The Long Walk Home to the Valleys

In February 1687, Duke Victor Amadeus II of Piedmont ordered every Waldensian in his territory to convert to Catholicism or leave. Soldiers swept through the alpine valleys these believers had called home for five centuries. Families were torn apart. Thousands perished in prison camps. The survivors scattered across Switzerland — a people fed, as the psalmist wrote, on the bread of tears, made a source of contention to their neighbors.…