e treated with such severity, that
several died under the tortures; one Charlin, in particular, was so
cruelly used, that his belly burst, his bowels came out, and he expired
in the greatest agonies. These barbarities, however, did not answer the
purposes for which they were intended; for those who remained alive
after the rack, and those who had not felt the rack, remained equally
constant in their faith, and boldly declared, that no tortures of body,
or terrors of mind, should ever induce them to renounce their God, or
Several were then, by the cardinal's order, stripped stark naked, and
whipped to death with iron rods; and some were hacked to pieces with
large knives; others were thrown down from the top of a large tower, and
many were covered over with pitch, and burnt alive.
One of the monks who attended the cardinal, being naturally of a savage
and cruel disposition, requested of him that he might shed some of the
blood of these poor people with his own hands; when his request being
granted, the barbarous man took a large sharp knife, and cut the throats
of fourscore men, women, and children, with as little remorse as a
butcher would have killed so many sheep. Every one of these bodies were
then ordered to be quartered, the quarters placed upon stakes, and then
fixed in different parts of the country, within a circuit of 30 miles.
The four principal men of La Garde were hanged, and the clergyman was
thrown from the top of his church steeple. He was terribly mangled, but
not quite killed by the fall; at which time the viceroy passing by,
said, is the dog yet living? Take him up, and give him to the hogs,
when, brutal as this sentence may appear, it was executed accordingly.
Sixty women were racked so violently, that the cords pierced their arms
and legs quite to the bone; when, being remanded to prison, their wounds
mortified, and they died in the most miserable manner. Many others were
put to death by various cruel means; and if any Roman catholic, more
compassionate than the rest, interceded for any of the reformed, he was
immediately apprehended, and shared the same fate as a favourer of
The viceroy being obliged to march back to Naples, on some affairs of
moment which required his presence, and the cardinal being recalled to
Rome, the marquis of Butane was ordered to put the finishing stroke to
what they had begun; which he at length effected, by acting with such
barbarous rigour, that there was not a single person of the reformed
religion left living in all Calabria.
Thus were a great number of inoffensive and harmless people deprived of
their possessions, robbed of their property, driven from their homes,
and, at length, murdered by various means, only because they would not
sacrifice their consciences to the superstitions of others, embrace
idolatrous doctrines which they abhorred, and accept of teachers whom
they could not believe. Tyranny is of three kinds, viz., that which
enslaves the person, that which seizes the property, and that which
prescribes and dictates to the mind. The two first sorts may be termed
civil tyranny, and have been practised by arbitrary sovereigns in all
ages, who have delighted in tormenting the persons, and stealing the
properties of their unhappy subjects. But the third sort, viz.
prescribing and dictating to the mind, may be called ecclesiastical
tyranny: and this is the worst kind of tyranny, as it includes the other
two sorts; for the Romish clergy not only do torture the bodies and
seize the effects of those they persecute, but take the lives, torment
the minds, and, if possible, would tyrannize over the souls of the
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