Thus the inhabitants of the valleys struggled on until the year 1686, when a fresh war broke out under the sovereignty of Victor Amadeus II., but chiefly through the influence of Louis XIV. of France. When joined by the French auxiliaries, the united force amounted to between fifteen and twenty thousand men. Though vast numbers of the invaders were killed, the peasants were overpowered, and those who escaped the exterminating vengeance of the sword were dragged to prison, and the valleys were quite depopulated. We have no space for details, but would just add, that treachery and atrocity, as usual, on the one side, and heroic devotedness on the other, marked the progress of the war; but treachery accomplished its end, and atrocities followed. "Fourteen thousand healthy mountaineers," says Henri Arnaud, "were thrust into the dungeons of Piedmont. But when, at the intercession of the Swiss deputies, their prisons were opened, three thousand skeletons only crawled out." Such were the tender mercies of Holy Mother Church; and such would be her tender mercies today, were her opportunities the same. At a distance of nearly two hundred years, the heart sickens, the imagination is oppressed, recoiling from the contemplation of such cold-blooded heartless cruelties. Eleven thousand perished in a few months from fetid air, cold, hunger, disease, inhumanity and utter neglect. What must have been the state of the atmosphere with such fearful mortality! But we cannot proceed further.
The prisons were thrown open in the beginning of October; but only on condition that the prisoners should immediately leave the country and embrace perpetual exile. Winter was already advancing in all its terrors, but no mercy could be shown to such heretics, and the famished band, the same evening, was driven forth to the Alps. They commenced their dreary march towards Mount Cenis; darkness soon overtook them, and before sunrise, more than one hundred and fifty had perished on the road. But the most afflicting spectacle in this harrowing procession, was that of the poor mothers and their infants. They turned their backs to the storm, so as to protect the child in arms, but many of them dropped with fatigue, and were wrapped in the stern winding-sheet of the Alps. The distressed exiles earnestly entreated the officer in command to let them rest for a day, especially as the weather showed signs of an approaching hurricane. The officer, however, had no authority to grant their prayer, and the dreary march was resumed. "During the hurricane," says Dr. Beattie, "the snow, resembling pounded ice, is tossed furiously around-like waves of sea-foam carried into the air-and deposited in overwhelming masses along the traveler's path. In its effect the snow-storm of the Alps is like the sand-storm in the Great Desert, saturating the air with its particles, and when blowing in the face, produced blindness and blistering of the skin. Under such circumstances, every hour must have been marked by some distressing incident-some new disaster that rapidly diminished their number, and sickened their hearts."