Monument at Sibaud

Monument at Sibaud. . The monument at Sibaud commemorates the return of the Waldensians to their Valleys, after being exiled in Switzerland. In August of 1689 a small army of 900 resolute men marched across the Alps to reclaim their homeland. Praying before every skirmish and chanting Scriptures as they went into battle, they fought their way from summit to summit. At Sibaud, in the Pellice valley, the entire company took a solemn oath to defend one another and their cause to death. Two hundred years later at the exact spot where that oath was taken, the Waldensian churches erected a monument representing each parish, with the name of each church chiseled into the stones - that is the monument replicated here., The combined armies of France and Savoy were no match for the guerrilla tactics of these Waldensian farmers-turned-warriors who knew every inch of the mountainous terrain. Once, when hemmed in by enemy forces at the top of a mountain, completely cut off from food and supplies, they prayed to the Lord and started digging fox holes - only to find that they had dug into a potato patch! The potatoes saved them until an unusually dense fog rolled in one night, allowing the remaining 300 Waldensians to make a dramatic escape over a treacherous mountain pass in the dark and within inches of enemy campfires., Their victories against bigger, stronger, highly-trained soldiers and overwhelming odds drew praise years later from none other than Napoleon. He considered the "Glorious Return" of the Waldensians to be "the greatest military exploit of the seventeenth century."