themselves, and skirmished
with the troops; and many, with their families, fled to the mountains.
In one village they cruelly tormented 150 women and children after the
men were fled, beheading the women, and dashing out the brains of the
children. In the towns of Villaro and Bobbio, most of those who refused
to go to mass, who were upwards of fifteen years of age, they crucified
with their heads downwards; and the greatest number of those who were
under that age were strangled."

Sarah Rastignole des Vignes, a woman of 60 years of age, being seized by
some soldiers, they ordered her to say a prayer to some saints, which
she refusing, they thrust a sickle into her belly, ripped her up, and
then cut off her head.

Martha Constantine, a handsome young woman, was treated with great
indecency and cruelty by several of the troops, who first ravished, and
then killed her, by cutting off her breasts. These they fried, and set
before some of their comrades, who ate them without knowing what they
were. When they had done eating, the others told them what they had made
a meal of, in consequence of which a quarrel ensued, swords were drawn,
and a battle took place. Several were killed in the fray, the greater
part of whom were those concerned in the horrid massacre of the woman,
and who had practised such an inhuman deception on their companions.

Some of the soldiers seized a man of Thrassiniere, and ran the points of
their swords through his ears, and through his feet. They then tore off
the nails of his fingers and toes with red-hot pincers, tied him to the
tail of an ass, and dragged him about the streets; and, finally fastened
a cord round his head, which they twisted with a stick in so violent a
manner as to wring it from his body.

Peter Symonds, a protestant, of about eighty years of age, was tied neck
and heels, and then thrown down a precipice. In the fall the branch of a
tree caught hold of the ropes that fastened him, and suspended him in
the midway, so that he languished for several days, and at length
miserably perished of hunger.

Esay Garcino, refusing to renounce his religion, was cut into small
pieces; the soldiers, in ridicule, saying, they had minced him. A woman,
named Armand, had every limb separated from each other, and then the
respective parts were hung upon a hedge. Two old women were ripped open,
and then left in the fields upon the snow where they perished; and a
very old woman, who was deformed, h