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Updated: June 21, 2025
Great were the surprise and excitement in Guillestre when it became known that the principal sergeant of gendarmerie the very embodiment of law and order in the place had gone over and joined the "Momiers" with his wife and family. M. Laugier was quite a model gendarme.
It is an apparently insignificant but treacherous stream, which by repeated floods has spread ugly devastation over a hill-girdled country that ought to be smiling with peace and plenty. At Guillestre we came in sight of the jagged double peak of Mont Pelvoux, and got a magnificent vista toward the south, ending in the white slopes of some giant of the Cottian Alps.
It is frequented by the people of the adjoining valleys, of which Guillestre is the centre, as well as by Piedmontese from beyond the Italian frontier. On the principal day of the fair we found the streets filled with peasants buying and selling beasts. They were apparently of many races.
The castle of the archbishop, flanked by six towers, occupied a commanding site immediately overlooking the town; but at the French Revolution of 1789, the first thing which the archbishop's flock did was to pull his castle in pieces, leaving not one stone upon another; and, strange to say, the only walled enclosure now within its precincts is the little burying-ground of the Guillestre Protestants.
We were standing in the garden in front of the parsonage at Guillestre late in the evening, when M. Schell, the pastor, pointing up to the height, said, "There you see it now; that is the curé's erection." The valley below lay in deep shadow, while the cross upon the summit brightly reflected the last rays of the setting sun.
But he left behind him what was worth more than any endowment of money, a noble example, which still lives, and inspires the labourers who have come after him. It was not until within the last twenty years that a few Vaudois families of Guillestre began to meet together for religious purposes, which they did at first in the upper chamber of an inn. There the Rev. Mr.
Freemantle found them when paying his first visit to the valleys in 1851. He was rejoiced to see the zeal of the people, holding to their faith in the face of considerable opposition and opprobrium; and he exerted himself to raise the requisite funds amongst his friends in England to provide the Guillestre Vaudois with a place of worship of their own.
They tarried but a night at Barcelonetta. On the morrow they captured Guillestre, and set out for Embrun, where they expected to be joined by the main army. Embrun resisted for twenty-four hours, but at the end of that time it fell, and Victor Amadeus took up his headquarters there, while Eugene marched on to Gab.
Laurent du Cros and Champsaur, in the valley of the Drac, provided with a temple, school, &c., principally through the liberality of Lord Monson; and Guillestre and Vars, provided with two temples, a parsonage, and a girls' school. A temple, with a residence for a pastor, has also of late years been provided at Briançon, with a meeting-place also at the village of Villeneuve.
Freemantle visited Guillestre for the purpose of being present at the Vaudois services on Sunday, the 10th of August, the curé preached a special sermon to his congregation at early morning mass, telling them that an Englishman had come into the town with millions of francs to buy up the souls of Guillestre, and warning them to abstain from such men.
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