A Ride on Horseback to Florence Through France and Switzerland. Vol. 2 of 2 / Described in a Series of Letters by a Lady

by Augusta Macgregor Holmes

Required by their allies of Fribourg to march with them against the sire of Grumingen, vassal of Gruyères, the Bernese gladly answered to the call, and seized on his castle, though he sued for peace. The count and his knightly companions were wont to pursue their chivalrous sports on the green meadows which stretch beneath the castle. The count’s attendants had dispersed themselves in a wood not far distant, and in the copses which surround the Tour de Trême, when the men of Berne and Fribourg, with a force superior to his own, surprised the count himself in the oak-tree meadow. Pierre fought with the heroism of his antique race, but the numbers had well nigh overpowered him, when two of his vassals, Clarembold and Ulric Bras de fer, resolved to save him at all hazards, flung themselves before his person, favoured his retreat, and guarding the narrow defile through which he had passed, kept his enemies at bay, till the count, who had hastily sounded his war-note and gathered his scattered troop, spurred back to the charge, put the assailants to the rout, and many of them to the sword. To Clarembold and Bras de fer, who covered with blood hailed his reappearance and joined in his attack, he accorded privileges and franchises, which he extended to their posterity. Their memories are still honoured in their village of Villars sous Monts.

Soon after this, in 1349, ushered in by fearful earthquakes, broke out the plague described by Boccaccio, which desolated Europe and Asia. According to the general belief, a third of the population of Switzerland died; the churchyards were filled to overflowing, and the victims buried in unconsecrated ground, and without religious rites, which priests were wanting to perform; whole regions were left desert, and lordships abandoned and unclaimed by friend or foe. Struck with terror, men strove to avert the scourge by the various and horrid means prompted by fear and fanaticism. It was then that numerous travelling societies, the Flagellans, wandered from canton to canton, inflicting blows and torment on themselves, for the sins of the world. Where they passed, the excited people devoted to death a number of Jews, innocent of all crime; it is well known that at Kybourg, the more enlightened Duke Albert was forced against his will to deliver three hundred to the flames; that at Bâle they were all driven into a wooden house, and burned with it; while at Constance and at Eslingen, in the synagogue, the despairing people inflicted death on themselves.

The vassals of Gruyères, unflinching in battle, attached and faithful to their lords, had obtained from them so many and important privileges, either as reward for their services, or in barter for the sums of money their necessities demanded, as to become almost as free as the most democratic states of Switzerland. But for their insatiable ambition, the counts of Gruyères might have been the happiest of mortals; but they looked from their tall towers on the height, less to rejoice in their possessions than to mourn that they saw their boundary. Not being kings themselves, they strove to find consolation in rendering themselves necessary to royalty; and they led their vassals from their flocks, and mountain pastures, and calm homes, to fight in foreign quarrels, and in climates so different from their own, that those sunk victims to the change who had been spared by the sword.

Count Michel of Gruyères, who died in 1570, was the last of his line. He was one of that brotherhood of La Cuiller, who quitted their own lands to ravage those of Geneva. He had commanded their army, forced many of his vassals to serve under their banner; and also sold yearly, and for several years, five hundred men to the French armies in Italy. They had rendered good service to the king of France, but Henry the Second, under various pretences, refused to pay the immense sums he owed to Gruyères; and Michel saw his country depopulated in vain, his debts accumulating, though he had received a large loan from his neighbours and sold his subjects a portion of his lordly privilege, till at last, persecuted by his creditors, and notwithstanding his carelessness of their welfare, mourned by his devoted vassals, he abandoned the inheritance of his fathers, which he saw before his eyes divided between the two cantons, and concealed his shame and sorrow in the castle of a relative in Burgundy, where he died poor and without an heir.

19th August.

So unwell this morning as to fear durance vile at the Cheval Blanc, but, being determined to go if possible, set off at three. I had hoped our road lay beneath Gruyères, but it led through the streets of the town, and thence for a considerable distance across rich meadows, their green pastures spotted with chalets; farther on they are divided by pine forests, the road skirting or passing through them, the sunshine reposing on their verdant glades, or playing among their old trunks, or excluded where these have been felled and supplied by multitudes of young stems crowded in nature’s extravagance. The hedges were gay with wild pinks and woodbine, and on the sides of the road were strips of green and rivulets for Fanny’s feet. We left on the right a gorge, through which the Saarine flows, commanded by a noble looking ruin. The peasantry here are almost German, and therefore perhaps a milder and more amiable race than the French or Genevese. They issued from their cottages and ran from their work in the fields to see us pass by, but always took off their hats and wished good evening. The clouds had threatened rain, but the wind, which whistled in the firs, blew it over us and left only a fine stormy sky above the mountains, partly hiding their white heads, while the sun was brilliant in the valley. As we passed the meadows where the cows were grazing, and the little cowherd lay almost hid in the clover, we thought of Lord Byron’s praise of the bells; their tones, differing and harmonizing, tinkled sweet music. Nearer Fribourg is a fair view into the gorge from the road, which hangs over it where a sweep of the Saarine makes almost an island of a tract of pine grove, and a suspension bridge has been flung from the peninsula to the shore. An avenue of fine trees leads into Fribourg, of which the first view with its dim mountains and most golden valley, is more striking than that of any town I have seen as yet, from the magnitude of the mighty chasm, over whose very edge the houses seem to hang giddily high above the torrent, and the feudal watch-towers, which guarded once, and are still ranged along the winding of its opposite shore. The far famed bridge was not visible, but we could see that now in progress, crossing the gorge of the Gotteron, which issues from the Saarine. In its present and unfinished state it hangs in an awful curve over the abyss, like a thread for a fairy rope-dancer.

The avenue passed, the road becomes precipitous, and scarcely, on a dark night, safe we crossed a bridge, and rode beneath an ancient gate to enter the old town. The houses which line the streets, narrow and ill-paved, are curious and of great age, as are the quaint fountains; at the summit of whose gilt and painted columns figure grotesque saints and Virgins. After various windings we reached this hotel, the Zahringerhof, which should be chosen for its situation and view, as it is close to the bridge and built on the very edge of the chasm.

20th August.

Stayed at Fribourg, a cold day broken by hail-storms, and passed it in walking over the town and along the narrow valley of the Gotteron. Not far from the hôtel on the Place, and opposite the town hall, which is built on the site of the palace of Duke Berthhold, is the venerable lime-tree, planted, according to tradition, the 22nd June, 1476, the day of the battle of Morat.

The young soldier who brought the tidings was a native of Fribourg; he had been wounded in the conflict, and feeling he grew weaker as he approached the town from fatigue and loss of blood, and that his shout of victory waxed too feeble to be heard, he gathered a bough as he passed, and waved it over his head in token of rejoicing. Arrived at this place, where the townsmen were assembled, he faltered forth his news and sunk down to die. They planted on the very spot his lime-tree branch, and it lived and grew his monument, and is now so old, that the decaying branches are rested on the four stone pillars and wooden trellis-work which surround it; there is an express order to tie no animal near, but it is dying of extreme age, and will hardly outlive another winter.