such a scheme. These gentlemen, Brianza,
priest of Lucerna, and Captain Odetti, gave notice to the Vaudois.
Messengers were at once despatched to the mountains. General Gaudin at
first refused to let them go to the defence of their homes, disbelieving
the existence of the conspiracy until he was shown the names of seven
hundred of those engaged in it. Then he hesitated to weaken his forces
against the French; but a stratagem happily relieved him of his
embarrassment, though eventually he lost his command for his humanity,
_while none of the conspirators were punished_! Instead of this a Vaudois
captain, Davit, was executed, and others placed under arrest upon unjust
suspicions. By these proceedings a feeling of disquietude was provoked,
which only the appointment of General Zimmerman, a native of Lucerna, was
able to calm.

An armistice taking place in the spring of 1796, and Charles Emmanuel IV.
coming to the Sardinian crown, the British ambassador sought more
considerate treatment of the Vaudois. In reply to this appeal they were
allowed to repair and enlarge their temples, and even to remove them to
more commodious sites. In 1798 Charles Emmanuel IV. was only allowed the
island of Sardinia by the all-conquering French, who took possession of
Piedmont, and annexed it as a province to France. This event gave to the
Vaudois in a moment every social right, every political privilege, and,
above all, the religious freedom they had for centuries fought, and bled,
and suffered in vain to procure, at least in its entirety!

However, the position of the Vaudois was one of difficulty. Under the rule
of their _de facto_ government they took part in repressing the uprising of
the Piedmontese against the French at Carmagnola. And when three hundred
wounded soldiers, fleeing from the Austrian army, who pursued them to the
Vaudois frontiers, reached Bobbio in a state of appalling destitution, M.
Rostaing, the pastor, and his people, fed them out of their scanty stores,
dressed their wounds, and carried them on their shoulders over frightful
precipices, and along snow-covered defiles impassable to ordinary traffic.
This act of humanity (gratefully acknowledged by the French commander,
Suchet) would have drawn upon them a fresh outpouring of oppression, had
not the Russian general taken a truer estimate of their position. He
allowed them to retain their arms on the condition that they used them only
in self-defence. Napoleon's victor