[Illustration]
The Vaudois troops (if the word ‘troops’ can be applied to the nine
hundred followers of Henri Arnaud) crossed Lake Leman on the 18th of
August, and at once pressed southwards through La Chablais and Faucigny.
They were already on the enemy’s ground, or rather in the dominions of
the Duke of Savoy, but their own country lay beyond the huge shoulders
of Mont Blanc and Mont Cenis; and they had many weary leagues to win
before they could look upon their enterprise as fairly begun. They had
no
[Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF THE WALDENSIAN VALLEYS.]
quarrel with the towns of Upper Savoy; all they asked was free passage,
and to be allowed to purchase food--a demand not always granted.
At Boëge they met with the first resistance; and here Arnaud made his
first stroke of generalship. He seized several gentlemen as hostages,
and made one of them write letters to the mayors of the towns of Vin,
St. Joyre, and Cluse, to the effect that the Vaudois ‘had requested
hostages to accompany them, to give an account of their conduct, which
should be in all respects honest and regular; that they wished to pay
for everything they demanded, and to go peaceably on their way.’ The
mayors were advised ‘not to sound the tocsin nor to alarm the country,
and to withdraw their people, if they were already under arms.’
These letters, signed by all the hostages, names well known and honoured
in Savoy, had an excellent effect; and the little army pressed on up the
Valley of the Arve, to gain, if possible, the Bridge of Sallenches,
before the news of their approach could give opportunity for it to be
fortified against them.
Just as they came down the Maglan road, they saw a horseman galloping
towards the town to give the alarm. Sallenches being the chief town of
Faucigny, there, if anywhere, their passage would be disputed, and it
was of the utmost importance to make what speed they might, that the
town might be taken unawares.
Within a hundred paces of the great wooden bridge they halted, putting
themselves in their best battle-array. A regular army corps might have
smiled to see their uneven ranks, their curious collection of weapons,
their queer attempts at soldierly equipment. But a second glance at
those lines of steadfast faces, a further thought of what those steady
eyes, those firm lips, and eager looks must mean, would have put an end
to smiling. The nine hundred men drawn up before the Bridge of
Sallenches were no fitting mark for scoffing--so much at least was
certain. The townsmen hoped to gain time by parleying. They sent
deputies and messengers; and meanwhile were getting the guard under
arms.
Arnaud divined the meaning of their delay. He looked carefully at the
bridge, laden as it was with houses, and flanked by towers which in
half-an-hour would be filled with soldiers. He looked along the ranks of
his men. _He_ could read the meaning of those steadfast faces! The word
was given. There was a rush forward. Swift and silent--the mountaineers
had crossed the bridge. Sallenches was won.
The passage of Sallenches, rather, for they dared not loiter in the
town. They hurried on to Cablau, where, weary and hungry, and soaked
with the heavy rain, they laid down to rest. But they raised thankful
hearts in gratitude to God that night.
The chronicler of their journey writes: ‘These poor people blessed God
that they had marched so far successfully, without fighting or loss of
men, over bridges and through defiles where a few courageous defenders
could have done them irreparable injury, and they were grateful for a
peaceful night after so much fatigue and anxiety. Rest was very
necessary, for they were about to face difficulties of which the
prospect might have shaken the courage of persons quite unfatigued and
free from anxiety; how much more men who for a number of days and nights
had known no rest or sleep but what they could enjoy during their brief
halts, not to mention the mental disquietude which scarcely allowed them
to close their eyes! Now they had reached the foot of the most gigantic
of the Alps, whose heads are hoary with eternal snows, and whose
precipitous sides are scored by a few perilous paths by which no
traveller can come without danger. The Vaudois had to traverse the
forests of the lower grounds, to clamber rocks surmounted with silver
snows, hollowed out with dazzling glaciers and torrent waterfalls; they
came not into this sublime scenery to admire the works of God, but to
shun men and cities, to breathe free air--as did the chamois bounding on
the heights above them, or the eagle that soared over their heads. They
had to cross numerous spurs and ranges of the hills, lateral branches of
the principal chain; to do this it was necessary to climb from the
bottom of one valley, only to descend again into the next. Often they
could find nothing to maintain them but milk and cheese and the frozen
water of the mountains. The rain frequently beat upon their backs, bent
with fatigue; and their suffering feet slipped upon the stones and in
the stony ravines. Late at night they would perhaps reach shepherds’
huts, barren and cold, where they would make fires by unroofing the
hovels for fuel; a plan that warmed them indeed, but exposed them to the
fury of the elements. And this was their daily experience for eight
days. But Arnaud, the zealous and renowned leader of the little troop,
restored, by his holy and excellent exhortations, the courage of those
who followed him. He spared himself least of all. His foot took the most
difficult path, his platter was the last to be filled. And in the
morning and at the night-falling he, in the name of his little flock,
asked for them the strength and confidence of God.’
Such were the first steps of the ‘Glorious Return.’