had it not seemed that the angels of heaven had protected them, that the very "stars had fought for them in their courses, and could they not still expect miraculous deliverance? A French writer, in contemplating their condition, says, "We know not in all history a more striking illustration of the phrase, 'Nothing is impossible to him that believeth.' Faith transformed them into heroes, and rendered them invincible." Each man knew that defeat now meant death for each. Yet no man spoke of capitulation. The Marquis de Fenguieres, having arranged all his positions for an overwhelming attack, again sent overtures to them. "What is your demand?" asked the Vaudois of the messenger. 66 That you surrender at once," was the reply; "if you do so, you shall be accorded passports to a foreign country, and five hundred louis d'or each; if you do not you must all perish." "That shall be as the Lord will," was their answer. The commander wrote to Arnaud again, offering favorable terms, but declaring that if they were declined every man taken alive should be hanged. Arnaud wrote back: "We are not under your French king; he is not master of this country; we can make no treaty with your messieurs; we are in the heritage that our fathers have possessed in all times, and we shall, by the help of the Lord God of armies, live and die here, should there remain only ten men of us. If your cannon fire, our rocks will not be frightened, and we know how to return your fire." That very night the Vaudois made a sortie, slaying a number of the enemy. The marquis ordered his guns to be pointed on Mont Guigneverte, his most formidable position, and hung out a white flag, and soon after a red one, to signify that there would be no hope after he began to fire. Finally, on May 14, the guns began to play destructively upon the Vaudois' position; it had been gallantly held for nearly seven months, but the rocky defenses were now crumbling under powerful artillery. The assailing columns attacked the Vaudois at three points, "pouring upon us," says Arnaud, "an incessant hail-storm, so thick that, after a hundred thousand shot, we had to abandon our lowest terrace." It was no longer tenable, but they ascended to a higher one, under protection of a thick mist, which saved them from the fire of a redoubt, which might have swept them to destruction. They fought on till nightfall, but it was now seen that the

stronghold would be battered into ruins and overwhelmed; they must escape or be lost. How to escape was the question. They were encompassed by tens of thousands of troops and hostile peasants; all known passes were occupied by the enemy; if seen the next day attempting to escape, their little troop could be instantly annihilated. "The night fires of the enemy," writes Arnaud, "were blazing all around; the obstacles seemed invincible. In fine, we saw that the hand of God could alone deCommitting ourselves to him, we learned very soon that he who had rescued us from so many dangers had now led us into this extremity only the better to show in what manner he could save us." One of their number was a native of this very region; he reported to them that he knew a solitary and very perilous path through which he might be able to guide them. The enemy's watch-fires enabled him to see from the Balsille that there was no other outlet for them. "It was," says the history, "along a frightful precipice." But how were they to get out of the Balsille and reach it, under the universal fire which they might expect from the enemy? "Precisely," says Arnaud, "at the moment which seemed fatal with a cruel and appalling death, a thick mist (such is common in these mountains) fell upon them," and rendered their movements invisible to the enemy. They marched silently out of the Balsille, under their mountain guide, Captain Paulat—“under the protection," continues Arnaud, "of heaven and the guidance of this brave captain." Stealthily they crept along the precipice of the ravine, " on hands and knees, taking hold of shrubs to rest at moments and take breath; those in front carefully feeling the way with feet and hands to be sure of safe footing." Paulat had to order them to take off their shoes, lest the enemy's outposts should hear them, for they had to pass close by some of these. A slight noise actually brought back the challenge of a sentinel, "Who goes there?" It was a critical moment for them; they maintained breathless silence, and the sentinel, hearing no reply, supposed he had deceived himself, and did not repeat his qui vive. They pressed forward, scaling a part of the Guigneverte, and drawing toward Salsethe friendly mist still covering them until ten o'clock in the morning, when they were out of danger. They had encountered an outpost of the enemy on a slope of the Guigneverte, but

the alarmed soldiers fled in all haste to their main force; for no one knew what to make of them, all supposing the Vaudois to be hermetically sealed up and doomed in the Balsille. Unutterable was the mortification of the French when, at the rising of the mist, they approached the Balsille to take it, and found that their expected prey had all escaped. "Looking," says Smiles, "across the valley, far off, they saw the fugitives thrown into relief by the snow, amid which they marched like ants, apparently making for the mass of the central Alps." The enemy had written to the city of Pignerol that they might look there for the Vaudois as prisoners to be hanged the next day; the expectant people saw arrive instead only wagons loaded with wounded and dying.

This was the grand crisis of the Glorieuse Rentrée-its climax. After many fights in most of the valleys, after repeatedly hurling back the combined forces of Italy and France from the Balsille, through long months, they still stood triumphant on their mountain tops.

But

No man of them could now doubt that the God of armies was leading them, and would lead them, however mysteriously, to a successful issue. And yet they could discern no signs of that issue. Their country was still thronged with armed enemies. They themselves were but a handful-though apparently invincible. What next? was the anxious question. that belonged to the responsibility of their Divine Commander. They must leave it to him; what they had to do was still to pray, march, and fight. They go on, mounting precipices by steps which they cut in the hard snow. On the summit of Mont Galmon they pause for rest, review their forces, and, sending their sick and wounded under care of a surgeon to a secret shelter, descend hastily into concealment in the woods of Serrelemi to await the night. Another thick mist providentially covering them, they resume their march, and attain a height where they expected to find water with which to boil their food, for they have fasted long; but there is none there. "Heaven," says Arnaud, "seeing our need, compassionately sent us rain." The next day, having early extinguished their fires that the enemy might not discover them, they advance to Prajet, where they conceal themselves in deserted barns for rest, but without daring to make fires; there, after prayer by Arnaud, a spy is

sent out to see if troops are near; he finds them at Rodaret. Another fog favoring them, they hasten forward; at intervals, when it breaks, they lie extended on the earth till it thickens again, and thus make their way to Fayet by midnight, having "suffered incredible pains, creeping along dangerous precipices, and holding on to bushes to prevent falls into the abysses."

They afterward descended into the village of Rüa, where they found the enemy with all the inhabitants intrenched in the church cemetery. Arnaud led an attack upon them, slaying fifty-seven, taking their commander, the Sieur de Vignaux, and three lieutenants, prisoners, and burning down the village. The Vaudois supplied themselves here abundantly with cattle, and marched on to the mountain of Angrogone. There, with no apparent end to their perplexities and conflicts, but equally no end to their resolution, astonishing news reached them. The God in whom alone they trusted had confounded all their enemies. The two sovereigns who had combined to exterminate them, given up to "judicial blindness," had quarreled, and had declared war against each other. A strange, an incredible providence it at first seemed, even to these praying heroes, whose faith, like their valor, had hitherto seemed superior to any surprise. Now messages were sent from each hostile party, entreating their alliance and aid. They took sides with their own sovereign, badly as he had treated them. The Italian officers were soon with them, hearty in congratulations and friendship. The remainder of their fighting was side by side with their late Italian foes, against the French, and it was not long before they swept the latter out of all their mountains. Arnaud hastened down into Italy, to the camp of his sovereign, where he was received with honors. All the Vaudois prisoners, both in the mountains and below, were set free and rejoined their brethren to fight the French; "and our joy was redoubled," says the history, "when one of them brought word that, among other kind things said to them by the duke, he assured them that henceforth they might preach their faith every-where, even in his capital of Turin." "It is the work of God," exclaimed Arnaud; "to him alone be the glory!" "Eight persons out of every ten who hear these surprising and miraculous things will," he later wrote, "consider them as fables and tales of the old times."

A remarkable historic coincidence had been taking place. William of Orange, the friend of these heroes, had ascended the throne of England, and, while they were confounding with miracles of faith and valor the troops of the royal author of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in these mountain heights, their Huguenot brethren, refugees from France, led by Marshal Schomberg, himself a refugee, were fighting for William, in Ireland, against the attempt of Louis XIV. to restore the Stuarts and Popery in England. On the very day in which Arnaud stood in the camp of his reconciled sovereign, the representative of his delivered people, the battle of the Boyne was fought, July 1, and the hopes of the Stuart dynasty extinguished forever.

On July 5 Arnaud was in the capital, Turin, and wrote to a friend in Switzerland: "His royal highness gives us complete liberty, and desires only the peace of the country. We wish, therefore, all our people immediately to return. Great miracles has God wrought for us in the last ten months. None but he alone knows, or ever can know, the struggles we have had, the horrible combats; but our enemies have failed; when they supposed we were theirs, the great God of armies has always given us the victory. We have not lost thirty men in these battles; our enemies have lost about ten thousand."

Their friends and most of the outer world had known little or nothing of their fate during much of the time, but supposed they must perish. One of them, who had kept a journal of their movements, had been captured and sent to prison in Turin. His journal was secretly conveyed to Switzerland, and excited such enthusiasm that an army of a thousand Protestants, ambitious to share in their heroic deeds, was soon moving to fight its way to them in the mountains; but it failed, and was not

needed.

The victorious mountaineers had sustained at least eighteen distinct attacks. But three hundred and sixty-seven of them held the Balsille during the eight months' siege, "shut in," says Arnaud, "by ten thousand French and twelve thousand Piedmontese, living on little bread and herbs," hurling back assault after assault, and at last escaping, "when the enemy had provided executioners and mules loaded with cords in order to hang them." But the trial was over; the Glorieuse Rentrée was accom