Protestantism in France From Death of Francis I to Edict of Nantes - James Aitken Wylie

who inhabited the high-lying valleys of the Piedmontese
Alps, cast their eyes upon this more
happily situated region, and began to desire it as a
residence. Here, said they, is a fine champaign
country, waiting for occupants; let us go over and
possess it. They crossed the mountains, they
cleared the land of rocks, they sowed it with wheat,
they planted it with the vine, and soon there was
seen a smiling garden, where before a desert of
swamps, and great stones, and wild herbage had
spread out its neglected bosom to be baked by the
summer's sun, and frozen by the winter's winds.
"An estate which before their establishment hardly
paid four crowns as rental, now produced from
three to four hundred."[3] The successive
generations of these settlers flourished here during
a period of three hundred years, protected by their
landlords, whose revenues they had prodigiously
enriched, loved by their neighbors, and loyal to
their king.
When the Reformation arose, this people sent
delegates--as we have related in the previous book-
-to visit the Churches of Switzerland and Germany,
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