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.’
CHAPTER XII.
THE Vaudois had lived from generation to generation a life described by a modern writer as one of absolute seclusion, ‘without thought or forethought of foreign help or parsimonious store;’ drinking draughts from their own grape-clusters and saving of last year’s harvest only seed enough for the next. They had the serenity given them by God and by Nature, with thanks for the good and submission for the evil; they persisted through better and worse in their fathers’ ways, in the use of their fathers’ tools, and in holding to their fathers’ fields as faithfully as the trees to their roots or the lichens to their rocks.