Alan de Lanvallay and the Soldiers of the Rosary

Attribution: from The Secret of the Rosary, Fourth Decade.

Several soldiers who fought under the protection of Our Lady of the Rosary found themselves delivered again and again against impossible odds. Simon de Montfort saw small companies scatter forces many times their size, and a papal legate, Cardinal Pierre, once saw three thousand men who had prayed the Rosary carried safely through a battle against a hundred thousand.

The most wonderful rescues, though, were granted to Alan de Lanvallay, a Breton knight devoted to his daily Rosary. One day, surrounded by enemies on every side, he called on the Blessed Virgin Mary, and a shower of a hundred and fifty stones fell upon his attackers, and he escaped from their hands. Another day his ship foundered and was about to go down, when this good Mother caused a hundred and fifty small hills to rise up out of the water, and by them he and his men reached the shore of Brittany in safety.

In thanksgiving for all she had done in answer to his Rosary, Alan built a monastery at Dinan, entered religious life himself, and died a holy death. He had learned in the plainest way that whoever prays Our Lady's Rosary is never left to face danger alone.

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Source:

Simplified retellings of the miracle and conversion stories that St. Louis de Montfort gathered in The Secret of the Rosary, written in the early eighteenth century. These are paraphrased in plain modern prose, faithful to the substance of the traditional English translation but not word for word. Montfort himself called them "ancient but authentic stories about the holy Rosary," collected from earlier authors such as Blessed Alan de la Roche, and offered on human authority, not as articles of faith.