cribed.

On the occasion of the defeat of the Count de la Trinite by the little
Vaudois band near the village of Angrogna, in November, 1560, the
general drew off, and waited the arrival of reinforcements. A large
body of Spanish veterans having joined him, in the course of the
following spring he again proceeded up the valley, determined, if
possible, to force the Barricade--the royal forces now numbering some
seven thousand men, all disciplined troops. The peasants, finding
their first position no longer tenable in the face of such numbers,
abandoned Angrogna and the lower villages, and retired, with the whole
population, to the Pra du Tour. The Count followed them with his main
army, at the same time directing two other bodies of troops to advance
upon the place round by the mountains, one by the heights of the
Vachere, and another by Les Fourests. The defenders of the Pra would
thus be assailed from three sides at once, their forces divided, and
victory rendered certain.

But the Count did not calculate upon the desperate bravery of the
defenders. All three bodies were beaten back in succession. For four
days the Count made every effort to force the defile, and failed. Two
colonels, eight captains, and four hundred men fell in these desperate
assaults, without gaining an inch of ground. On the fifth day a
combined attack was made with the reserve, composed of Spanish
companies, but this, too, failed; and the troops, when ordered to
return to the charge, refused to obey. The Count, who commanded, is
said to have wept as he sat on a rock and looked upon so many of his
dead--the soldiers themselves exclaiming, "God fights for these
people, and we do them wrong!"

About a hundred years later, the Marquis de Pianesse, who, like the
Count de la Trinite, had been defeated at Rochemalan, made a similar
attempt to surprise the Vaudois stronghold, with a like result. The
peasants were commanded on this occasion by John Leger, the pastor and
historian. Those who were unarmed hurled rocks and stones on the
assailants from the heights; and the troops being thus thrown into
confusion, the Vaudois rushed from behind their ramparts, and drove
them in a state of total rout down the valley.

On entering the Pra du Tour, one of the most prominent objects that
meets the eye is the Roman Catholic chapel recently erected there,
though the few inhabitants of the district are still almost entirely
Protestant. The Roman Catholic Church