Again when the Christians were in want of wood for the catapults and rolling towers with which to scale and batter down resisting walls, Tasso leads this same undaunted servant of de Bouillon into the forest enchanted by the Satanic ally of the Musselmans.
"Like all soldiers I must challenge fate—
Surprises, fears and phantoms know I not.
Floods and roaring monsters, the terrors
Of the common herd affright not me!
The last realm of hell I would invade,
Descending fearless, sword in hand."
Such, according to Tasso, was the spirit of the Swiss Crusaders. Did the banner of Gruyère float with those of Tancred, of Robert of Normandy and of all the flower of the French noblesse over the walls of Jerusalem delivered? No record tells of it. Many of the hundred "beaux Gruèriens" doubtless perished on the holy soil. A fraction only of the host which in multitudes like the stars and desert sands invaded the east, assembled for the assault upon the Holy City. Famine, thirst and pestilence decimated the great armies upon which fell the united cohorts of the oriental powers. Blasphemy and prostitution, the refuge of despair, alternated in the camp of the Crusaders with fanatic visions of visiting archangels, of armed and shining knights descending the slopes of heaven in their defence. From such a phantasmagoria, surpassing in the historical records all the poetic imaginations of its famous chroniclers, only a few returned to tell the tale. Among these fortunate pilgrims was Guillaume of Gruyère, who, once more safe among his home mountains, ended his life with lavish gifts to the holy church of which he was so preëminent a servant. The priory of Rougemont founded by him upon his return, the church of St. Nicholas in the same region, near the borders of the Griesbach, still exist in testimony of his devotion and preserve the memory of his name and reign. Exemplifying by his deeds the dominating religious exaltation of his time he was allied by marriage with a family equally illustrious for its loyalty to the church. His wife, Agathe de Glane, was sister to Pierre and Philippe de Glane, protectors and tutors of the young count of Upper Burgundy, who through his mother's marriage to the duke of Zearingen shared with the latter the rule of the united provinces under the sovereignty of the German Empire. Son of a father done traitorously to death by his own vassals, the young count of Burgundy was himself as basely murdered while at prayer in the church of Payerne by these same vassals, and with him the brothers-in-law of Guillaume de Gruyère, Pierre and Philippe de Glane. Guillaume de Glane, son and nephew of the murdered protectors of their young suzerain, profoundly moved by the tragedy which had befallen his house, determined to renounce the world and commanding that not one stone should remain of his great castle of Glane dedicated these same stones to the enlargement of the monastery of Hauterive, where, taking the garb of a monk, he finished the remainder of his days. Such was the origin of the power of the great Cistercian monastery which still stands at the junction of the rivers Glane and Sarine in the county of Fribourg. Not content with this unequalled act of piety and renunciation, the insatiable Bishop of Lausanne exacted the cession of every château and every rood of land belonging to the family of de Glane, part of which—through the marriage of Agnes to Count Rodolphe I, and of Juliane to Guillaume of the cadet branch of Gruyère—had extended the domain of the latter house. Undeterred by the greed of the bishop, Rodolphe piously preserved the traditions of his predecessors Raimond and Guillaume II, who had founded the monasteries of Humilimont and Hautcret, by continued gifts to the latter as well as to Hauterive. Yet the robber bishop implacably demanded another act of renunciation from Count Rodolphe, one of serious significance to the future of his house, by which he authorized the transference of the market of the county from Gruyère to the neighboring city of Bulle which belonged to the bishop. The city of Bulle thereafter became the centre of exchange of the county, while Gruyère, although now the chef-lieu of the reigning counts, was permanently deprived of all possibility of progress or enlargement. Thus the city of Bulle, busy and flourishing even to this day, has kept its place in the growing commercial importance of the county, while Gruyère is still the little feudal city of the middle ages, precious historically as it is picturesque, but crystalized in a permanent immobility. Forty marks, scarcely more than the worth of the mess of pottage for which Esau sold his heritage, was the price accepted by Count Rodolphe for the commercial existence of Gruyère.
GATEWAY
Rodolphe's far more virile successors, Pierre I and Rodolphe II and III, attempted with the support of the people to defy the power of the bishop, and in disregard of the act of their predecessor, to keep up the marché at Gruyère. But the power which could excommunicate an emperor did not hesitate to launch the same formidable curse upon the princes of Gruyère and they were forced to yield. The foundation of the church of St. Théodule at Gruyère and of the rich and venerated convent of the Part Dieu by his daughter-in-law, Guillemette de Grandson (widow of his eldest son Pierre) attested the unabated devotion of the Gruyère house to the Catholic religion.
