ror that he issued an
imperial mandate recognizing Claude de Vergy as ruler of the disputed
province. But Jean de Montsalvens, supported by his mountaineers,
with an enrolled force of four thousand men, dismissed with calm
politeness the messenger of Savoy, ignored the threats of the two cities
as well as the mandate of the emperor, and preserved so bold a front
against all his foes that he gained the assistance of Berne and the
unanimous support of all his people, and was formally recognized as
count of Gruyere. The duke of Savoy and the two cities now proposed a
council of all the parties concerned by which the rival claims should be
decided, but refusing at first to submit his rights to arbitration,
Count Jean delayed until he was assured by popular consent of the
success of his cause, and then appearing before the council at Geneva,
was formally confirmed in his already established succession.

[Illustration: TERRACE OF THE CHATEAU]

The Countess Claude, although supported by such friends as the marechal
of Burgundy, the duke of Savoy, the king of France, and the emperor of
Germany, had been reduced to sad straits. From her retreat at the
chateau of Aubonne, without heat, without food, she had appealed to the
guard which Berne and Fribourg had established at Gruyere for a little
of her home butter and cheese to keep her from actual starvation. The
council at Geneva provided for her necessities by requiring the
restoration of the amount of her dot, and to her and her daughter
possession of the chateaux of Aubonne and Moliere for their lives, with
a purchasable reversion in favor of Count Jean. But when, dying early,
Helene, in defiance of this provision, left these properties to her
husband and his family, there were more quarrels about their possession,
and again the European powers were invoked by Guillaume de Vergy, who
procured from Louis XII of France a protest as unheeded as the mandate
of the emperor, against their diversion to Count Jean. But the marechal
at last succeeded in his long considered plan of amicably uniting the
rival claims, for in a family council it was finally agreed that his
daughter Marguerite should marry Count Jean's son and successor, and
that the purchase money of the two chateaux, supplied by Count Jean,
should constitute her dowry. So was concluded a quarrel of more than
sixty years, begun and ended by a marriage.

The estates so manfully won by Count Jean were not destined to bring