We have now the agreeable task of recording the bounties of the United Provinces, ever celebrated for their philanthropy. No sooner had they received information of the disaster in the valleys, than they wrote to the courts of England, France, and Turin, as well as to the Swiss cantons, and deputed M. Van Ommeren, a deputy of the States General, to confer with the Swiss cantons, and to carry their joint complaints to the Duke of Savoy. In the mean while a general fast, and the order for collections in every town and village, seconded the zeal of the government, and Amsterdam was distinguished by its generous contributions, which furnished our ancestors with the means of rebuilding their houses, and churches, and recultivating their land.

From the Swiss cantons M. Van Ommeren went to Geneva, to confer with the British envoys, Morland, Pell, and Douning; and thence to Paris, where he urged the king to take into consideration the complaints of the Vaudois against the treaty of Pignerol, just concluded, and in which he had appeared in the character of a mediator, by means of his minister M. Servient. A person of confidence (M. de Bais, marÉchal de camp) was in consequence sent to inquire into the truth of the facts. He obtained at a meeting of the principal Vaudois, at La Tour, in March, 1656, a justificatory recital of the complaints of the valleys, a letter to the king of France, and another to M. Le Serdigences, governor of DauphinÉ, with which he sought redress at the court of Turin; but his object was defeated by the agents of the Propaganda, who so contrived to disguise the truth, that he seemed suddenly to have lost all that insight into the affairs of the Vaudois, which he had obtained by his visit to the valleys. The king of France was, however, so touched by the letter of the Vaudois that he was about again to intercede, when the intrigues of the same agents had the effect of convincing him that the statements of the Vaudois were without foundation.