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.
CHAPTER IV
FOREIGN WARS
odolphe IV, eldest son of Count Pierre, although sole inheritor of the title and authority of count, had two younger brothers Pierre and Jean, who perpetuated the strongly contrasted traits of the elder Pierre and Jean. But in the second generation the rôles were changed. Pierre was the religious brother, and became prior of Rougemont, while Jean, even more eager for martial glory than his father, went far from home to join the English armies of Edward III and the Black Prince in their wars with Charles V of France. Count Rodolphe, surpassing his predecessors in the brilliancy of his alliances, married two grand-daughters of Savoy, and through his second countess, Marguerite de Grandson, was related to the distinguished family whose soldiers following Pierre de Savoy to England there established a noble line of Grandisson. These Grandissons were intimately related with the kings of England through the Savoyard Queen Eleanor. The glorious progress of the English armies, the fame of Crécy, the capture of the King of France resounding through all Europe, inflamed with chivalric ardor, young Othon de Grandson, and in his company Jean de Gruyère, to set out in the spring of 1372 for England. Warmly received at Windsor, they were present at the fête of St. George, and assigned a place in the naval forces of Lord Pembroke, sailing shortly after with his fleet for the western shores of France. Bravely and confidently enough the English set out for the scene of their earlier and easy conquests, but the Black Prince, stricken with mortal disease, no longer led their armies; Spain under Pedro the Cruel was allied with the already disaffected English possessions in Brittany, and when Pembroke sailed up to the harbor of La Rochelle he was attacked by an overwhelmingly superior Spanish fleet.