On the Late Massacre in Piedmont

Also known as Milton’s “Sonnet 18,” “On the Late Massacre at Piedmont” has been described by the famous essayist William Hazlitt as filled with “prophetic fury.” The 14-line poem fuses the political with the personal and is a fine example of form mirroring content. Its enjambed lines, abrupt rhythms, and precise use of assonance captures the violence indicated in the title—the slaughter of civilians in Piedmont in April 1655—and the poet’s rage at the atrocity. Passionate and grim in tone, the sonnet is one of 24 written by Milton and distinguished in his oeuvre by its implacable, forceful voice. It is a direct petition for God to avenge the slain Waldensians, a peaceful proto-Protestant community who were militarily victimized on the orders of the French Catholic Duke of Savoy. As befits a sonnet, the mood of the poem turns near the end, its cry for vengeance giving rise to a more hopeful mood.

The poem is also notable because instead of the more common Italian and Shakespearean sonnet forms, it draws on the original Petrarchan rhyme scheme. Structured as one passage, divided internally into an octet (eight-line stanza) and a sestet (concluding six-line stanza), the sonnet follows a ABBAABBA CDCDCD rhyme scheme.

Poet Biography

Known as one the greatest English poets, John Milton is most identified with his wide-reaching works, the epic poem Paradise Lost (1667), and its sequel Paradise Regained (1671). The blank-verse poems are still regarded as the finest epics written in English. However, Milton was also a formidable poet in other forms (such as the sonnet and the elegy) and was a prolific pamphleteer, a languages scholar, and a politician. A renaissance man in spirit, Milton was born in 1608 to parents from the emergent middle class. His father, the composer John Milton, was excommunicated from the family by his own Catholic father for adopting Protestantism. Milton inherited his father’s independent spirit and Protestant beliefs, going on to critique even the antiquated Latin syllabus at his college, Cambridge. After completing his Master of Arts at Cambridge in 1632, Milton still independently studied Latin, Greek, Spanish, and other languages, building his reputation as a multilinguist. He also began publishing his views on free speech and belief in rationalism as well as masques (plays) like Comus (1634). During the 1630s and 1640s, he travelled to Europe often, meeting such radical thinkers and scientists as the imprisoned Galileo Galilei, pronounced a heretic by the Catholic Church for his discovery that the earth revolved around the sun. Such encounters strengthened Milton’s opposition to the tyranny of the Holy Roman Empire and his belief in the need for radical reform. Around the same time, England became more immersed in Civil War.

After Milton returned to England in 1639, he began publishing pamphlets in support of a political reformation and other radical changes, including the need for press freedom and more relaxed divorce laws. Milton especially espoused the need for republican rule (rule by the people) rather than kingly authority. To support himself, he began a career as a schoolmaster. In 1642, Milton married 17-year-old Mary Powell, 16 years his junior. Though the marriage was initially troubled, the couple went onto have six children. The English Civil War ended with the execution of King Charles I and the establishment of the Commonwealth, a parliamentary structure headed by the revolutionary Oliver Cromwell. Milton’s star rose in prominence, with Cromwell appointing him his Secretary for Foreign Tongues in 1649. Milton was reputedly Cromwell’s closest advisor; however, Milton was ambiguous about Cromwell’s dictatorial tendencies as well as Cromwell’s notion of organizing an armed Protestant front against the Catholic Church. It was during Milton’s stint as Secretary of State that he learned of the Piedmont massacre and wrote to several heads of state condemning the incident. The language of those missives was by necessity diplomatic, yet in “Sonnet 18,” Milton gives full vent to his rage against the atrocity. Though the sonnet was written around 1655, the year of the massacre, it was published only in 1673.

Milton continued to write poetry at the height of his political career, but he was beset with a new and fast-growing problem: vision loss. By 1652, the poet was almost completely blind, now dictating his verse to others. In 1658, Cromwell was assassinated, the Commonwealth began to weaken, and there arose a clamor to restore the monarchy. After the Restoration in 1600, Milton went into hiding to protect himself. He was briefly imprisoned afterwards, gaining pardon by the intervention of his friend, the poet Andrew Marvell. All throughout, he held to free thought and speech.

His political star on the wane, Milton composed the best works of his life: Paradise Lost was published from 1658 to 1667, immediately creating an impact in literary circles. His last two works, Paradise Regained and Samson Agonistes, were published together in 1671. The works redounded to his formidable literary reputation, but his health was failing. The poet died in London in 1674. Among his great admirers was the poet John Dryden, who first called Milton the “poet of the sublime” in 1677.

Poem Text

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughter'd saints, whose bones

      Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold,

      Ev'n them who kept thy truth so pure of old,

      When all our fathers worshipp'd stocks and stones;

Forget not: in thy book record their groans

      Who were thy sheep and in their ancient fold

      Slain by the bloody Piemontese that roll'd

      Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans

The vales redoubl'd to the hills, and they

      To Heav'n. Their martyr'd blood and ashes sow

      O'er all th' Italian fields where still doth sway

The triple tyrant; that from these may grow

      A hundred-fold, who having learnt thy way

Early may fly the Babylonian woe.

Milton, John. “On the Late Massacre at Piedmont.” Circa 1655. Poetry Foundation.

Summary

The poem begins with a first-person speaker addressing God directly, asking him to avenge his devoted followers, against whom great violence has been recently committed. The victims, the Waldensians or Vaudois, are a small community of excommunicated proto-Protestants who lived in the Piedmont valley at the foot of the Italian Alps. The cold mountains are still covered with the “bones” (Line 1) or corpses of this innocent community, implying the massacre’s freshness (as indicated by the “late” of the sonnet’s title). The speaker exhorts God not to forget these faithful, peace-loving devotees, who had followed a simple, pure form of Christianity from ancient times, when the speaker’s own forefathers were still worshipping stones or following pagan religions. The purity and longevity of their faith makes the Waldensians’s death even more poignant in the eyes of the speaker.

The speaker demands God record this injustice in his books, implying God should take note of the travesty so it may be punished come Judgement Day. These devout were like “sheep” (Line 6) following God the shepherd, and the manner of their execution was particularly risible: They were forced up the Alps from their valley home and slaughtered en masse by Piemontese soldiers, sent by the French Catholic Duke of Savoy. Mothers and their babies were tied to rocks and rolled down the hills. The cries of the dying echoed through the hills and valleys, thus doubled, and must have reached the Heavens. God cannot ignore those terrible cries.

Yet, not all is lost. From Line 10, the speaker’s bleak, vengeful mood shifts a little, and he notes that the blood and ashes of the slain saints covers the Italian hillside, in a country where the “triple tyrant” (Line 12), or the Catholic Pope, still reigns. The murders were ordered by the Catholic Church. The speaker wishes that from these martyr’s blood and ashes may grow new generations hundredfold so that their ancient faith thrives despite their persecution by the Catholic Church. Every drop of their spilled blood is fertile and will germinate new martyrs. In other words, the Waldensian spirit cannot be defeated by mortal violence; they will persist and spread all over the Catholic lands. Just like the Jewish faith endures even though the Babylonians in the Bible destroyed their temples, the faith of the Waldensians will endure though the temples of their bodies have been plundered.