REMARKABLE VICTORY.

121

A few only of that great host escaped to carry tidings of their discomfiture and destruction to their co-religionists on the plain. The Count La Trinita, on beginning his march that morning, had vaunted to his friends that before mid-day they should see the torrent of Angrogna running red. That prediction was verified. The sun had not yet attained his noon-day height when the crystal of the Angrogna was changed into blood; but the blood that dyed it was not the blood of the poor Vaudois, but the blood of his own ferocious soldiery.

For centuries the great conflict of conscience against power continued to rage almost ceaselessly in the defiles we are now traversing. The battle ebbed and flowed. Sometimes it was conscience that triumphed, and sometimes it was power that prevailed. The struggle was signalised by victories great, marvellous, indeed we might call them miraculous, on the side of the Waldenses. An handful of men would route an army of many thousands. Often did the Piedmontese count their slain by hundreds, while scarce a man had fallen on the other side. Numbers, discipline, equipments, a rage demoniacally fanatic and murderous, all counted for nothing-all went down before the

cool, calm, unconquerable heroism of the undisciplined, and all but unarmed Waldenses! To them the ancient promise was fulfilled, “ And five of you shall chase an hundred, and an hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight.”

Nor was the spirit of devotion that was maintained all through these conflicts less admirable. Their valleys resounded not less with the voice of prayer and praise than with the din of arms. Their opponents came from carousing, from blaspheming, from murdering, to engage in battle; the Waldenses rose from their knees to fight. Their Barbes always accompanied their little army, to inspirit them by their exhortations before battle was joined, and, after victory had been won, to moderate the infliction of their much provoked and long-suffering vengeance. When the fighting men hastened to the bastion or to the defile, the pastors repaired to the mountain's summit, where, with uplifted hands, they supplicated help from the "Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle." And when they had chased their foes from their valleys, and the setting sun was tinting with glory the mountain peaks of their once more ransomed land, they would assemble in the Pra del

AN OLD WAR-SONG.

123

Tor, the gray-haired pastor, the lion-hearted man of battle, the matron, the maiden, and the young child, and, uniting their voices, they would sing the old heroic war song of Judah, while their sublime rocks would send back the thunder of their praise in louder echoes than those of the previous battle, whose triumphant issue they were celebrating.

"In Judah's land God is well known,

His name's in Israel great:

In Salem is His tabernacle,

In Zion is His seat.

There arrows of the bow He brake,

The shield, the sword, the war.
More glorious Thou than hills of prey,
More excellent art far.

Those that were stout of heart are spoil'd,
They slept their sleep outright;
And none of those their hands did find,
That were the men of might.
When Thy rebuke, O Jacob's God,

Had forth against them past,
Their horses and their chariots both

Were in a dead sleep cast."

CHAPTER VIII.

Valley of Angrogna-The Pra del Tor.

Indian Sepoys outdone by Piedmontese Papists-Martyr HeroismCataneo penetrates the Val d'Angrogna-A Strange BridleMiraculous Deliverance-Tompie de Saquet-Memorabilia of the Pass-Nemesis-The Memory of the Martyr eternal-The Pra del Tor-Its Roominess-Its Isolation-Its Desolation-Retreat of Christianity in the Dark Ages-The Barbes-Their CollegeTheology - Church Government - Missions - Martrydom of a Barbe.

BUT there were times when the battle inclined

to the side of power. This, however, rarely or never happened, unless when their enemies had recourse to arts as well as arms. The history of the Waldensian race furnishes scarce an instance in which, when they stood unitedly and bravely to their defence, God suffered them to be overcome. It was only when they gave ear to the soft persuasions and the perfidious promises of their adversaries, and were prevailed on to lay down their

INDIAN SEPOYS AND PIEDMONTESE PAPISTS. 125

arms, that the poor Vaudois were given as sheep to the slaughter. Then the Valleys became a wide shambles. Butcheries and atrocities were committed, cruel, nameless, inconceivable, horrible, such even as a fiend, one should have thought, would have blushed to be guilty of. The civilised world has lately been shocked and horrified by the cruel massacre of our countrymen and countrywomen in India. But we appeal to every reader of Leger, the Vaudois historian, whether the Romanists of Piedmont did not surpass the Sepoys of India in fertility of ingenious and hellish cruelty, and whether, in the story of the Waldenses, there are not horrible and appalling modes of shame, of torture, and of death, not to be found among the barbarities and horrors of the Sepoy atrocity, even granting that all the Indian details are literally and absolutely true. But it was these dark scenes that brought sublimely forth the martyr steadfastness of the Waldenses. They never wavered; they hesitated, no, not for an instant betwixt the alternative presented by their enemies the mass or death. They dared to die, no matter in what horrible and awful form; but to go to mass, to renounce their Saviour, they dared not. Both ways