THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF GRUYÈRE
he three sons of Count Jean II not strangely reflected the conditions of their birth and the widely differing characters of their mothers. François, only son of his second marriage, which was founded on a real preference and esteem, possessed the kindly and charitable nature of his mother and the firm character of his distinguished Gruyère ancestors. Jean, the illegitimate son of Luce d'Alberguex, was lovable and valorous, but lacking in firmness or dignity of character. Michel, the heir of Gruyère, and the child of Count Jean's loveless marriage with Marguerite de Vergy, while personifying in their perfection the physical beauty and charm of his line, was like the fair fruit of a decaying tree hollow at heart, and was only too well fitted by his fantastic pretensions and his frivolous weakness of character for the tragic rôle which was assigned to him in the fall of his house.
"Véla, Michel li preux li beaux
Fleur de tous autres damoiseaux."
a couplet describing the romantic figure of the last count of Gruyère, is still rhymed by the people and still finds its place among their records. Imposing in height as his great forerunner François de Gruyère, his features were of a beautiful regularity and nobility, his manner had that princely pride and simplicity which was the greatest charm of François I of France. At the French court, as in all Switzerland, he was renowned as "the handsomest knight of his day." With the extinction of the court at Chambéry, where his predecessors had received their education in chivalry and where they had so faithfully and honorably served the dukes of Savoy, the young Michel was sent to the still more brilliant court of France. Blazing with the beauty of the great ladies who ruled the adored and adorable young king, the resort of painters and poets, the rendezvous of all the noblesse of France, this court at its highest pitch of pageantry and pride was a dazzling school for the young damosel of Gruyère. Here in the white and gold dress of the "Enfants du Roi," and next as king's Pannétier, he passed eight years of his youth, patterning his ideals only too faithfully upon the young sovereign he served. On his return to Switzerland fresh from this experience in France, he joined the league of young nobles called "de la cuiller," from their vow to make a sweet morsel of the rebel republicans of Geneva. In highwaymen raids in company with his mad cousin de Beaufort of Coppet and Rolle, he defied the formidable seigneurs of Berne, and was only saved from their chastisement by their regard for his father. After these escapades, he departed for Italy to the court of the emperor Charles the Fifth, who at first treated him with extraordinary confidence, but when he demanded to be appointed prince of the empire and gentleman of the bed-chamber, the emperor refused. Passing only enough time at Gruyère to receive the vows of fidelity from his subjects and to make a tour of his estates, he proceeded by way of France to carry out a mission of the emperor in Flanders. At Paris where the emperor halted on his way to deal with his rebellious Flemish subjects, Count Michel was so pleasantly entertained in the round of fêtes and divertissements which celebrated the imperial visit, that he postponed again and again the adjustment of the important differences with Fribourg which had been left in abeyance at the death of his father. His mission to Flanders was so carelessly executed that he soon lost the confidence of the emperor who, openly declaring that "he thought little of him," sent him away from Turin. On his return to Paris after another brief visit to his country Count Michel received a better welcome from François I, who invested him with the Order of the King and with the Collar of St. Michæl. No better example of the personal charm of François I is to be found in history than his influence over his Swiss allies. Assuring the ambassadors of Berne, when they visited Paris with the hope of being released from their military service, that the disastrous results of his Italian campaigns were due only to the derangement of his finances, he promised personally to lead them in his approaching invasion, beguiled them with fair words and promises, even engaging to place the crown diamonds in their custody as gage of their pay, and professing that he was "l'ami de cœur" of the Confederates bound them for weal or woe to his cause. At the battle of Sésia when Bayard fell before the armies of the emperor and the traitorous Constable of France, it was the Swiss who saved the existence of the French forces. At the disastrous defeat of Pavia, losing half of their soldiers, they fought with a desperate courage for the lost cause of the still beloved king, who at the moment of surrender could salute the Swiss guard and say to his captor: "If all my soldiers had fought like these, I would not be your prisoner but you would be mine."
In the complications which arose from Berne's renewed demands for the recognition of their authority over Gruyère, Count Michel became a figure of international importance. When his domain was threatened with invasion, he declared that he had received it from God and his fathers, and would not submit. The Fribourgeois, in the interests of the Catholic party, were against Berne, and declared they would support him to the full extent of their power. Six other Catholic cities also ranged themselves with Fribourg, and war seemed so imminent that the matter was taken before the Diet, when, with the aid of the French ambassadors and a summons from the emperor Charles V to respect the independence of his imperial fief, Count Michel was able to retain the freedom of Gruyère, but compelled like his father to admit Berne's authority over his possessions in the Pays de Vaud. In the support which François I gave to Count Michel, he followed not so much his predilection for a courtier whom he had invested with the Order of St. Michel as his habitual policy of conciliating the Swiss, whose support was indispensable to him in the war he had again declared against the emperor. In December of the year 1543, Count Michel at the invitation of the king joined the French army before Landrécies, where with a small force of cavalry armed and equipped at his own expense he was fortunate enough to assist his old master in relieving the siege of the city.
But this was the only fortune which fell to the Gruyère banner during the various campaigns in which he was engaged. "Fanfarront" and proud, the new and richly embroidered flag he commanded represented the symbolic and hitherto honorable "Grue," in a guise as "fanfarront" as Count Michel himself. Assuming the title of prince, and for his poverty-stricken little domain the powers and independence of a royal principality, he was not content to furnish the two thousand men required by the king, but rashly undertook to double the number. Still more rashly he left the levée of these troops to a delegate, who hastily assembled a motley and disreputable collection of untrained men from all parts of the country, with a few ignorant peasants from Gruyère itself who were in no way fitted to sustain the valorous reputation of their country. Detained by the quarrels which against all advice he continually pursued with Geneva and Berne, he delegated his command of these troops to the same untrustworthy agent who had collected them, a certain Sire de Cugy of Vaud. At a critical moment in the battle of Cérisolles this helpless band of peasants not surprisingly took to their heels and seriously endangered the victory of the French. The other Swiss soldiers sustained their old reputation with prodigies of valor, but upon the Gruyèriens were lavished every epithet of contempt. The pitiful episode was the object of many royal witticisms. To the king who "supposed that they were of the same stuff as the Confederates," his chronicler du Bellay replied that "it was folly to disguise an ass as a charger"——"Why pay these cowards," asked the king in return, "who fled like Grues hier?"
How important the little Swiss province was considered among the great kingdoms of Europe, was again shown in the multitude and variety of observations in the contemporary memoirs upon the conduct of the men who untruthfully called themselves Gruyèriens. A comment of Rabelais in his Pantagruel, adds to the general reproach. "It has always been the custom in war, to double pay for the day when the battle is won. With victory there is profit and somewhat for payment; with defeat, it is shame to demand reward, as did the runaways of Gruyère after the battle of Serizolles." Thus Rabelais mocked the last Gruyère soldiers as Tasso praised the first, and an undeserved stigma was set on the banner which had been carried unstained through six centuries of warfare at home and abroad.
CHURCH OF ST. THEODATE
With a persistency which deserved a better reward, Count Michel now determined to redeem his disgrace, and joined the French armies in the prolonged attempt to relieve the city of St. Dizier, besieged by the imperial forces. But fortune on this occasion was unfavorable to the French and no glory was gained and no rehabilitation of the unfortunate Gruyèriens. In a third campaign under the command of the Duc de Guise, Count Michel was again with the French before Boulogne, and a witness of the peace of Crépy which was signed at the moment when that city fell into the hands of the English. Thus although putting forth every effort to restore the ancient reputation of his house, the unlucky Count Michel was forced to return without laurels to Gruyère where, during the last peaceful years of the reign of François I, no further military service was required of him. But the Bernois still tormented him for recognition of their sovereignty over the disputed seigneuries of Palézieux, and continued to lend him money, thus gradually and surely laying their hands on his long coveted possessions. With a like calculating generosity, Fribourg accepted mortgages on such portions of his property as were not already mortgaged to Berne, while Count Michel, like a butterfly caught in the closing net of its captors, lived gayly in the lingering sunshine of this false prosperity. A romantic imbroglio in which his cousin de Beaufort was involved afforded him congenial distraction, and again served to attract the attention of the king of France and the emperor to the affairs of Gruyère. Passing their brilliant youth together at the court of François I, where the young sire de Beaufort was also "Enfant du Roi," the comrades were also associated in the mad escapades of the "Lique de la Cuiller," against the Geneva republicans, and when de Beaufort carried off the beautiful Marie de la Palud, it was to Gruyère that he fled, riding madly across country to ask Count Michel's protection. The mother of the runaway beauty—a certain Countess de la Varax, was determined to recover her daughter and as a bourgeoise of Berne, denounced the ravisher to the city authorities, but when informed by the countess of Beaufort that she had been married by bell and by book, and had Count Michel's promise to intercede in her favor, they declined to prosecute her or her husband. Fribourg also took the side of the lovers, and sent a letter in their behalf to the king of France. But the Countess de la Varax had already secured the support of both emperor and king, who, thinking the matter of high political importance, sent pressing letters by their ambassadors to Berne and Fribourg and, later, to the Diet of the Confederation, commanding that de Beaufort should give up his bride. Informed of these royal and imperial commands, the Sire de Beaufort declared he would die rather than give up his wife or emerge from his Gruyère asylum, and prayed the seigneurs of Berne to write to the king in his favor. Before the grave assemblage of the Confederation of the Diet at Baden, Count Michel magnificently declared that as for him he would protect the refugees at all costs, and left the matter to the justice of the delegates. The Diet as stoutly declining to dissolve a legalized marriage, defied the summons of the king and the emperor and ordered the pursuit of the lovers to cease. The two counts of Gruyère and of Beaufort were so gratified by this support that when the emperor prepared to invade Switzerland they offered to join the Confederate army in the defence of their country. With the passing of this threat of invasion Count Michel lost his last opportunity of military distinction. The remainder of his reign was one long struggle with the net of financial embarrassment which now encompassed him. The youthful impression of magnificence gained at the French court, the vanity of his extraordinary beauty, the favor of the dazzling François I, the actual independence of his imperial principality exalted his imagination to a pitch of pretension utterly beyond his capacity of either leadership or organization. He was fertile in imagination, persistent and indefatigable, but he had unfortunately inherited no trace of the firmness or judgment displayed by the long line of his ancestors, while from the intriguing de Vergy strain, he derived a treacherous and feeble duplicity, which lost him the confidence of the sovereigns he served and the cities with which he was allied. Although maintaining an apparent friendship with Berne and Fribourg, whose monetary assistance he constantly demanded, he succeeded by a complicated system of loans and partial payments of interest in possessing himself of a long line of châteaux-forts extending from Gruyère to the Pays de Gex. As he was the acknowledged head of the still existing league "de la Cuiller," his acquisition of this formidable line of fortresses only too clearly indicated his design of restoring the supremacy of the nobles in Switzerland, and by a brilliant dash for liberty at once to obliterate the power and the embarrassing financial claims of Berne and Fribourg. His friends had already begun to collect ammunition, and apparitions of armed bands were reported to Berne, when a warning from the French ambassador that a project was on foot to threaten their liberties and to reëstablish the exiled duke of Savoy, caused the authorities to send word to the baillis in the several departments to watch Count Michel and find out the secret of his intentions. When he was summoned to appear at Berne to account for these suspicious occurrences, Count Michel forthwith abandoned his far-reaching and unpracticable scheme, and sent a request to the council asking for time to prepare the documents to establish his innocence. Vanished now were his splendid hopes of reëstablishing the noblesse under his leadership, and crushed under the enormous debts which he had incurred in the acquisition of the now useless fortresses, he was forced to make a supreme effort to preserve himself and his domain from utter and imminent ruin. His long attachment to François I, although rewarded by the very considerable dignity of the royal Order of St. Michæl, had been far less profitable in substantial results, for his old master, according to his custom, had failed to pay either the salaries of his positions at court or the pensions alloted to Gruyère according to the terms of the Perpetual Peace. To the arrears of these pensions and salaries, Count Michel added the expenses of his various expeditions with the French armies and the pay of the soldiers who had so disgraced him at Cérisolles. The sum of these claims, drawn up in an interminable document and presented to François I's son and successor Henri II, amounted to no less than 1,700,000 francs. King Henri, who had by no means forgotten the sort of service rendered by these soldiers, was irritated at the fantastic sum of Count Michel's claims, and after a long delay offered half of the arrears of the pay of his soldiers but rejected the other demands, declaring that as a knight of the Order of St. Michæl the count was a French subject and had no right as a Confederate to the pensions granted by the terms of the Perpetual Peace. This offer Count Michel indignantly refused, threatening to send back the Order of St. Michæl, and appealing to the Diet to confirm his undoubted status as a Confederate. Berne and Fribourg and at length the Diet ratified this claim and sent messengers to the king recommending its recognition, but assigned the greatly reduced sum of 60,000 francs as the amount of the pensions due. The king replying that he would in no case alter his decision, the Berne authorities, with a singular consideration for their unfortunate debtor procured the additional recommendations of all the cantons; but the king still insisted that as Chevalier of St. Michæl, the count was bound to come to Paris to present his claims before the tribunal of the order. The count, however, as persistently refused to go to Paris "to be mocked by the King," and defiantly proposed that the latter should be summoned to personally appear before the Diet. A less extravagant demand, a less obstinate refusal, would have surely obtained a better recognition from the monarch who "never broke his word," but failing to persuade either the king or his claimant, the Confederates were forced to abandon their intervention and Count Michæl got nothing at all. Ill and despairing, he now abandoned the administration of his hopelessly involved estates to his brother François, who with the aid of an appointed council vainly essayed to bring order out of confusion. In an open assembly the people were asked to guarantee a new loan on the promise of the cession of all the Gruyère revenues at a fixed date. Irritated but still faithful to their ruler they consented, but the delay thus obtained only postponed the inevitable disaster. Berne and Fribourg now announced their intention of assuming the debts of the entirely mortgaged domain and dividing it between them. The unhappy people of Gruyère prepared to witness the dispossession of their ruler and the dismemberment of their beloved country when Count Michel played his last card, marrying through the good offices of his uncle Claude de Vergy, (who had now succeeded his father as maréchal of Burgundy) the widow of the Baron d'Alègre, Madeleine de Miolans, a daughter of a once illustrious Savoyard family. To her devotion and that of his de Vergy's relatives, who spared nothing but the necessary funds to avert his impending ruin, Michel owed a short reprieve from the execution of his creditors. Four months' delay was granted his wife in which to raise the interest due on the loans; but although journeying to Paris and soliciting every influence to procure the required sum, the countess of Gruyère failed in her efforts. The poor lady now saw the end of her dream of rehabilitating the fallen fortunes of the man she had so unwisely married. How potent was the charm of the bankrupt hero who could still inspire her unlimited devotion was still better proved by the affection of his half brother François. Modest, dignified and charitable, as his brilliant senior was wasteful and rash, François' loyalty was unaltered by any disgrace of misfortune. But in the very climax of his ills Count Michel lost this invaluable brother and friend. In a letter to his implacable executors he thus poured out his grief:
"Sirs, this letter is to inform you that in addition to all the misfortunes and adversities, illnesses and otherwise, which it has pleased God to send me, it has been His good pleasure to take from me my brother François d'Aubonne who died yesterday morning at eleven o'clock at Gruyère. The sorrow and grief which I suffer, dear Sirs, you cannot imagine, at thus losing my second self and the brother who has rendered me constant loyalty and service. Therefore, to you who are my chief masters, fathers and friends, I confide my sorrow, praying you as good fathers, friends, lords and ancient protectors of my house to console and assist me as has hitherto been your good pleasure."
"Fanfarront" no longer, but helpless as a child in the face of the ills he had wrought, Count Michel sent his courageous wife on her many futile errands in his behalf, while he waited alone at the château for the inevitable end. Writing again and again to Fribourg and Berne, declaring that his illness gave him no peace and that the slightest effort to think redoubled his pains, he found no better occupation for one of his solitary days than to re-read his treaty with Fribourg.
"Magnifique Monsieur l'Avoyer, and honored lords, to your good graces I affectionately commend myself.
"While I was sitting the other day, overwhelmed by the sufferings of my poor body, I began to re-read my treaty of Combourgeoisie with your city, to distract the ennui of my malady, when the countess' little dog who had been gamboling about me dragged off, while I was not looking, the ribbon and seal, which greatly annoyed me. I send you back the paper, therefore, asking you to be as good as to affix another seal, by which you will greatly oblige him who in heart and affection, Magnifique Monsieur l'Avoyer, is entirely your good citizen and servant."
The four months' respite had now passed, and the countess with her devoted sister presented herself before the Diet to make a last effort to procure a postponement of the sentence of dispossession. In silence the deputies listened to her tearful appeal, when realizing that no answer was possible and unwilling to listen to the fatal decree, the countess and her sister requested permission to retire. Respectfully conducting the weeping women from the chamber, the delegates then formally authorized the transference of Gruyère to the cities of Berne and Fribourg. At ten o'clock in the evening of this same fatal day, Count Michel, followed by a single faithful domestic, mounted his horse and rode away from Gruyère. The shadows of a November night, the sighing winds, the falling leaves, were the fitting accompaniment of this tragic departure. Significant also was it that with the fall of the house of Gruyère, the last remaining feudal sovereignty, the old chivalric order forever passed from Switzerland. With the extinction of the power of Savoy, and the establishment of the inclusive league of cantons and cities representing the new and united nation, the little principality of Gruyère was in any case doomed to the acceptance of the prevailing form of government. But although hastening by his extravagance the fall of his house, Count Michel had various difficulties for which he was not personally responsible. With the repeated enfranchisement of his people from their feudal contributions and taxes, his revenues had already been seriously reduced, and the long legal process and armed resistance necessitated by his grandfather's struggle with the rival de Vergys, had exhausted a large part of the accumulated capital. Thus only a rigid system of retrenchment would have sufficed to preserve the financial integrity of Gruyère. For such an administration Count Michel was utterly unfitted both by character and training, and he precipitated his own inevitable ruin, when, yielding to his unbounded and unrealizable ambitions, he essayed to reverse the course of events and restore the power of feudality in Switzerland, at the very moment of its disorganization. His refusal to accept any portion of his claims on the French crown, his rejection of the proposition to sell, while it was yet time, any part of his estates, were examples of his immoderate and unreasoning pride. But another cause, the machinations of the powerful and envious de Vergys, singularly conspired to hasten the final dismemberment of the coveted province. Causing first the exhaustion of the Gruyère revenues, through the forced and loveless alliance with the ruling and legitimate line, the de Vergy strain produced in Michel a changeling heir, who was empty of heart as he was bankrupt in purse. Thus as the old order of feudalism, yielding to the progress of free thought, free speech and free faith, in the whole extent of Europe crumbled and fell, then was fulfilled in the already democratic Switzerland the old prophecy of the fool Chalamala, that "the Berne Bear would some day eat the Grue in the caldron of Fribourg." To Berne in the final division was allotted the mountainous regions of Gessenay and château d'Oex, while Fribourg took possession of the lower pasture lands, the city and the château, and the château itself they converted into the seat of government. In the deserted castle where for six centuries Count Michel's vigorous forbears had pacifically ruled with their vigorous sons, the last pitiful illegitimate child of the line was discovered by the Bailli of Fribourg. Sent with her mother, an old domestic of the château, the little Guillauma was brought up in the hospice and supported, like her mother, at the expense of the city. Thus finished in utter disgrace the illustrious line of pastoral kings. At the château of Oron, where the countess of Gruyère had fled after the decree of dispossession, her despairing husband joined her. In the cold of the November weather, the empty château, without servants, heat or supplies, was only a temporary refuge, although the council of Berne mercifully sent the countess a small sum of money for her immediate necessities. The paternal patience of the calculating Berne authorities was solicited by their equally hypocritical victim, in the following humble appeal sent by Count Michel upon his arrival at Oron.
"Since it has pleased God so to chastise and afflict me that I am compelled to depart from your Excellencies and to follow the path He has pointed out to me, I praise Him in that His punishment is meted out to me in mercy and not according to my sins; my absence and inability to serve you as I have all my life desired being of equal affliction with my loss. I have always had such confidence in your great kindness and humanity, that I am assured that your magnificences will have compassion on me and my wife, who is departing to solicit you as humbly as possible to pardon my not appearing before you, as my heart is so desolate that I can say or do naught to help in these circumstances. Therefore, may it please you to listen to her proposition and to grant as great a degree of honor and welfare as is possible to your child."
Although Berne had permitted the temporary residence of the deposed count at Oron, and had granted to the countess the revenues of a small piece of land, the refugees soon left the "logis" which they found "si froid et si mal fourni de vivres," and repaired to Burgundy and the protection of their powerful de Vergy relatives. For many years the dispossessed princeling was destined to pursue his adventurous career in the various kingdoms of Europe. With his immediate necessities supplied by his wife's income, in the accustomed luxury of the châteaux of his relatives he quickly recovered his old pose of an independent and only temporarily deposed potentate, and proceeding to Paris in his character as Chevalier du Roi, was able to obtain a surprising degree of recognition. Welcomed by Catherine de Medici as a Catholic among the Catholics, he was present as a councilor of the King's Order at the private and preliminary trial conducted by the queen mother of the assassin of his old general and commander the Duc de Guise. King Charles IX may possibly have granted a part of Count Michel's claims upon the French crown, and was in any case so much influenced by his representations that he wrote to Berne and Fribourg recommending his reëstablishment in his estates. When informed by the council of the respective cities of the conditions of his dispossession, King Charles made no further effort on his behalf. The still undiscouraged adventurer then repaired to Flanders to the palace and protection of his powerful aunt the Sénéschale of Hainault. From Hainault as a base of supplies, he journeyed about Flanders and Belgium, finding temporary sympathizers and supporters in various notabilities with whom he consulted as to the best method of recovering his estates, or at least wresting them from the hands of Berne and Fribourg. The Cardinal de Granvelle, who was intimately known to the king of Spain, and the Belgian ambassador to the Spanish court were solicited to represent his claims for recognition as a good Catholic to his Spanish majesty. To his suggestions that Gruyère would be a valuable addition to the Spanish territories, no more attention was paid than to his desire to be decorated with the Order of the Toison d'Or and to be received as a colonel in the Spanish army. For Philip II, enlightened by the cardinal as to the character of the pretendant for his favor, had no wish to tempt him from the service of France, and still less to embroil himself with the Swiss Confederation by intriguing with a dispossessed bankrupt for the recovery of his lost estates. Deserted by the kings of France and Spain, the count, since the death of his faithful wife, old and alone, proceeded to the court of the emperor. A new friend, the Alsatian Count Bollwiler, was solicited to arrange for him another advantageous matrimonial alliance, while the Emperor Maximilian II was so moved by the recital of his woes that he sent a letter to Berne and Fribourg requesting that in view of the count's advanced age and many adversities, he should be permitted to repurchase and enjoy his lost principality for the brief remainder of his days. A long memorial from the count accompanied the emperor's letter and announced that with the aid of his new and powerful friends, he would soon be in a position to buy back Gruyère. He ended with an appeal for compassion on his bald head and his white beard.
With respectful attention to the august request of of the emperor, Berne and Fribourg replied that no provision had been made for the repurchase of Gruyère, and detailed the conditions by which they had acquired the property. The emperor thereupon declined to renew his recommendations, and after this final defeat, Count Michel, deprived of his last hope of royal or imperial assistance, the neediest and loneliest of adventurers, lived a hand-to-mouth existence with the faithful domestic who had followed him since the day he had departed from Gruyère. Nursing always the same chimera of some day returning triumphant to his lost province, he pursued his peregrinations, finding a final refuge in the Burgundian château of Thalémy, belonging to his cousin François de Vergy, where he died at last in March of the year 1576. On a day in May a messenger from Burgundy announced his decease to his uncle the protonataire Dom Pierre de Gruyère. With tolling of bells the news was proclaimed, and a month later, before a great throng of people from all parts of the country, a memorial service was held in the church at Gruyère. "Desolatione magna desolata est Grueria, ploratus et ulleratus auditi sunt in Grueria, et in omnibus finibus eius." With such a text the last Gruyère prelate celebrated the honors due to the last count of his line. "Desolate with a great desolation," in truth were the people who, bitterly weeping, lamented the loss of their happy independence, preserved through so many long centuries under the kindly rule of their beloved counts. A halo of melancholy romance had gathered through the popular traditions about the figure of Count Michel, so that he has strangely become the typical representative of the beauty, strength and valor of his far worthier predecessors. Conflicting reports about the place of his death and entombment, strange tales of his reappearance, have made him a second Boabdil, unburied, always returning to the beloved home of his youth. An hallucinated exile in life, his ghost, hallucinated, ever returning, haunts his lost and lovely Gruyère.
