"Beneath this Tomb lies
HENRI ARNAUD,
Pastor and also Military Commander of the Piedmontese Vaudois."
In the centre of the monument—
"Thou seest here the ashes of Arnaud, but his achievements, labours, and undaunted courage none can depict. The son of Jesse combats alone thousands of foreigners; alone he terrifies their camp and leader. He died September 8th, 1721, aged lxxx."
FOOTNOTES:
[E] A modern traveller thus graphically describes the place as he saw it in 1854:—"And now came in view the glorious Balsille, springing from the bed of the Germanasca, and its successive wooded aiguilles rising like pinnacles up the steep roof of a Gothic cathedral.... Around it gape fearful ravines, each with its headlong torrent, separating it from the grand heights of the d'Albergian on the north, and the mount Guignivert on the south; whilst it is attached to the summit of the Col du Pis on the west. The peaks of Balsille are fringed with pines, but the rocks themselves are so pointed and broken that they resemble tops of pines on a Titan scale. There are four principal peaks, and so the mountain has been named Quatre Dents." The term château, or castle, used in this narrative was applied to a kind of grassy platform at the top.
CHAPTER XI.
Although the Vaudois were not wholly despoiled of the fruit of their heroic efforts in fighting their way back to their native valleys, yet the cruel banishment of the French Protestants, and the removal of so many of their gifted and devoted leaders, was a very heavy calamity. It placed almost insuperable difficulties in the way of their reorganization. Furthermore, they were greatly harassed by the imposition of taxes far beyond their means, and most unjustly levied only on the Protestants. Very dishonourable attempts were also made to seduce their children from the profession of evangelical principles. They were not allowed to repair their shattered temples, and were deprived of a proper number of pastors; so that altogether they were in an evil case. Their proverbial and long-tried loyalty to their prince, however, flourished in spite of these discouragements. Victor Amadeus, having joined England and Holland against France, was besieged in Turin by the latter power in 1706. He was so hardly pressed by the French troops as to be obliged to take refuge among his faithful subjects of the valleys. A family named Durand had the honour of giving shelter to their fugitive prince; and when by the forced marches of Prince Eugene deliverance was at hand, King Amadeus conferred the right of burying in their own garden on the family which sheltered him, as well as bequeathed his own silver spoons and drinking-cup to the family. I had the pleasure of seeing one of these spoons, preserved in the museum at La Torre, on the occasion of my visit in 1871. Eugene and the Duke of Savoy ascended the heights of the Superga (a hill about six miles from Turin) together. The prince, detecting some mistakes in the movements of the French troops, exclaimed, "It seems to me that these people are already half beaten;" whereupon the duke vowed, if Turin were delivered from the French, that he would erect a monument on that spot to the Virgin. He kept his vow, and the present imposing structure, used as a mausoleum for the House of Savoy, was begun in 1717, and finished fourteen years after. But he was not equally mindful of his obligations to his devoted Vaudois, who, in addition to protecting their prince at the risk of their own safety, also inflicted great injury upon the French troops when obliged to raise the siege of Turin. Indeed the vexations to which the Vaudois were subjected by the interference of the French court as the ready instrument of papal cruelty and intolerance provoked the kindly interposition of Frederick I. of Prussia on their behalf. However, Amadeus would not protect the converts from Catholicism, although he was firm in maintaining the rights of the Vaudois within the narrow limits which had been conceded. Still these faithful subjects of the House of Savoy had to bear many grievous acts of injustice, from which they were exempted by the express words of the royal edicts. However, they endured all these irritations from papal lawlessness without being led away by the seductive promises and the illusory hopes of freedom and happiness which so largely unsettled the continent of Europe by the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. Indeed so sensitive were they of anything which might bring their loyalty into question that they actually suspended one of their pastors from his functions for six months because he had inadvertently alluded to revolutionary principles from his pulpit! I may add that the same principle of wise abstention from all political discussions still characterize the Vaudois pastors, both in the valleys and the mission-field of the Italian peninsula.