James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.
April 17
On the Late Massacre in Piedmont
By John Milton (1608–1674)
The inhabitants of certain Piedmontese valleys had long held tenets and forms of worship very like those favored by the German reformers. In January, 1655, a sudden determination was taken by the Turin government to make them conform to another form of worship and belief or to quit the country, under pain of death. They sent a humble remonstrance to the Court of Turin, the remonstrance was unheeded, and on April 17, 1655, the soldiers were let loose upon the peaceful population, whom they massacred with every circumstance of brutality.
AVENGE, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them, who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones,
