The Counts of Gruyère

ⷂ
Counts of Gruyère, by Mrs. Reginald de Koven

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Title: The Counts of Gruyère
Author: Mrs. Reginald de Koven
Release Date: August 6, 2007 [EBook #22255]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE COUNTS OF GRUYèRE
BY
MRS. REGINALD DE KOVEN
ILLUSTRATED
NEW YORK
DUFFIELD & COMPANY
1916
Copyright, 1916, by DUFFIELD & CO.

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
PROLOGUE 3
I. ORIGIN OF THE PEOPLE 7
II. INFLUENCE OF THE CHURCH 14
III. SOVEREIGNTY OF THE HOUSE OF SAVOY 25
IV. FOREIGN WARS 46
V. THE BURGUNDIAN WARS (COUNT FRAN?OIS I) 57
VI. THE BURGUNDIAN WARS (COUNT LOUIS) 67
VII. STRUGGLE FOR SUCCESSION 85
VIII. RELIGIOUS REFORM 94
IX. THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF GRUYèRE 105
X. GRUYèRE WITHOUT ITS COUNTS 128
APPENDIX 139
BIBLIOGRAPHY 141
ILLUSTRATIONS
LA PLACE DE GRUYèRE Frontispiece From a watercolour by Colonel R. Goff
THE CH?TEAU Facing p. 10
GATEWAY " 22
LACE-MAKERS " 38
FORTIFIED HOUSES--NORTH WALL " 56
THE CITY ON THE HILL " 72
TERRACE OF THE CH?TEAU " 90
CHURCH OF ST. THEODATE " 112
JOUSTING COURT " 132
* * * * *
THE COUNTS OF GRUYèRE
* * * * *
BIS SEPTEM SEACULA CURRENT MOENIA FUNDAVIT BELLO FORTISSIMUS HAEROS VANDALUS ATQUE SUO SIGNAVIT NOMINE MUROS GRUS VIXIT AGNOMEN COMITE DEDIT ADVENA PRIMO RUBEA GRUEM VEXILLA AC SCUTI PILOSI SUSTENTENT QUORUM EUTIS PARRIDA RUGIS AC ARMATA MANUS VULSIS RADICIBUS ARAE EST HUIC CELEBRIS SERVES ET LONGA PROPAGO NEPOTUM DIVES OPUM OLIVES PIETA VESTIS AURIS EXTITIT ET NOSTRIS PER PLURIMA SAECULA TERRAS PRAEFUIT GRUERIUS SEXTAE LEGIONIS VANDALORUM DUX
ANNO 436
Behold now twice seven centuries.--That a Vandal hero bravest among warriors.--Founded this fortress.--This fortified city has since preserved the name of the Grue.--The stranger became the first count.--His descendants carried the Grue on their scarlet banners.--And on their hairy shields.--To the Vandal hero succeeded a long line of illustrious descendants.--Rich in fortune, rich in their piety.--These Counts won the order of the golden vest.--And for many centuries the posterity of Gruerius.--Chief of the sixteenth Vandal legion who lived in the year 436 governed our country.

PROLOGUE
On the edge of a green plain around which rise the first steps of the immense amphitheatre of the Alps, a little castled city enthroned on a solitary hill watches since a thousand years the eternal and surpassing spectacle.
Around its feet a river runs, a silver girdle bending northward between pastures green, while eastward over the towering azure heights the sunrise waves its flags of rose and gold.
In the dim hours of twilight or by a cloudy moonlight, the city pitched amid the drifting aerial heights seems built itself of air and cloud, evanescent and unreal.
By the fair light of noonday, sharp and clear upon its eminence, it is like a Dürer drawing, massed lines of crenelated bastions, sharp-pointed belfreys, and towered gateways completing a medi?val vignette ideal in composition. Strange as the distant vision seems to the traveler fresh from the rude and time-stained chalets of the mountains, still more surprising is the scene which greets his arrival by the precipitous road, past the double towered gateway, within the city walls. Expressly set it seems for a theatrical décor in its smiling gayety, its faultlessly pictorial effect. Every window in the blazoned houses is blossoming with brightest flowers, as for a perpetual fête. The voices of the people are soft with a strange Italianate patois, and the women at the fountain, the children at their play, the old men sunning themselves beside the deep carved doorways are seemingly living the happy holiday life which belongs to the picture. The one street in the city, opening widely in a long oval place, is bounded by stone houses fortified without and bearing suspended galleries for observation and defence, forming thus a continuous rampart along the whole extent of the hillside.
At the eastern extremity of this enclosure beyond the slender belfrey of the Hotel de Ville and the ancient shrine where a great crucifix looks down upon the scene, a flagged pathway rises sharply under a tall clock tower within the enceinte of the castle set at the steep extremity of the ridge. There behind strong walls a terrace looks from a crenelated parapet over the descending sunset plains, a prospect as fair as any in all Italy. Within a second rampart, semi-circular in form, the castle with its interior court looks eastward and southward over the encircling valley with its winding river, up to the surrounding nether heights of the Bernese Oberland. Walls twelve feet in thickness tell the history of its ancient construction, and chambers cut in the massive stone foundations recall the rude life