They preserved their peculiar beliefs and ritual, and after three centuries numbered about 4000 souls.

Nearly the whole of these, it seems, were exterminated by sword, fire, famine, torture, noisome imprisonment, and hurling from the summits of high cliffs.

A few of the survivors were sent to work upon the Spanish galleys.

Some women and children were sold into slavery.

At Locarno, on the Lago Maggiore, a Protestant community of nearly 300 persons was driven into exile in 1555; and at Venice, in 1560-7, a small sect, holding reformed opinions, suffered punishment of a peculiar kind.