Let us now consider the impact of the sudden concentration in this small country of several
thousand men united by the most steadfast and fecund principles in religious and political matters.
These people were sound businessmen, principled bankers, persons of deep intellectual culture,
pastors and a flock that had foregone all they had rather than renounce their faith. Pushed by the
last, the most sweeping and the longest of religious persecutions, the French soon were at one with
populations upholding the principles of Reformation, among whom they found a homeland, where
they, in return, had a beneficial influence. Indeed the ten or twelve thousand families that settled for
good in that valley brought to all aspects of Swiss society a most spirited impulse.