Pays de Vaud

“ Amongst the band of patriots two men stand out as leaders. One was César de La Harpe, a noble-minded and enthusiastic Vaudois, who, however, was more concerned for his own canton than for Switzerland at large. The other was Peter Ochs, of Basel, a shrewd and able man, but ambitious, and a creature of France. La Harpe had once been taunted by a Bernese noble, who reminded him that Vaud was subject to Bern, and this he never forgot. ”

“ A few succeeded in gaining the frontiers of Switzerland.
The name of the Vaudois disappeared almost entirely from Provence, and their country relapsed into as desolate a wilderness as it was three centuries before.
History has preserved the pious words uttered by the Vaudois, who had taken refuge with their pastors in the mountain gorges. Prepared for death, and beholding in the distance the blazing ruins of their dwellings, the old and young thus exhorted each other: “The least of our cares should be for our property and our lives ”

“ This shore by its stern aspect makes a strong contrast with the shore of Vaud, but this very contrast adds to the originality and the grandeur of the landscape. The old fortress which served as Bonivard’s prison emerges at the left from the bosom of the waters, which form a graceful gulf around its walls. Opposite Chillon, a bouquet of verdure surrounded by a solid wall forms in the middle of the lake that islet on which that unknown captive, whose griefs Byron sang, used to feast his eyes. ”

“ VAUD (Ger. Waadt) , one of the cantons of south-western Switzerland. Its total area is 1255.2 sq. m. (thus ranking after the Orisons, Bern and the Valais) , of which 1056.7 sq. m. are reckoned as “productive” (forests covering 320.1 sq. m. and vineyards 24.9 sq. m., this last region being more extensive than in any other canton) . ”

“ The Vaudois who desired to avoid these penalties while they still remained staunch to their faith, did what so many Frenchmen then did—they fled across the frontier and took refuge in foreign lands. Some of the inhabitants of the French valleys went northward into Switzerland, while others passed across the mountains towards the south, and took refuge in the valley of the Pelice, where the Vaudois (p. 496) religion continued to be tolerated under the terms of the amnesty above referred to, which had been granted by the Duke of Savoy. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A thick mist having risen up from the valley, the Vaudois set out, late at night, under the guidance of Captain Poulat, a native of the district, who well knew the paths in the mountains. They climbed up on to the heights above, over icy slopes, passing across gaping crevices and along almost perpendicular rocks, admitting of their passage only in single file, sometimes dragging themselves along on their bellies, clinging to the rocks or to the tufts of grass, occasionally resting and praying, but never despairing. ”

“ And to all the sighs and burden of prayer that has gone up from the valleys these centuries past? Does He hear us at all, our God? or are the places of His dominion too wide for Him to have thought to spare for the narrow shelters where the Vaudois have tried to hide from the spoiler and oppressor? Look there, mother! see where the head of that mountain lifts itself into the skies; it is the same, always the same, silent and cold and cruel, though our forefathers were hunted across its ridges in the past years, and we are now creeping wearily towards its feet. It cares nothing. ”

“ Inaction and waiting were the hardest of trials to this girl, child of the mountain as she was.
Patience, Rénée! The time for doing will come. The blood of heroes does not flow uselessly in your young veins; ‘to do’ comes by nature to hearts like yours; ‘to wait’ is a lesson taught by care Divine.
Some stray reports penetrated even to the far recesses of this valley, the most southern of all the Vaudois dwelling-places. Some wandering folk would come from Vigne or Villaro, outcasts like themselves, whom they might question. ”

“ The valleys were not to be gained without a deadly struggle; and Arnaud knew it.
Eleven days after leaving Geneva they set foot in the first Vaudois village, Balsille, in the Vale of St. Martino. It was empty; the new inhabitants had fled down the river-bank towards Le Perrier, where a strong force of Piedmontese soldiers were forming across the valley.
But the Vaudois avoided the force they could scarcely hope to defeat. Arnaud turned to the south-westward, up the gorge of Prali, intending to reach the Valley of Luserna by the Guliano Pass, leaving Le Perrier and its garrison on his left. ”

“ The Vaudois were to be driven out; their hills should harbour heretics no more. Once and for all Savoy should be cleared from them and their doctrine. As Louis had purified the soil of France, so Victor Amadeus would purge Piedmont.
The prisons were to be emptied. The twelve thousand men, women, and children shut up in the several fortresses must go. To Switzerland, since the Swiss would receive them—but across the Alps, and out of the valleys at any cost, and any whither. ”

“ Geneva was Vaud's companion in trouble, threatened by similar dangers, and torn by similar struggles. Here also the bishop was lord-paramount, but in this case the stout-hearted burghers had wrested from him a considerable amount of self-rule. Its inveterate enemy, too, was the Duke of Savoy. But the men of Geneva loved independence far too much to submit quietly to hostile aggressiveness and encroachment; for centuries even they had kept at bay the designing nobility. ”

“ A little above the village, on a rocky plateau, are the remains of an ancient fort, near the hamlet of Sibaud, where the Vaudois performed one of their bravest exploits under Henri Arnaud, after their "Glorious Return" from exile,—near which, on a stone still pointed out, they swore fidelity to each other, and that they would die to the last man rather than abandon their country and their religion. ”

“ Martin, and Perouse, were no less than six flourishing Vaudois churches, as late as 1727, when in consequence of the exchange of territory between France and the House of Savoy, all those who remained faithful to their religion, were forced into exile.* The Vaudois were also very numerous in the valleys of Queiras, Mathias, and Meane, until entirely extirpated there by Duke Charles Emmanuel in 1603. As they were in the Marquisate of Sa-luces, in 1633, where they had many churches. ”

“ Some rumours of what was happening in the great centres of life, in Paris, and Vienna, and Turin, penetrated as far as Luserna, and echoes reached the friendly cottage on the Casina road, and finally were heard by Madeleine.
Savoy was stripped of troops; the duke had need of all his soldiers in Piedmont; the King of France was fighting with the emperor and the Dutch; and the Vaudois were massed in the cantons of Switzerland, looking with longing eyes at the hill-ranges of their native land. ”

“ Little settlements of heretics dispersed throughout Italy and Provence looked to the valleys as a place of refuge, and tacitly regarded them as the centre of their faith. At times attempts were made to suppress the sect of the Vaudois, but the nature of the country which they inhabited, their obscurity and their isolation made the difficulties of their suppression greater than the advantages to be gained from it. ”

“ Its area may be about three hundred square miles, and as so large a space is covered with mountains, it imposes considerable difficulties in the way of productive cultivation. Its population is [Pg 7] about twenty thousand persons, which at one time were almost exclusively Protestant, but the disabilities imposed on the Vaudois (of which we shall speak in another chapter) have compelled many of them to leave their native valleys for France, Germany, America, and other countries, in order to obtain a livelihood. ”

“ Among them many were married, others remained single, on account of the changes of abode then so often necessary to keep up a correspondence with distant countries; particularly (since the twelfth century) with Bohemia, Germany, Gascony, Provence, Dauphiné, Languedoc, England, Calabria, and Apulia. Our barbes visited each of those countries in turn, preaching and animating the courage of their brethren; and the money necessary for their journeys and support while absent, was furnished them from the valleys.
* The Catholics use the word Barbets, as a term of reproach for the Vaudois. ”

“ The path up the defile forms the only approach to the Pra from the valley, but it is so narrow, tortuous, and difficult, that the labours of only a few men in blocking up the pathway with rocks and stones that lie ready at hand, might at any time so barricade the approach as to render it impracticable. The extremely secluded position of the place, its natural strength and inaccessibility, and its proximity to the principal Vaudois towns and villages, caused it to be regarded from the earliest times as their principal refuge. It was their fastness, their fortress, and often their home. ”

“ One thing that struck me as a painful void was, the absence of any public monument of the past events of the wonderful history of the Vaudois. It is true, in one sense, that the whole place is a museum of relics; that every rock has some thrilling tale, every mountain slope and hill-side graven upon it the memory of saints and martyrs. Yet I confess that those who do remember what has passed, and that those who wish that generations yet to come may know the history of these valleys, may well desire that some external tokens stood out to impress the passer-by with suitable emotion. ”

“ And over and over the tale was repeated how the enemy broke and fled, leaving behind them provision, ammunition, and baggage; a welcome store for the men who came empty and poor in all things save belief in their cause and faith in their God.
Before the sun set the Savoy guard were fugitives on the mountain side, and the Vaudois stood shoulder to shoulder on the Col di St. Guliano, gazing down on the Luserna Valley, the very heart of their fatherland, the goal of their dearest hopes. ”

“ The Vaudois of the other valleys welcomed these poor exiles, and joyfully shared with them their own humble and scanty fare. They spread the table for all, and loaded it with polenta and roasted chestnuts, with the milk and butter of their mountains, to which they did not forget to add a cup of that red wine which their valleys produce. [108] Their enemies were amazed when they saw the whole community rise up as one man and depart. ”

“ Ever ready to rally round the throne of their prince the moment the hand of persecution was withdrawn, the Vaudois closed with the peace offered them. Their towns and lands were restored; their churches [Pg 202] were reopened for Protestant worship; their brethren still in prison at Turin were liberated, and the colonists of their countrymen in Germany had passports to return to their homes; and thus, after a dreary interval of three and a half years, the Valleys were again peopled with their ancient race, and resounded with their ancient songs. ”

“ A person of confidence (M. de Bais, maréchal de camp) was in consequence sent to inquire into the truth of the facts. He obtained at a meeting of the principal Vaudois, at La Tour, in March, 1656, a justificatory recital of the complaints of the valleys, a letter to the king of France, and another to M. Le Serdigences, governor of Dauphiné, with which he sought redress at the court of Turin ”

“ The village of Abries is situated close to the Alpine ridge, the summit of which marks the boundary between France and Italy. On the other side lie the valleys of Piedmont, in which the French Vaudois were accustomed to take refuge when persecution ravaged their own valleys, passing by the mountain-road we were now about to travel, as far as La Tour, in the valley of the Pelice. ”

“ Engaged in peaceful tillage, they had no means of defence, but fled to the rocks and caves, where their persecutors followed them, and being unable to reach them in their retreats, they piled up fuel at the mouths of the caverns, and so compelled the Vaudois to choose between death by suffocation or the sword. ”

“ This word Vaudois, which they first acquired from their geographical situation, they have preserved as a token of their religion in all countries, as the Vaudois of Provence, and of Bohemia, and the Walloons of the Low Countries. Since the Reformation the names of Lutheran, Calvinist, and Reformed, have served to distinguish all those who rejected the papal doctrines, and the inhabitants of our valleys, the only people who have never been affected by these opinions, have alone retained their original name of Vaudois. ”

“ From this natural wall a rock projects against the river and over the dwellings, forming quite a natural fortress. [Pg 78] It was supplied with water by three fountains. On this rock, then, the Vaudois determined to await the enemy, instead of fleeing from mountain to mountain as they had previously done. To this end they excavated, threw up entrenchments, made covered ways, and executed a series of defences in harmony with what might have been the suggestions of a skilful military engineer. ”