sed the Vaudois. They
employed large numbers of vile characters as mercenaries to make incursions
into the valleys. On one occasion they secured possession of a pastor by
treachery. Having alarmed his parishioners, they attempted his rescue. Some
of these were slain at once by the ruffians from the abbey, others were
captured, and by a refinement of cruelty (such as the Church of Rome
surpasses all her competitors in) were made, especially the women, to carry
the faggots for the fire which was to burn their beloved minister.
Occasionally these frocked and sandalled ruffians met with deserved
retribution at the hands of those whose homes they desolated. But these
things were but the distant rumbling of the tempest, which ere long would
burst upon the faithful Christians of the Alps. Their leaders foresaw what
was coming, and before the army of persecution actually invaded their soil,
they strengthened themselves by praise and prayer, by the word of God, and
the ordinance of the Lord's Supper.

Thus "strengthening each other's hand in God," they waited the progress of
the soldiers. These numbered over four thousand, commanded by the Count de
la Trinite. Twelve hundred of them first attacked the heights of Angrogna,
and although the defenders numbered but one in six of their assailants, yet
they are repulsed with a loss of sixty dead, while the Vaudois only lost
three. Other attacks were equally unsuccessful, and so La Trinite persuades
the Angrognians to a truce by which they are powerless to resist, although
he still continues his own plans of devastation, plunder, and confiscation.
Those cruelties drive the people of La Torre to caves and rocks, although
it is winter. An instance of cruelty may be narrated in the case of a man
aged a hundred and three, who was found by the soldiers hidden in a cave
under the guardianship of his granddaughter, a maiden of seventeen. After
taking the life of the venerable man, they seek to dishonour the girl, who,
preferring death, leaped over the precipice into the stream below. As she
did so, tradition says she sang one of their hymns, and that its melody
even now floats in the air of those mountain regions, and is heard by the
shepherd as he pastures his flock on the slopes of the Vandalin by "the
Maiden's Rock." La Trinite continued his persecutions during a period of
fifteen months. The Vaudois organized themselves successfully, and were
favoured with remarkable deliverances, which we