A Savoyard officer thus briefly described the issue of the disastrous affair in a letter to a friend: "I have only time to tell you that the French have failed in their attack on the Balsille, and they have been obliged to retire after having lost one hundred and fifty soldiers, three captains, besides subalterns and wounded, including a colonel and a lieutenant-colonel who have been made prisoners, with the two sergeants who remained behind to help them. The lieutenant-colonel was surprised at finding in the fort some nineteen or twenty officers in gold and silver lace, who treated him as a prisoner of war and very humanely, even allowing him to go in search of the surgeon-major of his regiment for the purpose of bringing him into the place, and doing all that was necessary."
Catinat did not choose again to renew the attack in person, or to endanger his reputation by a further defeat at the hands of men whom he had described as a nest of paltry bandits, but entrusted the direction of further operations to the Marquis de Féuquières, who had his laurels still to win, while Catinat had his to lose. The Balsille was again completely invested by the 12th of May, according to the scheme of operations prepared by Catinat, and the Marquis received by anticipation the title of "Conqueror of the Barbets." The entire mountain was surrounded, all the passes were strongly guarded, guns were planted in positions which commanded the Vaudois fort, more particularly on the Guinevert; and the capture or extermination of the Vaudois was now regarded as a matter of certainty. The attacking army was divided into five corps. Each soldier was accompanied by a pioneer carrying a fascine, in order to form a cover against the Vaudois bullets as they advanced.
Several days elapsed before all the preliminaries for the grand attack were completed, and then the Marquis ordered a white flag to be hoisted, and a messenger was sent forward, inviting a parley with the defenders of the Balsille. The envoy was asked what he wanted. "Your immediate surrender!" was the reply. "You shall each of you receive five hundred louis d'or, and good passports for your retirement to a foreign country; but if you resist, you will be infallibly destroyed." "That is as the Lord shall will," replied the Vaudois messenger.
The defenders refused to capitulate on any terms. The Marquis himself then wrote to the Vaudois, offering them terms on the above basis, but threatening, in case of refusal, that every man of them would be hung. Arnaud's reply was heroic. "We are not subjects," he said, "of the King of France; and that monarch not being master of this country, we can enter into no treaty with his servants. We are in the heritage which our fathers have left to us, and we hope, with the help of the God of armies, to live and die in it, even though there may remain only ten of us to defend it." That same night the Vaudois made a vigorous sortie, and killed a number of the besiegers: this was their final answer to the summons to surrender.
On the 14th of May the battery on Mont Guinevert was opened, and the enemy's cannon began to play upon the little fort and bastions, which, being only of dry stones, were soon dismantled. The assault was then made simultaneously on three sides; and after a stout resistance, the Vaudois retired from their lower intrenchments, and retreated to those on the higher ledges of the mountain. They continued their resistance until night, and then, taking counsel together, and feeling that the place was no longer defensible in the face of so overpowering a force, commanded, as it was, at the same time by the cannon on the adjoining heights, they determined to evacuate the Balsille, after holding it for a period of nearly seven months.
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. At length they succeeded, after a long détour of the mountain crests, in gaining the northern slope of Guinevert. Here they came upon and surprised the enemy's outpost, which fled towards the main body; and the Vaudois passed on, panting and half dead with fatigue. When the morning broke, and the French proceeded to penetrate the last redoubt on the Balsille, lo, it was empty! The defenders had abandoned it, and they could scarcely believe their eyes when they saw the dangerous mountain escarpment by which they had escaped in the night. Looking across the valley, far off, they saw the fugitives, thrown into relief by the snow amidst which they marched, like a line of ants, apparently making for the mass of the central Alps.
For three days they wandered from place to place, gradually moving southwards, their object now being to take up their position at the Pra du Tour, the ancient fortress of the Barbas in the valley of Angrogna. Before, however, they could reach this stronghold, and while they were still at Pramol in the valley of Perosa, news of the most unexpected kind reached them, which opened up the prospect of their deliverance. The news was no other than this—Savoy had declared war against France!
A rupture between the two powers had for some time been imminent. Louis XIV. had become more and more exacting in his demands on the Duke of Savoy, until the latter felt himself in a position of oppressive vassalage. Louis had even intimated his intention of occupying Verrua and the citadel of Turin; and the Duke, having previously ascertained through his cousin, Prince Eugène, the willingness of the Emperor of Austria, pressed by William of Orange, to assist him in opposing the pretensions of France, he at length took up his stand and declared war against Louis.
The Vaudois were now a power in the state, and both parties alike appealed to them for help, promising them great favours. But the Vaudois, notwithstanding the treachery and cruelty of successive Dukes of Savoy, were true to their native prince. They pledged themselves to hold the valleys and defend the mountain passes against France.
In the first engagements which took place between the French and the Piedmontese, the latter were overpowered, and the Duke became a fugitive. Where did he find refuge? In the valleys of the Vaudois, in a secluded spot in the village of Rora, behind the Pelice, he found a safe asylum amidst the people whose fathers he had hunted, proscribed, and condemned to death.