The Countess Claude, although supported by such friends as the maréchal of Burgundy, the duke of Savoy, the king of France, and the emperor of Germany, had been reduced to sad straits. From her retreat at the château of Aubonne, without heat, without food, she had appealed to the guard which Berne and Fribourg had established at Gruyère for a little of her home butter and cheese to keep her from actual starvation. The council at Geneva provided for her necessities by requiring the restoration of the amount of her dot, and to her and her daughter possession of the châteaux of Aubonne and Molière for their lives, with a purchasable reversion in favor of Count Jean. But when, dying early, Hélène, in defiance of this provision, left these properties to her husband and his family, there were more quarrels about their possession, and again the European powers were invoked by Guillaume de Vergy, who procured from Louis XII of France a protest as unheeded as the mandate of the emperor, against their diversion to Count Jean. But the maréchal at last succeeded in his long considered plan of amicably uniting the rival claims, for in a family council it was finally agreed that his daughter Marguerite should marry Count Jean's son and successor, and that the purchase money of the two châteaux, supplied by Count Jean, should constitute her dowry. So was concluded a quarrel of more than sixty years, begun and ended by a marriage.
The estates so manfully won by Count Jean were not destined to bring him unmixed satisfaction. The men of Gessenay demanded pay for their support in the form of costly enfranchisements from contributions or taxes; the revenues of Gruyère had already been decreased by the long legal processes of the succession, the maintenance of the army of defence, and the payment of Countess Claude's dot and her daughter's pension, as well as by the heavy purchase money of the châteaux of Aubonne and Molière. While still preserving its appearance of luxury the court of Gruyère was now supplied and maintained by loans from Berne and Fribourg, while Count Jean, who had prevailed against so powerful an array of foes, was like his predecessors, despoiled by the bishop of Lausanne, who demanded the cession of his rights over a rich part of his possessions. Thus the reign which had begun by an astonishing display of courage and firmness was so embarrassed by the expenditure incident to its establishment, that it ran thereafter a very inglorious course unmarked by the happy prosperity of former years. When Maximilian I prepared to proceed to Italy to be crowned emperor of the Romans, the Bernois consented to enroll Count Jean's son, his son-in-law, the seigneur of Châtelard, and Claude de Vergy, under the Gruyère banner in the army of confederates which was to swell the imperial forces. But with the refusal of Venice to permit the passage of Maximilian this dream of worldly experience and adventure was necessarily abandoned. Except for the service of the Count's illegitimate son Jean, who fought with a force of Gruyèriens in the battle of Novara, when the Swiss preserved Milan to its dukes against the invading army of Louis XII, no military honor accrued to Gruyère during his reign.
CHAPTER VIII
RELIGIOUS REFORM
he death of Count Jean in the beginning of the 16th century left to his son Jean II the task of upholding the old ideals of the Gruyère house against the continually growing democracy in Switzerland, as well as against the advance of religious reform. Endowed with all his father's firmness, he possessed the chivalric ardor of his predecessors and a full share of their personal charm. The long and intimate relation of Gruyère and Savoy which had been interrupted by his father's maintenance of his rights of succession against the will of Duke Philibert II, were renewed by Count Jean II, who soon merited the title so worthily won by his predecessors of the "greatest noble in Romand Switzerland."
When Count Philippe de Bresse, after a lifetime spent in envious agitations against the ruling dukes at last succeeded to the throne of Savoy, he splendidly atoned for his ill-treatment of Count Louis de Gruyère and his brother by immediately investing Count Jean II with the offices held by his predecessors; and when he magnificently celebrated his reconstitution of the Order of the Annonciata in the chapel of Chambéry, he invested Count Jean with the order, and at the ensuing fêtes gave him a seat at his side. The gift of this order, bestowing upon its possessor the privilege of diplomatic negotiations with the thrones of Europe, brilliantly recognized the position already held by the counts of Gruyère of arbitrators for Savoy and Romand Switzerland in the continual differences which arose between them and the monarchs of France and Austria. Although still only a duchy, Savoy had long been related by marriage with all the kingdoms of Europe. It was triply related to France through the wife and the sister of Louis XI and through Louise de Savoie, mother of François I; it was doubly related to the latter's great rival, the emperor Charles V, through Philibert's wife, the able Marguerite d'Autriche, and again through the emperor's sister-in-law, the Duchess Beatrix of Portugal, wife of Philibert's successor, Charles III. Fortified and elated by this imperial alliance, Duke Charles III began his unfortunate reign with a magnificent progress through Piémont and Savoy, where, particularly in the Pays de Vaud, he was cordially welcomed. At Geneva "the youth of the city were gayly decked out in damask, velvet and cloth of gold, while a corps of the most beautiful women, superbly dressed as amazons carrying lances and shields, were led by a fair Spaniard in honor of the Duchesse." At Vevey, bells rang, and a great procession of soldiers in parti-color followed by others in pure white, with a hundred pages also in white, carrying the white cross of Savoy, came out from the gates to meet him.
Presenting his suzerain with the donations of the Pays de Vaud at Lausanne, Count Jean was also present with the bishops of Tarentaise, Lausanne and de Bellay at the general assembly of the Savoy estates at Morges, and at the château of Oron received the duke and his suite at a splendid banquet.