Questo episodio è tratto da "Recollections of seventy-two years", il libro di memorie di Lord William Warren Vernon (1834-1919). Lord Vernon era un assiduo frequentatore della Toscana perché studioso di Dante. Fu uno dei quattro sudditi britannici (un uomo e tre donne) che rimasero intrappolati nella sala di culto in occasione dei fatti del 24 marzo 1861.

È curioso il fatto che Lord Vernon non esiti a usare il termine "valdesi" per indicare gli evangelici pisani, nonostante l'episodio narrato sia avvenuto circa un mese dopo la partenza da Pisa di Pietro Salomon, quindi molto verosimilmente in un momento in cui i rapporti fra gli evangelici pisani e la chiesa valdese dovevano essere cessati del tutto.

Un ringraziamento ai proprietari dell'Hotel Victoria di Pisa, dai quali ci è stata segnalata questa interessante testimonianza.
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L'autore a 77 anniA few days after my return to Pisa, an event occurred which tended to accelerate our migration to Lucca. Agnes, who, from her Huguenot Boileau descent, was greatly in sympathy with the Italian Vaudois (Valdese) churches in Italy, occasionally asked me to take her to their services at Pisa. The freedom enjoyed by these Italian Protestants under the new régime of the Kingdom of all Italy had enraged the Roman Catholic Hierarchy to the highest pitch of resentment, and they had brought over to Pisa a fiery preacher, a sort of Torquemada, who in all his sermons excited the populace to put down these heretical services by violence.
On Sunday, March 24th, we heard that a sermon was to be preached in the Protestant church by the ex-prior of a rich monastery, who had become a Protestant minister. We were very anxious to hear him, and accordingly went thither; but the crowds in all the neighbouring streets and fields (the little church was on the outskirts of the town) looked so menacing, that I determined to take Agnes home again, and very foolishly returned to the church myself. I then heard that a serious riot had taken place an hour before. A Protestant father and mother were taking their baby to be baptized at the Protestant church, when they were suddenly attacked by a furious mob, one of the ring-leaders of which was the very cook, Eugenio, whom I had discharged. They seized the carriage and forcibly conveyed both parents and child to the Baptistery, where it (the baby) was baptized a Roman Catholic. When I reached the Protestant church, it was ominously surrounded by an angry croud, among whom I saw Eugenio again and again exercising his malevolent influence on them. However, the ex-prior made his appearance and, after due preliminaries, commenced his sermon. He had not got very far with it, when all of a sudden a shower of great stones was discharged at the windows, demolishing every pane of glass in the building. We ran to the windows, and closed the outer shutters, upon which stones continued to thunder with but little intermission. Besides myself, there were three English ladies in a congregation of about fifty persons.
Among the congregation was Count Guicciardini, who was one of the principal members of the Italian Protestant church. One or two of the leading men in the congregation now came to me, and asked me if I would mind speaking from one of the windows and telling the gendarmerie that there were four British subjects in the building, and that we demanded protection. I instantly did what they asked me, but the moment I had opened the shutter, the captain of the carabinieri called out to me to put in my head and shut up. At that moment I saw two priests beckon the mob forward, and a shower of stones rattled against the shutter at the exact spot where my head had been. Meanwhile Agnes, seriously alarmed about me, had sent our coachman and footman to the Syndic of Pisa, and they spoke so persistently and vigorously that at last they got him to take action, and he somewhat hesitatingly telegraphed to Cavour. The answer came back promptly and decisively, ordering him at once to call out the National Guard and put down the riot by main force. We could hear the drums beating the générale, and at last, after an imprisonment of three hours, we were gratified and relieved to see 500 National Guard marching to deliver us. The captain of the carabinieri had guaranteed to get us four English out safely, but we saw such despair in the faces of the Italian congregation that we, one and all, refused to leave until all could do so together. This was effected by the National Guards. It was the first time, since the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, that they had been called out, and the unanimity with which they obeyed the summons was most satisfactory. On the following day the commandant of the National Guards at Pisa, F. Michelozzi, issued an Order of the Day, communicating a letter to him from the Prefect of Pisa, giving high commendation to the troops for the way they had restored order, which had been gravely perturbed by persons, foes to real liberty, who, under the colour of an insensate and hypocritical simulated religious zeal, had been bought with the money of "Judas traitors."
The effects of this riot were so great, and religious animosities in Pisa were so powerfully aroused, that we were advised not to delay too long in moving to the villa we had taken near Lucca. Not long after our arrival at Villa Sardi, I was summoned before the magistrates at Lucca, to give evidence upon any details of the recent riot that I had witnessed. I soon found that they were examining me as to what I had seen of Eugenio as one of the ringleaders of the riot. I tried not to lean too hardly against him; but unfortunately the general evidence was too strong, and he was sentenced to eight years' penal servitude. At the end of a year, King Victor Emmanuel happening to pass through Pisa, Eugenio's wife got leave to present herself before him. She threw herself at the King's feet with many lamentations, and she obtained a free pardon for her husband. Nine years afterwards, in February 1870, I had joined Agnes and my sister Louisa at the Hotel Victoria at Pisa, where they had preceded me by some weeks. The next day I noticed that Eugenio was continually in front of the hotel. Then I found that both Agnes and Louisa professed to be much bored with Pisa, and begged me to take them to Florence. I was nothing loath, for I hated Pisa and adored Florence; but, when we had established ourselves at the Hotel dell'Arno, Agnes informed me that old Piegaja had been to her, begging her on behalf of the Pisa police to get me away, as Eugenio was determined to put a knife into me. I do not know why he did not follow me to Florence for this praiseworthy object, but, somehow of other, he never did, nor did I ever hear anything more about him.

 

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