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Updated: June 10, 2025
The man whose heart is filled with hatred against another will retire secretly to a spot at the edge of a PADI field, or of some other clearing, where he can see a large expanse of sky and yet feel sure of being unobserved. Here he sets up the BATANG PRA, a pole supported horizontally some six or eight feet above the ground, its ends resting on two vertical poles.
They allowed them to occupy their hiding-places and strongholds, from whence no fair fight had ever driven them. The very eagerness of the soldiers to penetrate into these recesses, and their brutality on their way to the Pra del Tor, opened the eyes of the Vaudois to their miserable condition.
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 Vachére, 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.
On this occasion, the Marquis de Fleury led the troops of the Duke of Savoy, whose object, as before, was to advance up the valley, and assail the Vaudois stronghold of Pra du Tour; and again the peasantry resisted them successfully, and drove them back into the plains.
Desirous of ascertaining, if possible, the site of the ancient college, we proceeded up the Pra, and hailed a young woman whom we observed crossing the rustic bridge over the Pêle, one of the mountain rivulets running into the torrent of Angrogna.
But we now come to the goal of our journey to-day, Pra del Torno, a very sanctuary, embosomed amidst the everlasting hills, the site of the ancient college of the Vaudois clergy, from whence they went forth to preach the doctrines of a pure faith even before Wickliffe rose as the morning star of the Reformation in our own land.
The Pra du Tour, or Meadow of the Tower, is a little amphitheatre surrounded by rugged and almost inaccessible mountains, situated at the head of the valley of Angrogna. The steep slopes bring down into this deep dell the headwaters of the torrent, which escape among the rocks down the defile we have just ascended.
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 Vaudois organized themselves successfully, and were favoured with remarkable deliverances, which we shall refer to more appropriately in a later chapter, as they were chiefly connected with the Pra del Tor.
When Aurelia rose in the morning and threw open her green shutters, if the sunlight was broad upon the Pra, flecked upon the trees, striking the domes and pinnacles of the Santo with fire, she sang full diapason with that careless fling of the voice, that happy rapture, that bravura which makes the listener's heart go near to burst with her joy.
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