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.

Recounted immortally in the glowing pages of Froissart, is the story of Pembroke's hopeless battle with the Spanish fleet. Confiding in the skill and valor of his soldiers and bestowing the title of chevalier on every man among them in the last hour before the combat, he gave the signal to advance. It was dawn and the tide flowed full, when, with a favoring wind, the forty great Spanish vessels, bearing the floating pennons of Castille, advanced to the sound of fife and drum in battle line upon the English fleet. Arrived at close quarters, and grappling Pembroke's ships with chains and iron hooks, they poured down from their tall towers a rain of stones and lead upon the lower and exposed decks of the English, who with swords and spears sustained the fierce attack all day until darkness fell. With the twenty-two newly-made knights who valiantly defended Pembroke's ship was Jean de GruyÈre, and when at last, grappled by four great galleons, they were boarded and every resisting arm subdued, he was taken prisoner with Pembroke. On another vessel, fighting as bravely, Othon de Grandson was also taken prisoner and with Jean de GruyÈre was transported in captivity to Spain. Dearly paying for their ambition and their new titles, they were furnished in recompense for their valor with lands in Spain by a Burgundian noble, and by industrious commercial enterprise paying their ransom and their debts, after two years regained their liberty and their homes.

Rodolphe IV, reigning count of GruyÈre, displayed in his long career no quality worthy of his generous and high spirited father, no trace of the conciliatory wisdom or devoted piety of his mother. Calculating in his marriages, he was unjust and even dishonest with his people, whom he forced to pay twice over for their exemptions and their privileges. Still dishonestly withholding the signed and purchased acknowledgement of their new privileges from his subjects, he was surprised alone at night in the castle by a doughty peasant, who forced the paper from his unwilling hands and threw it out of the window to a waiting confederate. Left in charge of the Savoyard troops who had driven the invading Viscounti from the Valais, and entrusted with the guardianship of the chÂteaux and prisoners won by the Savoyard arms, he exacted and obtained large sums for his services, although those services consisted in a complete surprise and defeat at the hands of the sturdy inhabitants of the Valais, wherein, except for the heroic defence of the very subjects he had so oppressed, he would himself have perished. From the benefits of the peace which was ultimately established in the Valais, these same loyal subjects were excluded.

How greatly Count Rodolphe was lacking in the noble and humanitarian qualities which had so generally characterized the counts of GruyÈre, was shown in his dealings with his young relative Othon de Grandson. The comrade of his brother, Jean de GruyÈre, in his French campaigns and in his long captivity in Spain, Othon de Grandson was later doubly related to Count Rodolphe, as brother-in-law of his first wife Marguerite d'Alamandi, and as nephew of his second countess, Marguerite de Grandson. The tragic hero of an unjust drama of prosecution which divided in opposing camps the nobles of Romand Switzerland, Othon de Grandson was falsely accused of complicity in the poisoning of Count AmÉdÉe VII of Savoy, and although declared innocent by a royal French tribunal, was again implacably accused by his rival in love, Count Estavayer, on his return to his estates. Calling God to witness that his accuser lied, he consented to defend and prove his innocence in a trial of arms, where, in the presence of his suzerain and of his council and knights assembled, he fell mortally wounded at the feet of his opponent. No effort was made by Count Rodolphe to defend his relative, while Rodolphe le Jeune was not only an unprotesting witness of his undeserved and tragic fate, but the purchaser with his father's assistance of the confiscated Grandson estates. Again, although selling the newly acquired chÂteaux of Oron and PalÉzieux to increase their revenues, the two Rodolphes, in total disregard of the rights of the new owners, attempted to retake them by force of arms, and except for the immediate intervention of the count of Savoy, would have plunged the newly pacified country into a general war.

An enchanting legend regarding the first wife of Count Rodolphe illuminates the dismal story of his inglorious reign. Marguerite d'Alamandi has been confused in the tradition with Marguerite de Grandson, the second wife of Rodolphe. It is Marguerite d'Alamandi, and not the other Marguerite who is the heroine of the tale which has been elaborated into a moving little drama by a poet pastor of the eighteenth century, and which beautifully preserves the customs and the atmosphere of that distant time.

Countess Marguerite of GruyÈre, so runs the story, was so sadly afflicted that she had borne no heir, that she had no longer any joy in her fair castle, no comfort with her beloved lord. Vainly journeying to distant shrines, as vainly invoking the aid of sorcerers and magicians, she went one day, clad as one of her poor subjects, to pray in the chapel at the foot of the GruyÈre hill. There, as the November day was closing, poor Jean the cripple, well known through the country, came also to tell his beads. Very simple and kindly was poor Jean, with always the same blessing for those who gave him food or mocked him with cruel jeers. Perceiving in the shadow a poor woman sadly weeping, he gave her all his day's begging, a piece of black bread with a morsel of coarse cheese, repeating his usual blessing, "May God and our Lady grant thee all thy noble heart desires." That evening, again clad in her jewels and brocades, the Countess Marguerite, at the close of a feast laid for her husband's comrades after a day at the chase, offered each knight a bit of this bread and cheese, with a moving story of poor Jean and a prayer that all should wish what her heart so long and vainly had desired. Nine months later, so concludes the tale, a fair son and heir was born to the happy dame. On the walls of the Hall of the Chevaliers, among the painted legends of the house, poor Jean and Countess Marguerite live in pictured memory; and a room next the great kitchen of the chÂteau, called by the cripple's name, has been pointed out for many generations as the spot where, fed on the fat of the land, he enjoyed the bounty of the countess during the remainder of his days.

Rodolphe le Jeune, the long awaited heir of this story, did not live to inherit the rule of the domain whose fame his father had so sadly stained. Brilliantly educated at the court of Savoy, and later the councilor of the countess regent, he emulated his uncle's heroic example and joined the English armies under Buckingham in France, there winning praise and the offer of the chevalier's accolade. But he failed to fulfil the promise of his youth and died prematurely, leaving his young son Antoine, the last hope of the family, to succeed to his grandfather. Count Antoine's overlord, the youthful count of Savoy, confided the education of his vassal and protÉgÉ to a venerable prelate of Lausanne; but heeding nothing of his pious instructions the young ruler wasted his revenues in extravagant hospitality, lived gaily with his mistresses, and celebrated the weddings of his two sisters with famous feasting and generous marriage gifts. Unlike his predecessors, who shared the rule of GruyÈre with brothers or sons, he reigned alone, and gave himself wholly to the ambition of maintaining the pleasure-loving reputation of his house. More than ever under Count Antoine was GruyÈre a court of love. The numerous and beautiful children of his mistresses filled the castle with their youthful gayety and charm, and his two splendid sons, FranÇois and Jean, proudly acknowledged by their father and legitimized with the sanction of the pope, took their place among the young nobles of the country as heirs of the GruyÈre possessions. Again the gay Coraules of flower-crowned shepherds and maids wound over the valleys and hills. Again minstrels and chroniclers recorded and sang the lovely traditions of their pastoral life.

So in a fond ecstasy of recollection, sings a Romand poet, and thus in the famous lines of Uhland is related the Coraule of Count Antoine.

The Count of GruyÈre

No attacks from feudal lords or from rival cities threatened GruyÈre during the reign of Count Antoine, which came to its end in undisturbed tranquility. The kindly and complaisant father, brother and lover essayed as he grew in years to correct some of the follies of his youth, and according to the opinion of GruyÈre's principal historian married the mother of the children he had already legitimized. A pious and lamenting widower, he instituted many masses and anniversaries for the repose of the soul of his wife, the Countess Jeanne de Noyer of blessed memory; and erecting a chapel to his patron St. Antoine in the parochial church of GruyÈre caused to be painted therein the kneeling portraits of himself and his countess, in perpetual testimony of his devotion to the rites of matrimony and religion.