The village of Rora is now in the hands of the pope's soldiers, who, meeting with little resistance, abandoned themselves to the work of destruction. The inhabitants consisted of old men, women and children; the effective members of the community were now expanding their patriotic efforts on the frontier. A general massacre followed. Nearly ten thousand assassins fell upon the helpless and unoffending peasants with all the impetuosity of wolves rushing upon a fold. No distinction was made of age or sex. Happy they who were slain at once, and thus escaped indignities and barbarities, to which we cannot give utterance. "Every soldier," says Dr. Beattie, "took upon himself the office of an executioner, till the devoted hamlet presented the spectacle of a vast scaffold strewn with victims, and streaming with blood. When the morning sun rose upon the village, not a voice was heard, nor a hearth left standing; but a mass of smoldering ashes, through which protruded at intervals the ghastly features of the slain, carried its appeal to the gates of heaven"-page 56.
The wife and three daughters of Gianavello, Pianessa spared from the sword that he might work on the feelings of the father and husband. He threatened to burn them alive unless he surrendered himself a prisoner and abjured his religion. Gianavello nobly replied: "As for the first condition, my wife and children are in thy hands, and if such be God's will, thou mayest accomplish thy threat; but this barbarous act can only affect their bodies, for which their religion teaches them not to be over-solicitous. If brought to the stake, they will be supported in the hour of trial. Their faith is proof against terror, and enables the innocent to look with complacent eye upon what is terrible only to the guilty. What was once said to Pilate, I now say to Pianessa:-`Thou couldest have no power at all against me except it were given thee from above.' As to the question of apostasy; shall I abjure these principles I have so long defended with my blood-principles unchangeable as the word of God? Shall I desert His cause for the hopes of a renegade? No! in that cause which I have thus feebly espoused, I am ready to perish. The terrors of the Inquisition are mild, compared with the upbraidings of conscience; and I shall never incur the one by shrinking from the other." He escaped to Geneva.
What could Pianessa do? What could the papal armies do? What could the legions of hell do against a religion that produced such faith in God, and such champions for His truth? They might crush for a time the feeble few, "the poor of the flock," and seem to triumph; but God is in the midst of them, and in the most wonderful manner preserves a remnant for Himself, a seed to serve Him, the silver link in the unbroken chain of witnesses; and the happy day will come when He will vindicate their cause in the presence of an assembled universe, and lifting up their heads on high, He will honor them with the martyr's crown, while their enemies, covered with shame and branded with eternal infamy, will seek the darkest regions of the lost that they may conceal the enormity of their guilt, and the undying agonies of hopeless despair. Those shrieks and groans of the dying which echoed and re-echoed among the Alpine hills shall be heard again; and those quivering limbs of frightened children for whom there was no pity shall be seen again, but in awful frightful vision. Haunted by such sights and sounds, with a load of guilt which now oppresses the imagination, what must that place of torment be? What vitality to the worm that never dies, what vehemence to the flame that shall never be quenched, must the recollection of such deeds forever give! Still the grand truth remains, that, by a timely repentance and a genuine faith in the Lord Jesus, our sins, however many, are all washed away; but the soul that dies impenitent is lost forever!