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. We read of five persons by name, who, after being condemned by the Holy Office, were taken at night from their dungeons to the Porto del Lido beyond the Due Castelli, and there set upon a plank between two gondolas. The gondolas rowed asunder; and one by one the martyrs fell and perished in the waters.[105] [Footnote 101: It is singular that only one contemporary writes from Rome about Bruno's execution in 1600; whence, I think, we may infer that such events were too common to excite much attention.] [Footnote 102: The main facts about these men may be found in Cantu's _Gli Eretici d'Italia_, vol. ii. This work is written in no spirit of sympathy with Reformers. But it is superior in learning and impartiality to McCrie's.] [Footnote 103: For the repressive measures used at Lucca, see _Archivio Storico_, vol. x. pp. 162-185. They include the prohibition of books, regulation of the religious observances of Lucchese citizens abroad in France or Flanders, and proscription of certain heretics, with whom all intercourse was forbidden.] [Footnote 104: An eye-witness gives a heart-rending account of these persecutions: sixty thrown from the tower of Guardia, eighty-eight butchered like beasts in one day at Montalto, seven burned alive, one hundred old women tortured and then slaughtered. _Arch. Stor._, vol. ix. pp. 193-195.]