Three days after this event, the Marquis di Pianezza, ashamed of such ill success, sent another message to Rora, enjoining every one to go to mass within twenty-four hours, if they wished to avoid immediate sentence of death, and prevent their lands being laid waste, and their houses razed to the ground.
Rather death than the mass, was the unanimous reply of the inhabitants.
It may well be imagined that the Marquis was not satisfied with it. He now ordered 10,000 men to march to the reduction of Rora, and divided them into three corps, one of which took the road from Luzerne, and the others by Bagnol and Villar. Janavel hesitated not to attack the last of these divisions, and succeeded in killing great numbers, when being informed that the other divisions had gained the post where the twenty-five families of Rora had taken refuge, and seeing himself overcome by numbers, he escaped with his brave companions, into Val Queiras, taking with him his son, who was only seven years old.
It is needless to harrow the feelings of my readers with a detail of the dreadful fate of Rora; suffice it to say, that none of the horrid tortures to which their countrymen were condemned on the 24th of April, were omitted here; nearly all the victims were old or infirm, women, and children. And lest any stragglers should ever return to their once beautiful home, the houses were all burnt, and no vestige of cultivation left around them.
Yet even this was not enough to glut the vengeance of Pianezza; Janavel had escaped--and the Marquis did not hesitate to use the most unworthy means of getting him into his power. He wrote to him, urging him to renounce his heresy, as the only means of obtaining mercy for himself, and his wife, and his daughters, who had been taken prisoners. In case of non compliance, he was threatened that they should be condemned to the flames, and that so high a price should be put on his head, that he could not escape; in case of his capture no torture should be spared to punish his rebellion. Janavel's simple reply was, that "no tortures were horrible enough to induce him to abjure his faith, which the threats of the Marquis only served to confirm; and as to my wife and daughters," he adds, "Providence will not abandon them; if you are permitted to put them to death, the flames will only destroy their bodies, while their pure souls will soon accuse you before the throne of the God of the universe."
