Chapter V: The Albigensian Crusade (2)

On November 11, the Lateran Council met. It was an impressive assembly, including seventy-one patriarchs and metropolitans, four hundred abbots and bishops, and a huge number of delegates holding proxies for bishops who were unable to come. The Patriarch of Jerusalem was there, and the Patriarch of Constantinople, as the Greek Orthodox Church (for the first and last time since the ninth century) was in full communion with Rome, owing to the occupation of Constantinople by the short-lived “Latin Empire” which the iniquitous fourth Crusade had planted there. According to the well-known laws which govern human assemblies, this august body was impotent for effective deliberation, and at the mercy of the manipulation of its leaders, because of its great size. In general, its function was not so much to make decisions but merely to register decisions made before it had convened. In its three sessions, on November 11, 20 and 30, the Council passed all the decrees submitted to it, no less than seventy in number, which had been resolved upon, as we should say, in committee. Indeed, in every matter but the Albigensian, Pope Innocent seems to have been in complete control.

On the three stock subjects of faith, Church organization, and discipline, the Council affirmed transubstantiation, settled the order of precedence of the Patriarchs in the order Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, required sacramental confession once a year, and followed the usual mediæval practice of legislating interminably against the irregularities of the clergy. Those in orders were forbidden to act as surgeons, since operations cause the shedding of blood. Trial by combat was forbidden. Trial by ordeal was virtually abolished by forbidding any religious ceremonies in connection with such trials, thus depriving them of all reason for being, since they depended on religious sanction for their whole moral force. Decrees were passed against “incontinence, drunkenness, hunting, attendance at farces and stage plays,” on the part of the clergy. Other decrees regularized the procedure and penalties against heretics and their protectors, as we shall see in more detail in the next chapter. In the political field, the Council confirmed the election of Frederic II, son of Henry VI, as Holy Roman Emperor, and attempted to decide the future of Languedoc.

Every principal actor in the Albigensian drama was present, except de Montfort who was represented by his brother Guy. Arnaut Amalric, Archbishop and Duke of Narbonne, Fulk and Guy, bishops, respectively, of Toulouse and Carcassonne, and Theodisius now Bishop of Agde, represented the Languedocian clergy. Over against them on the lay side were the two Raymonds, the Count of Comminges, Count Raymond Roger of Foix, the boldest and most energetic of them all, and a minor noble, Bermond of Anduze, a son-in-law of Raymond’s, who pretended to have rights over the Toulousain inheritance.

Two hearings of the matter in dispute have been reported to us. The scene of the first was the court of the Lateran Palace, presumably either of classic style, or showing the slim circular pillars, delicate round arches and varicoloured stone inlay work of the Cosmati school. Innocent presided, and with him were all the curia. Raymond Roger of Foix, the centre of all eyes with his handsome person and ruddy face, spoke first. He denied his own guilt and that of Raymond of Toulouse. They had only defended themselves, he said, against brigands come to rob them under a pretence of crusading. The younger Raymond, so he maintained, had never even been accused of any crime. He himself, upon Innocent’s express request, had handed over the Castle of Foix, with its mighty ramparts, to Cardinal Peter. If the place, now held by de Montfort, was not given back, then no faith was to be put in solemn treaties. Fulk of Toulouse replied fiercely, recalling Raymond Roger’s crimes, his persecution of the Church and his protection of heresy, the Crusaders he had mutilated and massacred. Raymond Roger replied more fiercely still. A Toulousain knight sprang up, shouting that if they had known that so much fuss would be made over mutilated Crusaders, then even more would have lacked eyes and noses; at which those listening groaned and murmured as a shocked audience will. The Count of Foix then attacked Bishop Fulk. Not content with the lying songs and bitter satires he had written as a troubadour, the Bishop of Toulouse, he said, had caused more than five thousand deaths, including children, behaving himself more like Antichrist than like a Roman legate. Innocent mildly answered that Raymond Roger had stated his own case well, but had “a little” understated the Church’s case against him. Last, a representative spoke for the heir of Beziers and Carcassonne, son to that Trencavel who had died in prison in 1209, claiming that as the father had been assassinated by de Montfort and the Crusaders, the Pope, to “save his own honour,” must return the viscounty to the son. “Justice shall be done,” replied Innocent and retired to his private apartments.

The scene now changed to Innocent’s garden, no doubt some sort of formal garden with clipped plants, for the sure Italian taste changes little. The Pope knew that the great majority of the Council was dead against him with regard to Languedoc. Raymond Roger’s violence had certainly not been calculated to attract wavering churchmen, if any still wavered. But to Innocent that violence showed clearly as the fruit of great wrongs inflicted in the name of the Church over which he ruled, the Church which he passionately desired to have prevail as the arbiter of right and the doer of justice. His sense of his own personal honour, too, was as keen as any in that knightly age. Therefore he was troubled and sought to put his trouble from him among the growing things. Thither the Languedocian bishops, and others of their opinion, pursued him. If Simon had the land, they were saved, they said. If Raymond were returned to power, they and the Church in Languedoc were ruined. At first Innocent resisted, reminding them of the injustice of taking his lands from a Catholic noble like Raymond, and saying that while de Montfort might keep the lands taken from heretics, at least the rights of the widow and orphan must be preserved. But they pressed upon him indignantly, first Fulk speaking, then Theodisius, then the Archbishop of Auch, insisting that such a settlement would give de Montfort nothing, since the Pope held all three counts for Catholics; whereas de Montfort deserved much. They themselves had preached against Raymond as wicked and detestable, to restore him would be to disavow them altogether. Everything must be given outright to de Montfort. Indeed, they dared to say, it was impossible to take from him that which he possessed, for they would be there to defend him. Still Innocent held out. He reproached them with their cruelty, their refusal to compromise, the savage sermons in which they had so far exceeded his will. A few supported him, among them the Abbot of Beaulieu, who was present as Ambassador from John of England, and (for a wonder) Arnaut Amalric. That fierce old man had forced the Pope’s hand more than once in de Montfort’s interest. Now, full of his quarrel with his former friend, he told Innocent to take no one’s counsel but to go his own way. Nevertheless, the voices raised in support of the Pope’s opinion were so few that, at last, Innocent consented that Raymond should be deposed and Simon be Count of Toulouse. The Council so voted in a decree and went home, having legislated in the name of a united Christian Europe, at the apex of the Church’s power.

Although beaten on the main point of Raymond’s deposition, Innocent nevertheless continued to do what he could to limit de Montfort’s triumph. It was said that he told Raymond that something would soon be done for him. The younger Raymond, a high spirited and attractive young man of eighteen, was entertained as the Pope’s guest in Rome for some time after the Council adjourned. Even the terms of the immediate settlement, which were published in a papal decree on December 15, were by no means a blanket endorsement of de Montfort’s ambitions. Raymond was assumed to have been found guilty of heresy and of despoiling the Church. All that part of the Toulousain fief held by the Crusaders was made over to de Montfort with the title of Count of Toulouse. And yet, with the usual papal policy of reservations, it was stipulated that the new settlement was not to override the rights of any Catholic man or woman; which might well have been made a ground, had Innocent lived, for Raymond’s return.

Besides this general reservation, there were four lesser specific ones. De Montfort was to hold his dignities on condition of swearing homage to his proper overlord, the King of France. Thus, if the crusading leader had ever seriously hoped to make himself an independent sovereign, the hope was denied him. Raymond’s wife was to retain the lands of her dowry. Raymond himself, although condemned to exile, was to have an annuity of 400 marks a year payable from the revenues of his former possessions. Most important of all, the younger Raymond was confirmed in possession of so much of the Toulousain fief as was not in the hands of the Crusaders, that is to say Nismes, Beaucaire, and the “Marquisate of Provence” to the east of the Rhône. Finally, a papal letter of December 21 put in question the legitimacy of the measures taken by de Montfort against Raymond Roger of Foix, directing the Bishop of Nismes and the Archdeacon of Conflans to take over the Castle of Foix and hold an inquest to decide whether the place should be returned to its original owner, which was later actually done.

Innocent’s letter reopening the matter of Foix was the great Pope’s last recorded act in Languedoc. Six months later, too soon for him to hear of the anti-French reaction there, he lay dead in Perugia, in the full vigour of middle age, for he was not yet fifty-seven. He had lived only for his passion to make the papacy and (through the papacy) the Church, supreme; and he had raised the See of Peter to a height of unquestioned power which it had never before, and has never since, attained.

Shortly after the young Raymond’s departure from Rome, the two Raymonds reappeared in the unconquered part of their diminished holdings. There they found the people, especially the townsmen, so hot against the “French” that it seemed possible to continue the struggle. Beaucaire, Avignon, Tarascon, declared for their former lords, and Marseilles showed sympathy with his cause. The elder Raymond went off to Spain in the hope of recruiting reinforcements there. In Beaucaire the castle was held by a garrison of de Montfort’s, put there no doubt during his operation east of the Rhône after Muret. The citizens now rose and besieged this garrison, and de Montfort accordingly moved to relieve it.

On the way to Beaucaire, Count Simon appeared before Narbonne, and there the quarrel between him and his old ally Arnaut Amalric came to a head. The walls ordered to be destroyed the previous year must have been patched up after a fashion, for Arnaut ordered the gates shut against de Montfort. The time, I repeat, controlled no agents of demolition except fire and human muscle. Still, the new defences were weak, for the Crusaders promptly broke in and, having entered, threatened Arnaut Amalric himself with violence for opposing them. The redoubtable old man excommunicated de Montfort, publishing the sentence twice over, and interdicted all the churches of the city as long as the excommunicated leader of the Crusade should remain in the place. Whereupon the Christian warriors stoned the archbishop’s palace and the champion of Catholicism joked about the anathema laid upon him, and even showed himself at mass as usual!

After this exchange of compliments at Narbonne, de Montfort moved on Beaucaire, where the inhabitants had declared for Raymond, and besieged the place. The situation was complicated, as the citizens were at the same time besieging the garrison of “Crusaders” in the castle on its bluff over the Rhône. Repeated assaults by de Montfort failed for want of a sufficient number of catapults and other siege machinery. Meanwhile, in the castle, the woodwork of the roofs and hoardings (i.e., wooden galleries projecting outward from the tops of walls and towers so as to command their base) was badly damaged by the catapults of the men of Beaucaire. Nevertheless, the castle garrison held out stoutly, catching the battering ram with a noose of rope which prevented the heavy ram from being drawn back to gain momentum for its blow and keeping the sappers from the base of the walls by lowering burning bundles of tow and sulphur by means of chains from the battlements. Presently word came that Toulouse was about to declare for Raymond. Whereat de Montfort, in a fury, raised the siege of Beaucaire, abandoning his siege machinery and much of his equipment in his haste to meet the new danger.

In angry haste he concentrated all the force he could move from the Razes country on the upper Aude, the Carcassonne district, the Lauraguais region between Toulouse and Carcassonne, and the Toulousain district itself. Then, his concentration made, he promptly appeared before the town more like an enemy than like a rightful lord returning to his own. Now Toulouse, like most important thirteenth-century towns, was a “free city,” a practically independent little republic, whose elected magistrates were accustomed to sit in conference with their nominal feudal lord and follow his lead by their own consent rather than be commanded by him. Accordingly, they asked de Montfort to enter peaceably, unarmoured, and mounted on a palfrey. He replied fiercely that message after message had told him of their conspiracies and treasons against him, and that he would put off neither his hauberk of mail nor his helmet of Pavian steel until he had taken hostages of the flower of the city.

After more high words, the magistrates were inclined to yield, and prepared to confer with de Montfort outside the walls, but were restrained from putting themselves in his power by public opinion, which began to run high. About this time a number of squires, young gentlemen, and pages from de Montfort’s army, entered the town and began to break in and pillage. This was too much. A typical mediæval riot started. Men of all ages and classes, and even women, seized whatever was handy that might serve as a weapon. Barricades of furniture, stakes, and barrels sprang up before every house, and piles of stones and beams appeared on the balconies ready to be thrown down on the heads of the “French.” Battle was joined to the cry of “Montfort” on one side, “Toulouse! Beaucaire! Avignon!” on the other, and matters became so hot that de Montfort’s people, forced to give way under the rain of missiles from the houses, could scarcely make good their retreat over more barricades thrown up to cut them off. Seeing that the place could not be held, Count Simon ordered it to be set on fire in several places. The “French” had become scattered, and the energy of the Toulousains put them in danger of being crushed, so that they had to concentrate and cut their way through in deep columns. By nightfall only the citadel, the “Chateau Narbonaise,” was still in de Montfort’s hands. He himself was “full of rage and anxiety” at the heavy losses his troops had suffered.

On the following day, however, Bishop Fulk persuaded the Toulousains to submit, and give not only hostages but also a huge ransom of 30,000 marks. De Montfort accepted the hostages and the ransom, and then pillaged the place once more, “destroyed” its fortifications (after he had officially demolished them in the previous year), filled up the ditches and disarmed the inhabitants. The uneasy peace lasted through the rest of the year.

The new Pope, Honorius III, was of a mild nature, so that even had he wished, he would hardly have been able to struggle against the extreme party in Languedoc. Instead, the new legate whom he sent there—a Cardinal Bertrand of San Giovanni e Paolo—was more bitter than any of his immediate predecessors.

Now that the party of violence had nothing to fear from Rome, the Crusade was again preached, so that new Crusaders appeared in Languedoc in the spring, and with them a small royal force sent by Philip Augustus. With these reinforcements de Montfort was operating east of the Rhône when, for the second time, word came that Toulouse had declared against him. This time it was not a matter of suspicion and secret conspiracies. The citizens had joyfully welcomed back the two Raymonds and massacred all Frenchmen who failed to gain the shelter of the Château Narbonaise. The counts of Foix and Comminges and many nobles had rallied once more to fight the “French.” De Montfort’s wife, the Countess Alice, and one of his sons were in the Château Narbonaise, which held out, although seriously threatened by the Toulousains. Messengers were sent to tell Count Simon that he must make haste to relieve the garrison. This he did, and in the month of September began the third siege of the capital of Languedoc.

The trace of the walls of Toulouse in 1217-1218 is known throughout most of their length. On the south they left the river at the corner of the present Rue des Renforts, and extended in a fairly regular curve until they struck the line of the present inner boulevards just east of St. Etienne. They then followed, roughly, the Boulevard Lazare Carnot and the Rue Dutemps, divided the capitol and its grounds, and met the river in the neighbourhood of the Place St. Pierre—a circumference of about a mile and three-quarters.

The bits of their foundation which still exist are built in small square stones, with occasional binding courses of brick, in the manner of the later Empire and the Dark Ages. Throughout most of its length the wall is flanked by round towers at the regulation Roman intervals of about seventy yards.

The fortress known as the Château Narbonaise stood near the intersection of the present “Allée St. Michel” with the Rue des Renforts. It was rectangular in plan, of no great extent, with a tower at each corner. Instead of forming a part of the city walls, it stood outside them, commanding them the more easily through being considerably higher. The Porte St. Michel, through which ran the road to Narbonne, pierced the city wall just opposite the castle’s north-western corner, so that the castle dominated it completely.

Within the place the intense local patriotism of the mediæval commune was again blazing high. Everyone worked fiercely, digging ditches and setting up palisades and wooden towers to fill the gaps made in the walls by the recent “demolitions.” Even at night the work was continued by torchlight.

The first party of Crusaders to arrive was commanded by Guy de Montfort, Count Simon’s brother. Dismounting, and cutting off part of the shafts of their lances to make them more manageable in street fighting, the “French” men-at-arms attacked the place. An entrance was forced, but, as in the previous year, the assailants could not maintain themselves in the streets of the town, finding themselves always confronted by new barricades and exposed to a hail of missiles from the houses. Guy and his men ended by taking refuge in the Château.

The Toulousains had fought so savagely that when Count Simon himself appeared and proposed another general assault, Guy and those who had seen the new spirit of the citizens finally persuaded him not to do so. The crusading leader, with all the scorn of a knight of the Middle Ages for townsmen in arms, at first made no preparations for a regular siege, but merely completed his concentration and terraced the walls of the Château Narbonaise with emplacements for catapults to fire upon the works which the Toulousains had thrown up to confront it. But despite this heavy “artillery support,” the attack which he delivered was repulsed with loss, and Guy was wounded. Clearly a regular siege was necessary, and Count Simon called a council of war and resigned himself in sombre anger to listen to the advice of his barons and clergy as to how such an operation might be made good.

Throughout the true Middle Ages it was extremely difficult—in fact, almost impossible—to contain, that is to hold continuous lines all around, one of the first-class cities of the time. The sudden, spontaneous expansion of Christendom, reflected especially in the size of those cities, had been accompanied by no adequate corresponding increase of public powers, and by no system of banking and floating credit. Therefore, it was almost impossible to raise and maintain an army of sufficient size for such an undertaking. Very few mediæval commanders would risk attacking, let alone laying regular siege to, a first-class city. In this case the circumference of the defences to be attacked was over 1,600 yards on the right or east bank alone plus a bridgehead on the left or west bank. In the council of war Bishop Fulk pointed out that it would be useless to blockade the city proper if the bridgehead were not blockaded also. The double task was accordingly undertaken.

Having contained the bridgehead, de Montfort’s main task was to make it as difficult as possible for the city proper, on the right bank, to communicate with the open country. Even if he could not make good his blockade, he might be able to annoy the citizens so much that they would end by surrendering.

Throughout the siege both sides continued to receive reinforcements. The Count of Foix, together with certain Aragonese and Catalans, joined the besieged, so that it was possible to make an active defence with continual sorties. De Montfort’s reinforcements seem to have come in more slowly, and to have consisted mainly of mercenary troops. At first de Montfort himself took station on the left bank opposite the bridgehead, so as to hinder communication between the town and the friendly country to the south-west. Shortly after the arrival of Foix and the Spaniards, he was forced to return to the right bank by a vigorous sortie, against the Chateau Narbonaise, and the entrenched camp of the Crusaders which was growing up around it to the south of the town. Throughout the late autumn continual sharp skirmishing went on south of the town in the space between the walls and the entrenchments of the camp. During the winter the Crusaders attempted a surprise attack at dawn, and broke into the city, but were repulsed with nothing gained. With the spring both sides were reinforced. De Montfort was forced to withdraw the lines of his entrenched camp some distance further from the town, abandoning many of the shelters he had constructed. The besieged thereupon began attacking the Château Narbonaise, when a high flood of the Garonne not only cramped their operation but hindered their communications with their bridgehead so that Count Simon was able, by long and obstinate fighting, to win the bridgehead altogether. Further, with the reinforcements which kept coming in, he was able to extend his entrenched lines from the Château Narbonaise (which stood on the river bank above the town) to a point opposite the great church of St. Sernin. But he could not close the space between St. Sernin and the river bank below the town or prevent the movement of boats on the lower river. Further, while the morale of the besieged was as high as ever, and their defences were always being made stronger, in de Montfort’s camp the strain was beginning to tell. The legate taunted him to madness with his failure to get a decision. Money to pay the numerous mercenaries was running short. In vain Pope Honorius alternately threatened and pleaded with the Kings of France and of Aragon, the Count of Foix, the younger Raymond, the citizens of Toulouse, Avignon, Marseilles, and anyone else who occurred to him. Clearly, either matters must be brought to a head, or the siege raised.

De Montfort was not the man to admit himself beaten. He determined on a decisive assault by means of a large “cat,” a movable wooden gallery with a steep roof covered with raw hides to prevent fire. Under such cover the defences might be approached and sapped. At the first attempt the “cat” was injured by stones from catapults. Strengthened, it was moved forward a second time, “moving with jerky little steps,” as an eye witness reports. Without waiting for it to reach their lines, the besieged began a general sortie. De Montfort himself was at mass when this news was brought to him. “I will not go,” he said, “until I have seen my Saviour.” Not until after the elevation of the Host did he take command. Then he concentrated his men and had driven the Toulousains back to their walls, when a stone from a catapult worked by women struck him on the head. He fell and died in a few minutes, his face all bloody and black where the helm had been driven in upon it. A few days after a final attack was made and repulsed, upon which the siege was raised.

Despite de Montfort’s apparent failure his work was decisive. The eight years during which he had maintained himself in Languedoc had not only seen many “Frenchmen” assigned to lands there, they had also seen the moral and political prestige of the southern nobles damaged beyond repair. Toulouse had definitely lost any chance she may have had of rallying the south about her to make head against Paris. Languedoc with her wealth, her culture, and her indifference to the moral unity of Europe, was destined to go under. The great tolerant southern houses were to be swallowed up by the “most Christian” kings of France, who represented the new, vague, but enormous idea of the nation. De Montfort, dead and apparently beaten, had changed the course of history.

The next six years of the Crusade (1218-1224) saw only small wars. They are marked by a single brief and inconclusive campaign, commanded by Louis of France.

The permanent effect of de Montfort’s work did not at first appear. His son Amaury could not fill his place. Philip Augustus promptly permitted Prince Louis to lead another crusading army, with Cardinal Bertrand, the new papal legate, at his side. At Marmande a massacre was achieved fit to rejoice the heart of any mediæval Crusader, but Toulouse successfully resisted another siege, and the army returned home having accomplished nothing. In fact the desultory fighting which went on after its departure ran somewhat in favour of Raymond. Amaury’s strength was mainly in his possession of Carcassonne, on account of its great natural and artificial strength under the conditions of the time, together with its powerful strategic position commanding the highway between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. But Simon’s son had so little of the ability of his father that he could not prevent Raymond from winning back, bit by bit, much of his old domain. In 1220 Raymond retook Lavaur and slaughtered every man in it except a handful who escaped by swimming down the Agout. The Crusaders had no monopoly of massacre.

Meanwhile Pope Honorius tried every means at his command to push matters, but without success. A new legate, Conrad of Porto by name, set up a military order patterned after the Templars and Hospitallers under the name of “Knights of the Faith of Jesus Christ,” but the new foundation achieved little. In the following year Honorius published a sentence of excommunication and exhereditation against the entire Toulousain House, and raised enough money to set on foot another expedition under Prince Louis. But the Prince turned his army against La Rochelle and took that city from Henry III of England, so that the net result of the Pope’s effort to settle Languedocian affairs was just nothing.

Early in 1222, four years after his father’s death, Amaury de Montfort recognized his position as hopeless and offered all that he possessed or claimed in Languedoc to Philip Augustus. This brought on a year full of diplomacy. Amaury urged Honorius to support his action, and the Pope did so, pointing out the deplorable state of religion in Languedoc, where heresy was openly preached and seemed ineradicable. Philip refused, the obstinate caution of the Capets strong in him. Even the offer of a twentieth of the entire income of the Church in France together with all manner of indulgences did not tempt him. Next Amaury made his offer to Thibaut, the powerful Count of Champagne, but again King Philip blocked matters by refusing to exempt Thibaut from service to the Crown in case of a break with Henry of England. In August Raymond died. His son, succeeding him under the title of Raymond VII, promptly wrote to Philip Augustus to ask his suzerain’s help towards the removal of the Pope’s sentence of excommunication and exhereditation against himself. In December, Amaury repeated his offer to the King, and again the King refused.

The confused and indecisive negotiations of 1222 had at least the result of convincing both the new legate and the King of France that Languedoc must be stabilized, and that promptly. The legate saw that heresy was again on the increase, favoured by the confusion born of the long war. The King felt himself near his end—he was suffering from continual fevers—and he feared that after his own death Louis, with his amiable character and weak health, would find himself drawn into the Languedocian business by the clergy and would die too of the fatigue of it, so that the kingdom would be left in the hands of a woman, Louis’ wife, and of an infant, who was to be St. Louis. Accordingly, when the legate called a council at Sens for the purpose of reconciling Amaury and Raymond VII, Philip asked and obtained a change of meeting place to Paris in order that he himself might be present. He was in the provinces, down with another attack of fever, but felt so deeply the need of a definite settlement that he risked the fatigues of the journey, and died on the way. True to his policy of supporting the de Montforts, but cautiously and without identifying himself with their cause, in his will he left Amaury thirty thousand livres.

Within a few months after Philip’s death, the first of the events his wisdom had foreseen actually came about. Amaury’s financial position had become so bad that in January 1224 he patched up a provisional treaty with Toulouse and Foix, used most of Philip’s legacy to pay off his garrisons, and definitely evacuated Languedoc. The Archbishop of Bourges, together with the Bishops of Langres and Chartres, asked Louis to grant him the reversion of the office of Constable of France, and, with this understanding, for the third time he offered his Languedocian possessions and claims to the French Crown. In February the offer was accepted.

With the acceptance of Amaury’s offer by the French Crown begins the last or monarchical phase of the Crusade, which lasts three years (1224-1227). In it the small war continues—varied by a single major operation, a second campaign under Louis VIII, the amiable son of the wise and crafty Philip Augustus, which operation fails. Despite this military failure, the war ends in a political decision against the House of Toulouse.

The citizens of Narbonne (royalist like all townsmen because of the internal peace and order the Crown stood for) were promptly assured by a letter from the King that he would lead a Crusade which should march three weeks after Easter. In dealing with the Pope, Louis made conditions. Rome was to give him one of his own prelates (the Archbishop of Bourges) for legate instead of the Italian Cardinal Bertrand of Porto, indulgences were to be the same as for a Crusade to Palestine, any of his vassals who might refuse service were to be excommunicated, and Roman diplomacy was to do its utmost to assure him peace with all other possible foreign enemies. Finally, the Church was to give him twenty thousand livres of Paris per year out of its revenues during the Crusade, which was to begin and end when Louis chose. It was a formidable list, but the Church could hardly find any conditions too hard.

At this point matters were held up by another of the innumerable shifts of purpose in the Roman Curia. Henry III of England was Raymond’s kinsman. Moreover, Bordeaux and all the lands still left to the Plantagenet in Aquitaine would be dangerously isolated should the county of Toulouse become French Crown land. Accordingly, English influence at Rome was exerted in Raymond’s favour. The young Count of Toulouse himself caused his own ambassadors to promise full obedience to the See of Peter, and through them made exceedingly handsome “presents” to all who might possibly have influence with the Pope. These tactics succeeded so well that Honorius wrote favourably to Raymond, promising to send a new legate (Cardinal Romano of St. Angelo) to arrange matters; and wrote to Louis saying that the Emperor Frederic II’s proposed Crusade was so important that no other crusading indulgences could be issued for the present. The papal letter to the King went on to say that if Louis would but keep on threatening Raymond, the Count must end by giving in. The veteran Arnaut Amalric was directed to lead the local bishops in pressing Raymond VII to make no reservations in his offer of submission to the Church. The legate formally withdrew the Albigensian crusading indulgences and warranted Raymond VII as a good Catholic at a “parliament” in Paris. Louis disgustedly washed his hands of the whole matter, wrote to the Pope that he, Louis, had been played with and tricked, and that Rome might do what it liked without his help so long as his own rights as lay sovereign were not infringed. The French force which was already on foot was used to capture some of the Aquitanian castles still held for Henry III of England.

For a time it looked as if the peace would stand. Under the tutelage of Arnaut Amalric, Raymond VII agreed to enforce anti-heretical legislation as thorough as even the grim old Cistercian could desire. With the Count of Foix and the Bishop of Beziers to confirm his signature, the young Count promised banishment, confiscation of goods and physical punishment of heretics, dismissal of all bandit mercenaries, internal peace and order, restoration of Church privileges and an indemnity of twenty thousand marks to be used partly for repayment of damage to ecclesiastical property in Languedoc during the fighting, and partly (in case the Pope obtained a formal and complete renunciation of the Montfortist claims) to Amaury as compensation. If all this was not enough, Raymond VII agreed to put himself entirely in the Church’s hands, reserving only his allegiance to the King. All of which was agreed to by an Ecclesiastical Council, which Arnaut Amalric attended, at Montpellier in June. Amaury vainly protested, before this decision was taken, saying that Louis was about to act and that the whole Church would be scandalized by such compounding with the House of Toulouse. Unlike his father, Raymond VII made some attempt to confirm promises with deeds, for he restored the See of Agde to Theodisius. Everything seemed to point to confirmation of the settlement by the Pope and an end to the whole Albigensian war.

Again, as had so often happened, Rome reversed the decision of the Languedocian Church, only this time the local clergy were for peace and it was the Curia that was for war. Toulousain promises had too often proved broken reeds. Heresy was again raising its head; another public debate like those of the years just before the Crusade had even been held, and heretical “bishoprics” were multiplying. All this must have been well known at Rome. Moreover, not a few of the local clergy had increased their possessions during the war and had no wish to go back to the _status quo_. Finally, Louis sent Guy de Montfort to oppose the settlement. From October, 1224, until after the new year Honorius refused to move.

When at last the Pope’s decision was made it was hostile to Raymond. Cardinal Romano of St. Angelo was again sent as legate to France to threaten the young Count and to try to patch up a truce so that Louis might be free to use his whole strength in Languedoc. During this year, nothing happened. Raymond VII, who had permitted the Dominicans to preach in Toulouse against heresy, and welcomed the Franciscan Saint Anthony of Padua, offered a national Church council at Bourges such unreserved submission that the council could not bring itself to condemn him, but broke up without giving a decision. To meet the situation, Cardinal Romano the legate ordered each archbishop to take counsel with his suffragans and give him written decisions to transmit to Louis and the Pope. The strictest secrecy was to be kept in the matter of these decisions. Anyone who revealed them was to be excommunicated on the spot. Clearly such a system would enable Pope and King to do exactly as they pleased. Raymond could not flatter himself that the attack would be delayed much longer, especially as the English had decided to leave Louis free to weaken himself by taking on the difficult job of breaking the high spirit of a district removed by so great a distance from his base of operations. Further, old Arnaut Amalric, who had helped play the Toulousain game ever since becoming a Languedocian Archbishop himself, chose this unfortunate moment to die, and to be succeeded in the Archbishopric of Narbonne by Peter Amiel, a bitter enemy of the young Raymond.

In January, 1226, a grand parliament of the kingdom was held in Paris. An address from the nobles was presented to Louis asking that he undertake the Crusade. This he accordingly did, with the reservation that he must be free to break off the campaign when he should so desire. Raymond’s full submission at Bourges two months before had prejudiced many French nobles in his favour, but nevertheless nearly all of them took the cross with their King. The one interruption to the proceedings was the Pope’s action in ordering those of the nobles of Aquitaine and Poitou who had changed their allegiance from English to French to change back again. The action of the Pope was entirely defensible on moral grounds but had been brought about (so the chroniclers say) by liberal use of English and Toulousain money at Rome, as any trouble between the two crowns at this time would benefit Toulouse enormously. Louis promptly went to work to show even greater liberality to the Curia; the Papal orders were suspended, and the preparations for the Crusade were resumed. At a parliament held on March 29 orders were issued to concentrate at Bourges on May 17. Service was to be for the duration of the King’s stay in the South, instead of for forty days as before. The ruinous effects of short enlistments had been as much of a curse to former Crusades to Languedoc as to Washington in the American Revolution. Raymond VII was supported only by the Count of Foix. Comminges had made his peace, and Louis had taken diplomatic precautions to prevent any intervention from Spain. Everything pointed to a complete conquest of the South, except the delicate health of the King, on whom the whole enterprise depended, since his presence in the field was necessary to keep the army together.

On the appointed day, the army mustered at Bourges. Louis was deaf to the pleas of the numerous clergy who begged of him remission of the heavy tithe laid on them. He further swelled his war-chest by accepting money payments instead of field service from certain nobles not keen for the expedition. Even after these exemptions had been granted, the army was enormous for the time. There were fifty thousand knights and mounted men-at-arms, and “innumerable” infantry it is said. The line of operations was on Lyons, and thence down the Rhône, as in 1209.

There was no resistance until Avignon was reached on June 10. There the citizens refused the “French” entry and manned their walls, although they promised not to harass the army in its march if they were left in peace. The place was within the Holy Roman Empire, but Cardinal Romano, the legate, urged Louis to destroy it inasmuch as it had remained ten years excommunicate and impenitent for tolerating Waldensianism, so the King laid siege to it. The incident shows how easy it was to influence Louis and draw him away from the central matter in hand, and also, very significantly, how Waldenses were now attacked as readily as Manicheans. The siege dragged on throughout the summer and into the autumn. Raymond of Toulouse cleverly seized his opportunity to move up and lay waste the country from which the besieging army must draw food and forage. Disease and a plague of flies in the French camp made matters worse. On top of this Pierre Mauclerc, Louis’s second cousin, quarrelled with the King and left the army. Philip Augustus had made this man Count of Brittany by marrying him to the heiress of that fief, and now that she was dead he was out to marry the heiress of Flanders and was angry when Louis thwarted him. So he went off, after serving for forty days, and began strengthening his castles and intriguing with the disaffected Counts of Champagne and of La Marche in Poitou, both of whom were supposed to have an understanding with Raymond. But Louis, although easy to persuade, was not easy to discourage. He stuck to it until, after three months’ siege, Avignon surrendered on September 10. The citizens had been brought very low by the long blockade. They therefore consented to pay ransom, demolish or dismantle their fortifications, and accept from the legate a bishop pledged to suppress heresy.

After the long delay at Avignon the army was at last directed against Toulouse. Almost all the Languedocian cities, including Nismes, Narbonne, Carcassonne, Albi, Beziers, Marseilles, Castres, and Puylaurens had already declared for Church and King. But, just as the end seemed in sight, the hardships of the campaign forced Louis to turn homewards, sick with dysentery. At Montpensier, in Auvergne, on November 8, he died. Within a little over three years after Philip Augustus’s death, his fear had been realized: the kingdom he had given his life to build was in the hands of a woman and child.

Despite this perilous state of affairs, the ideas of centralization and nationality had been so quickened that their growth was hardly checked. At first, to be sure, there was confusion, during which Raymond was able to recover some ground. Louis’ widow, the able and pious Blanche of Castille, was busy getting her 11 year old son, Louis IX, crowned at Rheims. Meanwhile the Counts of La Marche, Champagne, and Brittany intrigued busily with each other and with England, and prepared for open rebellion. Blanche’s position was so difficult that operations on a large scale in Languedoc could not be continued. Nevertheless the ground already won was held by the royal troops, under the energetic Humbert of Beaujeu who had been left in command in the theatre of war by Louis when he turned homeward to die. As long as Humbert’s force was kept “in being” in the South, the crusading tithes on Church property continued to flow into the royal treasury. During Lent in the year 1227, a local Church council at Narbonne excommunicated those who had broken their oaths sworn to Louis and ordered stricter persecution of heretics, showing therefore that some oaths had been broken and that persecution was not being carried on as faithfully as it might have been. Throughout the year the fighting swayed back and forth. Humbert de Beaujeu, with Archbishop Peter Amiel, of Narbonne, and Bishop Fulk, of Toulouse, at his side, took the castle of Becede, massacred the garrison and joyously burned some heretics. Raymond VII, for his part, recovered the town of Castel Sarrasin on the middle Garonne, but was not strong enough to keep the royalists from laying waste the countryside clear up to the walls of Toulouse.

Both sides were weary of war. The drain on the royal resources was serious, especially in view of the hostile attitude of the three northern Counts, and the Church tithes came in slowly and caused endless friction to collect. On the other hand, Raymond saw his position in the eyes of the world steadily going from bad to worse as his overlord continued to make war against him in the name of the Church. Clearly, if he could save anything at all by submission, he had better make haste to do so. Finally, the third party to the matter, the papacy, had also become anxious for peace in Languedoc. In March, 1227, the mild and aged Honorius III had died and been succeeded as Pope by Gregory IX, equally aged but far harsher than his predecessor. In spite of his eighty years, Gregory was determined to oppose the Emperor Frederic II, who had been growing ever more powerful and readier to oppose the Church ever since his guardian Innocent III had died. For a collision with Frederic, the Church must concentrate all her strength. The Languedocian business, therefore, was better out of the way.

With all three parties to the dispute equally determined upon a settlement, there remained only the question of ways and means. Raymond VII had no son and only one daughter, Jeanne. To betroth her to one of the younger brothers of the King would assure the ultimate reversion of the entire Toulousain heritage to the Crown. The Church would back the Crown in obtaining a settlement favourable to the King of France, granted that strong and systematic measures were taken against heresy. A papal letter of March, 1228, to Cardinal Romano the legate, shows that the proposed marriage was the heart of the negotiations. A second letter, of October 21 in the same year, renewing the crusading indulgences, shows that pressure upon Raymond was necessary in order to make him accept the terms proposed. To the same end, it seems that there was further devastation of Toulousain territory. In December Raymond gave in, and named Count Thibaut of Champagne as his agent with full power to negotiate in his behalf. In January, 1229, the parties in interest, including representatives of the municipality of Toulouse, met at Meaux and signed a preliminary agreement. On Holy Thursday, before the great western doorways of Notre Dame de Paris, was enacted the last scene of the long drama. There Raymond came before the legate, bare-footed like his father twenty years before at St. Gilles and clad only in his shirt. He then walked the length of the church to be “reconciled” as a penitent before the high altar. This done, he yielded himself the King’s prisoner in the Louvre, until such time as his daughter and five of his castles should be in royal hands, and five hundred “toises” (over a thousand yards) of the long-suffering walls of Toulouse should be demolished. The end had come.

The terms were hard. Raymond was to pursue heretics and their “favorers” without reserve, even to his nearest kinsmen. The familiar conditions of restoration of Church property, dismissal of bandit mercenaries, and establishing public security, again appear. In addition, the Count was to pay handsomely for ten years, “two masters in theology, two decretalists and six masters in grammar and the liberal arts” as members of the faculty of Toulouse University. He made also the familiar promise to crusade to Palestine, and engaged to do so within two years and remain in the Holy Land five years more. He, and after him his daughter Jeanne, were to retain Toulouse itself, Agen, Rouergue, Quercy except Cahors, and part of the district of Albi. The duchy of Narbonne and the counties of Velay, Gevaudan, Viviers, and Lodeve reverted at once to the Crown. The Church took the “Marquisate of Provence” a fief of the Empire to the east of the Rhône. Jeanne’s betrothal to Prince Alphonse, a child of nine, was treated as a royal “grace” bestowed on Raymond, and so was the royal amnesty to the numerous prescribed gentlemen of Languedoc, except the heretics among them. His vassals and people also subscribed to the conditions, and swore to acknowledge the King as their sole lord after forty days should Raymond fail in any particular. The glory had departed from Toulouse.

The settlement ended the struggle. The Count of Foix came in and made his peace the following year. Raymond seems to have lived up to the conditions, except that he kept putting off crusading to Palestine. In 1237 the light-weight Amaury de Montfort played the fool by calling himself Duke of Narbonne and by making attempts on the county of Melgueil in his own name, and on Dauphiné in the name of his wife. Gregory IX brought him up with a round turn and ordered him off to Palestine. His ill luck held; he was taken prisoner by the Saracens and held for three years until Gregory ransomed him, whereupon he ended his futile life at Otranto, on his way home in 1241. In 1240, there was a last flicker of local independence. The last of the Trencavels scraped up some support in Spain and laid siege to his ancestral city of Carcassonne. There was no movement in his favour among the people, and he was unable to reduce the royal garrison, so he ravaged the countryside before taking himself off and disappearing from history. Seven years later Raymond VII died, in the midst of preparing for his long-postponed crusade to Palestine. Countess Jeanne and Prince Alphonse, who had been duly married, succeeded to what was left of his possessions. In 1271 they died without issue and King Philip III, St. Louis’ heir, took their lands.

Summarizing the four phases of the war, in the first the Crusaders appear in great force in obedience to the Church and take Beziers and Carcassonne. This phase lasts only a few months in 1209.

The second phase (1209-1212) begins with the appointment of Simon de Montfort, nominally to govern the conquered territory and really to root out the tolerant southern houses. Personal interests now take their place beside religious interests. The second phase lasts for three years. Throughout this period Simon de Montfort uses his scanty resources with such ability that he not only maintains himself but also extends his holdings over the greater part of the country in dispute.

The third phase (1213-1224) begins when Simon breaks the formidable intervention of Pedro, King of Aragon. The capital point of Toulouse he is unable to take, or to hold it after it is adjudged to him by the Lateran Council, and he is finally killed beneath its walls. He is successful in that he weakens the prestige of the House of Toulouse due to the long war waged against it in the name of religion.

After Simon de Montfort’s death, for seven years his son continues to lose ground, and finally resigns his claims in favour of the French Crown.

The third, or royal phase, lasts three years (1224-1227). An imminent decision by arms, in favour of the Crown and against the House of Toulouse, is averted by King Louis VIII’s death, and finally, in 1229, a treaty is made, providing for the eventual absorption of Toulouse by the Crown.

The net results are: (first) the establishment of French national unity down to our own day, with no prospect of its dissolution: (second) the re-establishment of the moral unity of Europe, threatened at the beginning of the thirteenth century by the Albigensian movement; which moral unity, so re-established, endured until the convulsion of the sixteenth century, in which the modern world was born.