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The Counts of Gruyère
Paperback
Medieval & Renaissance HistoryGeneral Military HistoryGerman History
Publisher: Katrinabooks
Published: Sep 1 2026
Pages: 94
Weight: 0.30
Height: 0.19 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
riply woven of the French, German and Italian races, the Swiss nation
discovers in its Romand or French strain another triple weave of Celtic-
Romand-Burgundian descent.
While the high mountainous regions of eastern Switzerland were early scaled
and settled by the Germanic tribes, the western were still earlier inhabited by
the ancient Celtic-Helvetians and then civilized and cultivated by the most
luxurious of Roman colonies. Resisting first and then happily mingling
with their Roman conquerors, the Celtic people were transformed into a
Romand race, similar in speech and origin to the French. In the heart of this
Romand country was an ancient principality where the essential qualities of
the beauty loving and imaginative races, Roman and Celtic, expressed them-
selves uniquely. A fountain of Celtic song and legend, a centre of chivalry
and warlike power, this principality is known only to the outer world by the
pastoral product which bears its name Gruyere.
Remarkable in the interest of the unbroken line of its valorous and lov-
able princes, and in the precious and enchanting race mixture of its brave,
3 ANNA DE KOVEN
laughter-loving people, its supreme historical interest lies in its little recorded
and astonishing political significance among the independent feudal princi-
palities of Europe.
When the Teuton barbarians came to devastate the enchanting loveliness
of the templed Roman garden which was Switzerland for three idyllic cen-
turies, they stopped at last at the penultimate peaks of the Occidental Alps,
at a certain region called aux fenils (ad fines), where a glacial stream rushes
across the narrow valley of the Griesbach, among the southern mountains
of the Bernese Oberland. Thus western or Romand Switzerland preserves a
character definitely apart from the eastern, and this barrier across the Bernese
valley, unpassed for a thousand years, still divides the German from the Ro-
mand speaking peasantry. To the north and west lies Gruyere, greenest of
pastoral countries, uniquely set in a ring of azure heights, where like a lost
Provence, the Romand spirit has preserved its eternal youthfulness and charm.
Greatly loved by all the Swiss, its annals piously preserved by ancient chroni-
clers, this country is German only in its eastern rocky portion; but where the
castle stands and in all the wide valleys which open towards the setting sun, it
is of purest Romand speech and character. Here ruled for six hundred years
a sovereign line of counts whose history, a pastoral epic, is melodious with
song and legend, and glowing with all the pageantry and chivalry of the mid-
dle ages. Although skirted by the great Roman roads, and flanked by out-
post towers, Gruyere was never romanized, being settled only in its outlying
plains by occasional Gallo-Roman villas, while the interior country, ringed
by a barrier of almost inaccessible mountains, was left to the early
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