maiden, of about eighteen,
in a cave. They butchered the poor old man in the most inhuman manner,
and then attempted to ravish the girl, when she started away and fled
from them; but they pursuing her, she threw herself from a precipice and
perished.

The Waldenses, in order the more effectually to be able to repel force
by force, entered into a league with the protestant powers of Germany,
and with the reformed of Dauphiny and Pragela. These were respectively
to furnish bodies of troops; and the Waldenses determined, when thus
reinforced, to quit the mountains of the Alps, (where they must soon
have perished, as the winter was coming on,) and to force the duke's
army to evacuate their native valleys.

The duke of Savoy was now tired of the war; it had cost him great
fatigue and anxiety of mind, a vast number of men, and very
considerable sums of money. It had been much more tedious and bloody
than he expected, as well as more expensive than he could at first have
imagined, for he thought the plunder would have discharged the expenses
of the expedition; but in this he was mistaken, for the pope's nuncio,
the bishops, monks, and other ecclesiastics, who attended the army and
encouraged the war, sunk the greatest part of the wealth that was taken
under various pretences. For these reasons, and the death of his
duchess, of which he had just received intelligence, and fearing that
the Waldenses, by the treaties they had entered into, would become more
powerful than ever, he determined to return to Turin with his army, and
to make peace with the Waldenses.

This resolution he executed, though greatly against the will of the
ecclesiastics, who were the chief gainers, and the best pleased with
revenge. Before the articles of peace could be ratified, the duke
himself died, soon after his return to Turin; but on his death-bed he
strictly enjoined his son to perform what he intended, and to be as
favourable as possible to the Waldenses.

The duke's son, Charles Emmanuel, succeeded to the dominions of Savoy,
and gave a full ratification of peace to the Waldenses, according to the
last injunctions of his father, though the ecclesiastics did all they
could to persuade him to the contrary.

_An account of the Persecutions in Venice._

While the state of Venice was free from inquisitors, a great number of
protestants fixed their residence there, and many converts were made by
the purity of the doctrines they professed, and th