By the edict of May 23rd, 1694, the ancient rights of the Vaudois are acknowledged, and the persecuting decrees of January and April, 1686, revoked. The pope, Innocent XII., tried to invalidate the decree, but the Senate of Turin confirmed the edict of their sovereign, and prohibited the bull of the pope.
So, all the prospect seemed fair, and the Vaudois, so long and cruelly persecuted, might hope for an era of prosperity; for the time and means not only to cultivate their desolated vineyards, to lead their flocks again to pasture on their mountain slopes, and rebuild their thatched homesteads, but also to restore the pure worship of their own and their fathers' God. But, alas! "put not your trust in princes" was a sentiment which might have been graven deeply on the memory of the all-confiding, all-enduring Vaudois.
Victor Amadeus was persuaded by the crafty Louis XIV. to forsake his allies in the war against France, and become again a vassal of the proud and perfidious French king. And therefore, while he remains true to the engagement to protect the ancient inhabitants of the valleys against their inveterate persecutor, he makes a secret treaty (1696) by which, firstly, intercourse between the professors of the reformed faith in France and Savoy is prohibited; secondly, French soldiers enlisted in the Vaudois army are no longer allowed to remain in the service of the duke; thirdly, refugees from France were to be expelled the valleys.
This crafty device of the mean and cowardly French king resulted in the banishment of seven of the most valuable Vaudois pastors, viz., Montoux, the companion of Arnaud, five of their colleagues, natives of Pragela or Dauphine, and _Arnaud himself_! It was indeed with a heavy heart that the brave and trusted leader, the tried and sagacious counsellor, the devoted and accomplished pastor of the Vaudois, left for ever those churches in whose service he had wrought such exploits, and on whose behalf he had dared death in a thousand shapes and suffered almost incredible privations. His only consolation, and without it, hero as he was, Arnaud might have died from grief, lay in the mighty fact, that he had been privileged to accomplish a work inferior to none in the annals of history. With a motive infinitely higher than that of Zenophon, his exploits as a soldier are equal in skill, endurance, and bravery to his; while, as regards results, the contrast is still more favourable to Henri Arnaud's work.