
upon the troops, even causing the death of their leader, Mario. These
continuous defeats so enraged Pianezza, that he sent them a message to
attend mass within twenty-four hours on pain of death. They replied, "We
prefer death to the mass a hundred thousand times." On this he assembled a
force of ten thousand to attack their village. Janavello fought like a
lion, but was overpowered by numb