advanced into the hills, each under its own commander, without any
fixed plans save to destroy every habitation, to capture or kill
the flocks of goats, which afforded the inhabitants their chief
means of subsistence, and to give no quarter wherever they
resisted.

"Even now, I shudder at the thought of the work we had to do;
climbing over pathless hills, wading waist deep through mountain
torrents, clambering along on the face of precipices where a false
step meant death, and always exposed to a dropping fire from
invisible foes, who, when we arrived at the spot from which they
had fired, had vanished and taken up a fresh position, so that the
whole work had to be done over again. Sometimes we were two or
even more days without food, for, as you may imagine, it was
impossible to transport provisions, and we had nothing save what
we carried in our haversacks at starting. We had to sleep on the
soaked ground, in pitiless storms. Many men were carried away and
drowned in crossing the swollen torrents. Our clothes were never
dry. And the worst of it was, after six weeks of such work, we
felt that we were no nearer to the object for which we had been
sent up than we were when we started.

"It was true that we had destroyed many of their little villages,
but as these generally consisted of but a few houses, only rough
buildings that could be rebuilt in a few days, the gain was not a
substantial one. We had, of course, killed some of the Vaudois,
but our loss had been much heavier than theirs, for, active as our
men were, they were no match in speed for these mountaineers, who
were as nimble as their own goats, knew everything of the country,
and could appear or disappear, as it seemed to us, almost by