SOVEREIGNTY OF THE HOUSE OF SAVOY
n the middle of the thirteenth century the counts of Gruyère—who had so long been oppressed by the grasping prelates of the Church—came within the orbit of another power, that of the rising house of Savoy.
Fortifying their influence by alliances with the kingdoms of Europe, extending its domains over occidental Switzerland and far into Italy, the counts of Savoy were already in a position to dispute the power of the bishops, when Count Pierre took his place at the head of his house. Although he had occupied for two years the bishopric of Lausanne, which had so long been inimical to the counts of Gruyère, the spiritual overlordship of the country of Vaud did not satisfy the genius or the ambition of the ablest personage in a family which numbered five reigning queens, and who, himself was marquis in Italy, earl of Richmond in England and uncle and adviser to King Henry III of England and of his brother the Emperor Richard. Although he lived by preference in England where his lightest word could control the tumults of the populace, the wisdom of Count Pierre's choice of delegates greatly extended his Savoyard domain. "Proud, firm and terrible as a lion," "the little Charlemagne" as his contemporaries called him, was wise also and affable with his subjects. Brilliant in intellect, master of happy and courteous speech, he fascinated where he controlled. The princely air of pride and power, seen in the portraits of Pierre de Savoy, the blazing dark eyes and mobile mouth of his Gallo-Roman ancestors, present the truly majestic semblance of the founder of a dynasty and the eminently sympathetic overlord of the Gallo-Roman counts of Gruyère. Such was the great ruler and law-giver who easily supplanting his niece as head of the house of Savoy, reduced to a loyal vassalage all the nobles of Roman Switzerland. Not without opposition from the bishops and feudal lords nor without jealousy from the German emperor did Count Pierre arrive at a height where he saw only heaven above and his mountainous domain! "From Italy through the Valais," so a chronicler of his house relates, "at the rumor that a rival German governor of Vaud was besieging his castle of Chillon, he reached the heights above Lake Leman. There he surveyed the banners of the noble army, and the luxurious tents in which they took their ease before his castle. Hiding his soldiers at Villeneuve, alone and unobserved he rowed to Chillon, where from the great tower he watched the young nobles as they danced and reveled in jeweled velvets and shining armor, with the maidens of the lake-side. Then at a given signal, he emerged to lead his waiting army to the complete rout of the surprised besiegers."
Among these holiday warriors was Rodolphe III of Gruyère, who with his comrades—eighty-four barons, seigneurs, chevaliers, ecuyers and nobles of the country—were taken to the castle of Chillon where, according to the chronical: "Comté Pierre ne les traita pas comme prisonniers mais les festoya honorablement. Moult fut grande la despoilie et moult grande le butin."
After a year's imprisonment Count Rodolphe was ransomed by his people, and first among all the Romand knights swore fealty to his new overlord at the château of Yverdun. Growing in favor with Pierre de Savoy and his successors, the counts of Gruyère became their trusted courtiers and counselors, and through many vicissitudes and many wars merited the encomium of Switzerland's first historian, that the "Age of chivalry produced no braver soldiers than these counts, their suzerain had no more devoted vassals."
The submission of Rodolphe of Gruyère having been confirmed in formal treaty, his grandson and successor Count Pierre the Third, loyally supported during a long and brilliant reign the banners of his overlord against the rising power of Rudolph of Hapsburg. When Berne, allied with Savoy, was besieged by the Hapsburg army, Count Pierre generously supplied money to the beleaguered city and in the final battle when the city fell, it was a Jean de Gruyère who snatched the torn and bloodstained Bernese banner from the hands of the enemy. When asked the name of the hero who had saved the flag, his comrades answered "c'est le preux de Gruyère," and to this day the Bernese family of Gruyère bear the title thus bravely won by their progenitor.
The role of mediator, filled with distinction by his successors, was first assigned to Count Pierre III, who as avoyer of Fribourg at that time allied with Austria, was empowered to arbitrate the differences which arose between the houses of Savoy and Hapsburg.
Always loyal to his suzerain, Count Pierre served under the Savoy banner in the war with Hughes de Faucigny, dauphin of the Viennois, and only after the marriage of Catherine (daughter of Amédée V of Savoy) to the redoubtable Leopold of Austria had sealed a truce between the rival powers which divided and devastated the country, did he consent to join the Austrian army in Italy under Duke Leopold himself.
In the brilliant cortège which followed Duke Leopold to Italy, Count Pierre, accompanied by a number of his relatives, was notable by the command of a hundred horsemen and a force of archers. Mounted on horses, armored like their riders and covered with emblazoned velvets, such a force of cavalry was the strongest as well as the most imposing instrument of warfare in this time, when the knights, willing only to conquer by personal bravery, despised all arms except their lances and their swords. Contested by the warring Guelphs and Ghibellines, the city of Milan and the palace of the newly crowned German emperor himself was with difficulty protected by the imperial guard. The soldiers of Duke Leopold, arriving without the city walls, under a hail of stones and arrows, broke through the outer barricades and burst the city gates, and then Gruyère again, at the head of his horsemen dashed through, bringing release to the imprisoned emperor and victory to the Austrian arms.
Not long was the alliance between the houses of Hapsburg and Savoy to endure. The rising powers of the cities, still more the prowess of the mountaineers, the Waldstetten, who soon after Duke Leopold's Italian campaign had vanquished him and his shining warriors at the famous battle of Morgarten, resisted with growing success the Savoyard and the Hapsburg sovereignty, and divided in ever changing alliances the fermenting elements of the tottering feudal society. The horn of the Alps, sounding the tocsin over the rocky defile of the Swiss Thermopylae, announced the approaching end of the feudal rule of the middle ages and the dawn of liberty in Switzerland.
Although at first a willing ally of Pierre de Savoy, the city of Berne, greatly enlarging its possessions by conquests and alliances and growing rapidly in independence and republican enlightenment, warred incessantly with the nobles of the surrounding country and with particular virulence attacked the counts of Gruyère. So serious a menace did the proud city become to all the knights of Romand Switzerland, that they were driven to attempt its humiliation. All the great lords of Helvetia west and east joined the brave alliance. The banners of Hapsburg and Savoy were united in the determined onslaught upon the powerful city, and a large force from Fribourg, eager to aid in bringing her rival low, swelled the forces of the nobles in a glittering army of three thousand knights, who with their attendant vassals gayly and confidently practised feats of arms before the little fortified city of Laupen while awaiting the arrival of the Bernois.
Among them, Count Pierre de Gruyère, refusing an enormous indemnity for losses at the hands of the Bernois and as ever faithful to his order and to Savoy, took his place with other nobles of his house. Warriors each one by training and tradition, not yet had any fear of defeat chilled their ardor or their courage, nor had they learned the wisdom of concealing their threatened attack upon the growing republic. The citizens of Berne were given ample time to send a messenger to the victorious mountaineers of Morgarten, and this was their reply: "Not like the birds are we who fly from a storm-stricken tree. In trouble best is friendship known. Tell the Bernois we are friendly and will send them aid."
The June sun was setting over the plateau when the nobles desisting from their sports drew up their cavalry, supported by a chosen band of infantry from Fribourg. Retreating before the advance of the latter, the Waldstetten, in the forefront of the Bernese army, sought, as was their custom, an advantageous position for attack. From the heights above the city, with their terrifying war cries, and with the same furious onslaught which had overwhelmed Duke Leopold's glorious horsemen at Morgarten, they fell upon the nobles in a bloody melée in which horses, men and valets perished in a hopeless confusion. Three Gruyère knights were left lifeless on the battlefield and eighty-four others, who thus paid the price of their temerity in thinking to stem the already formidable confederation of citizens and free people in Switzerland. Undeterred by this defeat and continually menaced by the incursions of the Bernois, Count Pierre de Gruyère successfully held them in check, and, no less wise as ruler than he was valorous in war, enlarged the power and extent of his domain by political and matrimonial alliances with the great Romand families of Blonay, Grandson and Oron, as well as with the warlike La Tour Chatillons of the Valais, and with the powerful Wissenbourgs and the semi-royal Hapsburg-Kibourgs of eastern Switzerland. Leaving to his nephews, "Perrod" and "Jeannod," the seigneuries of Vanel and Montsalvens which they had inherited from their father, he shared with them the rule of the people.
The "three of Gruyère" whose acts are recorded in the dry and unpoetic parchments of the time, were united in a paternal and pacific rule under which people and country reached a legendary height of arcadian prosperity.
First to deserve the name so cherished in the legends of Gruyère of "pastoral king," Count Pierre III saw his herds increase and valleys and mountain sides blossom into fabulous fertility. His was the golden age of the herdsmen the "Armaillis," of whom it was related in symbolic legend that, "their cows were so gigantic and milk so abundant that it overflowed the borders of the ponds into which they poured it." By boat they skimmed the cream in these vast basins, and one day a "beau berger," busy with the skimming, was upset in his skiff by a sudden squall and drowned. The young lads and maidens sought long and vainly for his body and wore mourning for his tragic fate. Discovered only several days later, when amid floods of boiling cream they whipped the butter into a mound high as a tower, his body was buried in a great cavern in the golden butter, filled full by the bees with honey rays wide as a city's gates. "Where," asks a living Romand writer, "is the eclogue of Virgil or Theocritus to surpass the beauty of this legend?"
Dying full of years and honors, Count Pierre left the care of his beloved people and his happy country to his nephews the cherished Perrod and Jeannod, who even in the churchly parchments are known by the nicknames affectionately given them by their uncle. Together they ruled, although Pierre IV, the eldest and ablest, bore the title of Lord of Gruyère. Always by the side of his uncle in all his wars and on the bloody plain of Laupen, Perrod had already won his title of Chevalier, and did not lack occasion to further prove his courage in a new war with the Bernois who in one of their many incursions had advanced far among the upper Gruyère mountains, near the twin châteaux of Laubeck and Mannenburg, lately acquired by the Gruyère house. Accustomed to success and confident of an easy victory, the Bernois scattered about the valleys, leaving the flag to their leader with a few men-at-arms. But the Gruyèriens, wary and prepared, were already massed upon the heights over the defile of Laubeck-Stalden, whence they fell suddenly upon the Banneret of Berne, who, thinking only to save the flag, cast it far behind him among his few followers, and meeting alone the attack of the enemy, died faithful to his duty and his honor. Bitterly lamenting, the Bernois retreated with their flag, while Count Perrod and his victorious band, returning to the castle, celebrated famously with songs and jests, in a brave company of knights and ladies, their triumph over their redoubtable enemies. Not so gayly did the banners of Gruyère return homeward in the next contest with Berne, for, now allied with Fribourg and determined to avenge their late defeat, they advanced in great numbers and with fire and sword ravaged the country of the count of Gruyère and attacked the châteaux of his allies, the lords of Everdes and Corbières. Already the château of Everdes was burning, the Ogo bridge was lost, and while Corbières was hotly besieged by the men of Fribourg, the Bernois advancing within sight of the castle of Gruyère to attack the outpost Tour de Trême, encountered at the Pré de Chénes a small band of Gruyèriens. Here, until the arrival of the main force of Count Pierre, two heroes, justly celebrated and sung in all the annals of Gruyère, alone behind a barrier of corpses withstood the onslaught of the Bernois. Two men of Villars sous Mont were they: Ulric Bras le Fer, and the brave Clarimboz. So strong the arms with which they wielded the great halberds of the time, that the handles, clotted with the blood of their foes were glued to their clenched fists, so that it was necessary to bathe them long in warm water to detach them. Although the Bernois burnt the Tour de Trême and captured sixty of the defendants, Count Pierre and his soldiers forced them to retire, and the castle and city of Gruyère were saved. Strong men were these knights and vassals of Gruyère to withstand and gayly to forget the bloody assaults of their determined foes, for in the intervals of war alarms they passed a holiday life of jest and song. Within the circle of their starlit heights, they nightly watched the brandon lights on peak and hilltop; and while the sentinels in every tower scanned the wide country for a sign of the approaching foe, within they made merry in the banqueting hall. In the long summer afternoons, tourneys in the jousting court, or tribunals held in the same green enclosure alternated with generous feasts out-spread on the castle terrace for the enjoyment of the people. Often Count Pierre would mount his horse and ride among the mountains where he administered justice before the doors of the chalets, adopting the orphans who were brought to him, giving dots to the daughters of the poor, and sometimes taking part in the wrestling contests of the herdsmen—their brother in sport—their father in misfortune. During all the years of the fourteenth century the feudal society of Switzerland, although so fiercely attacked by the rising bourgeoisie power, blazed like the leaves in autumn in a passing October glory with the snows of winter seemingly still afar. At Chambéry, the court of Amédée VII of Savoy, called Le Comté Vert from the emerald color of the velvet in which he and his courtiers were clad, the brother rulers of Gruyère took part in all the fêtes and tourneys. Present when the great order of the Annonciata was instituted, and again, when the emperor of Germany was received at banquets served by knights on horseback, they sat at tables where fountains of wine sprinkled their rubies over gilded viands in vessels of wrought gold.
But at Gruyère the young brother rulers held a little court which for intimate gayety and charm surpassed all others. Gallic in its love of beauty, loving life and all its loveliest expressions, it was a court of dance and song—the heart of hearts of Gruyère, itself the centre and the very definition of Romand Switzerland. Often intermarried, the Burgundian counts preserved in its perfection the blond beauty of their ancient race, surpassing in athletic skill the strongest of their subjects, and with the same bonhomie with which their conquering ancestors had mingled with their vassals, they exemplified in their kindly rule the Burgundian device: "Tout par l'amour, rien par la force." The people doubly Celt in origin, added to the Celtic ardor the quick imagination, the gift of playing lightly with life, and a high and passionate idealism expressing itself in an unequaled and valorous devotion to their rulers, together with an arcadian union of simplicity and finesse, the individual mark of their sunny pastoral life.
The château on its green hill was a fit centre of the closely mingled life of the rulers and their people. Rebuilt on its ancient rude foundations under the reign of Pierre de Savoy, it possessed the great towers and sentinel tourelles, the moat, drawbridge, courtyards, terrace and arsenal of the time, but in its enchanting situation, its intimate, inviting charm, it quite uniquely expressed the sense and love of beauty of its unknown artist architect.
Within were the high hooded fireplaces of the time, blazoned with the silver crane on scarlet of the Gruyère arms, armorial windows and walls brilliantly painted with lozenges or squares of blue and scarlet. In the great Hall of the Chevaliers, Count Pierre and his brother Jeannod held their revels among a familiar company of their cousins of Blonay, Oron, Montsalvens and Vanel, preux chevaliers all, assembled at Gruyère after long days at the chase. There, also, were the daughters of the house, brave in jewels and brocades, and answering to the names of Agnelette and Margot, Luquette and Elinode, who took their part in the fair company dancing and singing through the long summer nights. Or Chalamala, last and most famous of the Gruyère jesters, would preside over a Conseil de folie, with his jingling bells and nodding peacock plumes, recounting with jest and rhyme the legends of the ancient heroes of Gruyère. Only Count Perrod was forbidden to wear his spurs, having one day torn the pied stockings of the fool. "Shall I marry the great lady of La Tour Chatillon?" he had asked his merry counselor. "If I were lord of Gruyère," was the reply, "I would not give up my fair mistress for that ill-featured dame."
Devoted Catholics as were the Gruyère people, their religion was a source of comfort and protection, but even more a reason for rejoicing and for the innumerable fêtes in honor of their favorite saints, for which the little city was almost continually decorated. Passion plays and mysteries culminated at Easter in a wild carnival week in which priests and people sang and danced together in masks and parti-color from dawn to starlight. In the fête called Jeu des Rois, a parade in costume was led by a crowned king in scarlet robes, accompanied by his fool, by his knights and his minstrels. Music and dancing and feats of arms were followed by a religious ceremony, and at night-fall after the play, the king's banquet, where white-bearded magi offered him gifts of gold and silver goblets, of frankincense and myrrh, finished the revel.
LACE-MAKERS
Or again on the first Sunday in May all would assemble for the sport called Château d'Amour of ancient Celtic origin. In the midst of a green field or in the square before the Hotel de Ville, a wooden fortress was erected, surrounded by a little moat and with high towers and a donjon. Maidens and more maidens, smiling and flower-crowned and with white arms outstretched, poured down a rain of arrows and wooden lances from the battlements, or oftener pelted their lovers the assailants with showers of roses. Then at a given signal, in a sudden escalade, the besiegers broke over the walls, each to receive a kiss and a rose as prize of victory. Then besiegers and besieged together burned the fortress, and the day ended with bacchic libations and with dances. Meeting by moonlight nights to sing their love songs and rhymed legends in the city square, the Gruyère people better loved their dances, the long Celtic Korols (or Coraules), when, singing in chorus in wild winding farandoles, they went dancing over vales and hills, day in and day out until human strength could bear no more. Such was the famous dance quaintly recounted in ancient French by a Gruyère chronicler.
"It happened one day that the Count de Gruyère returning to his castle, found thereby a great merry-making of young lads and maidens dancing in Koraule. The same Count, greatly loving of such sport, forthwith took the hand of the loveliest of the maidens and joined the company. Whereupon, no one tiring, they proceeded, dancing always, through the hard-by village of Enney up to Château D'Oex in the Pays-d'en-Haut, and wonderful was it to see the people in all the villages they passed joining in that joyous band. Seven hundred were they when they finished, having danced continuously for three days over the mountain leagues between Gruyère and Château D'Oex, and great was the fame of Count Perrod and his dancing in this Grande Coquille."
Such was life in this idyllic country, the beloved Grévire of the melodious Romand speech, where "the houses are high with roofs leaning far towards the ground, where the plums are so ripe they fall with the breeze, where there are oats and tressed wheat, cows black and white and rich cheese, black goats, too, and horned oxen—and beautiful maids who would wed."
Nourished on rich milk smelling of the aromatic grasses of their pastures, white and pink as the apples of their orchards; light-footed and vigorous from their mountain life, their dancing and their athletic sports, the Gruyère people developed a beauty celebrated even in the grave pages of the historians. From their hearts warm with the sun, their fancy fed by the beauty of their ravishing country, issued songs witty and sad, and always melodious with their soft Italian vocables, a literature in Romand patois. Thus the golden age of chivalry, rhyming harmoniously with the golden age of the herdsmen, in the blue circle of the Gruyère heights, grew to its noon day.
Then, suddenly as a tempest gathering across the sun pours quick destruction over a parterre of flowers, black horror swallowed up Gruyère. The plague called the Black Death, born in the Levant and rushing like a destroying flood with terrifying rapidity over the borders of Switzerland, penetrated even into the mountain-encircled country of Count Pierre. The devils and evil spirits of the caverns and the forests seemed now in the imagination of the Celtic people to be the sinister authors of this mysterious and devastating curse. The youths and maidens, no longer dancing to rhymed choruses of love and joy, swung wildly in dances of death among the abandoned corpses.
Sprung from the carnival dances, where the masked Death forcing the terrified maidens to his embrace led them to the cemeteries to celebrate the memory of the dead, the priest countenanced these masks as religious rites and taught the superstitious people that their gifts would ease the souls of those sent suddenly unshrived to hell. With solemn phrase and syncopated notes, the danse macabre wound through the darkened street around the shadowed crucifix up to the chapel door, where in hideous masks, and dancing still, the hallucinated people, cast their gold before the altar. "And as the coins, tin, tin, fell in the basins, so, ha, ha, hi, hi! the poor souls laugh in purgatory." So, taught by the priests and prelates ignorant as themselves, the sadly altered Gruyère people incessantly danced and prayed, sometimes giving themselves to the strange lascivious customs to which the whole country was abandoned, and sometimes joining in the cruel persecution of the Jews, accused of poisoning their fountains and their streams. Nothing was lacking in the reign of terror which overwhelmed Gruyère in the last years of Count Pierre's reign. Fires and earthquakes succeeded to the plague, and in the midst of their terrors their implacable enemies, the Bernois, attacked them.
"O! Misfortune, and three times misfortune, beware how you touch Berne!" the refrain of an old song too often forgotten by Count Pierre, was once more exemplified in the revenge which the Bernois wreaked upon the Gruyère châteaux of Laubeck and Mannenburg, for the thefts of their herds.
On St. Etienne's day, in the dark December of 1349, the avenging Bernois took the field, and a thousand strong assembled before the walls of the twin fortresses. Reeling and shouting to the sound of fifes and drums, in a gross satire of the dance of the fanatic flagellants, they whipped themselves into a furious rage and then attacked the walls. Both donjons, although strongly fortified, fell and were destroyed. Unappeased, the Bernois were advancing towards Gruyère when their cupidity was tempted by offers of rich indemnities by Count Pierre's messengers, with whom, together with a crowd of prisoners, they returned to Berne. Rage and despair as black as this the darkest winter of his reign, possessed Count Pierre, but milder counsels spoken by the gentle voices of his countess and the two sainted Dames de Vaud, Isabelle de Savoie-Chalons and her daughter prevailed. Like a trio of angels singing over the deathlike darkness and terror of the time, they brought peace where there was no peace; and with the august assistance of the reigning prince of Savoy and the bishop of Lausanne established another Trêve de Dieu between the warring cities of Berne and Fribourg, and truce between Berne and the country of Gruyère. At last, where fire and sword, where the power of rival cities and proud knights allied, had failed, the love and high influence of these noble ladies of the middle age most wonderfully succeeded. Memorable for its beneficent and permanent effects, the treaty was unique for its high and unselfish spirit of conciliation, and the final words of exhortation which stilled the waters tossed by two centuries of storm have the sacred accent of heavenly inspiration.
"The parties in this present treaty shall in all sincerity forget all bitterness, all offence and all resentment. Secret hate shall give place to the old love, which, God helping, shall endure forever."
Although by this pact Count Pierre's private wars were ended, the old warrior, unaffrighted by the anathema of excommunication, launched by Pope Clement VI against the foes of the archbishop of Sion, joined the barons who invaded the Valais at the instance of his father-in-law the lord of La Tour Chatillon. But this was his last war and during the remaining twenty years of his reign he and his people lived together, happily free at last from danger of invasion or attack. Dying at eighty, Count Pierre ended a reign, shared peacefully with his uncle and brother, of over sixty years. Strong and tenacious of character, hospitable and courageous as all his acts declare, he was the exemplar of all the traits which have united to express the typical Gruyère prince, and under him his pastoral domain blossomed into its climax of idyllic prosperity. Loyal knight and brilliant comrade of his suzerain, compassionate and kindly master, by his high unflagging gayety, his frank and affectionate dealings with his adoring subjects, he was the very soul and leader of the astonishing épopée of revel and of song which has made his reign celebrated in the history of Gruyère.
His brother-ruler Jeannod, as the years rolled by, became water to his wine, as gravely sad as Pierre was gay. Three wives preceded him to the grave, all childless, and after a fourth barren marriage he bestowed the greater part of his inheritance upon the church, and when a few years after his brother's death he was carried sumptuously in gold and silken sheets to his prepared resting place in the cathedral of Lausanne, a multitude of sacred lamps burning perpetually in shrines and monasteries over all the land celebrated his pious memory and his disappointments.
