In 1198, Pope Innocent III had sent two legates into the Languedoc who comported themselves in very grand and luxurious manner and unsuccessfully preached against les Cathares. Five years later, he appointed the native Languedocien Peter of Castelnau, who quickly became so hated that death threats were frequently made against him. One year later, the Cistercian Abbot of Clairvaux, Arnauld-Amaury was sent and was similarly ridiculed and loathed by the local populace. Domingo de Guzman, the founder of the Dominican order, presented a more ascetic appearance but achieved no more success or acceptance. 

Peter of Castelnau had been begging the pope for some time to return to Rome, but he kept on delaying. Finally, when Peter was allowed to return to Rome in January 14, 1208, he was stabbed in the back after crossing a river. An agent of Raymond V, Count of Toulouse was blamed by Arnauld-Amaury, who rushed to Rome to personally deliver the news to the pope, although the murderer could just as easily have been an agent of Arnauld-Amaury or the pope himself, so quick was Innocent to call to arms just two months later (7). Arnauld-Amaury became chief recruiter, propagandist, and titular leader for the crusade and began a formal preaching campaign over northern France (8).

Although the king of France declined to join the crusade, as he had not yet solved the problem of his northern lands in Anjou with King John of England, he encouraged his land-hungry nobles of second, third and fourth sons such as Simon de Montfort, who, unlike their counterparts in the Languedoc, were not allowed to inherit any land. Riff-raff, rabble-rousers and routiers (mercenaries) who had failed to gain plunder in the Holy Land and gratuitously killed their fellow Christians were also recruited; those very same men whom Pope Urban had so eagerly called over one hundred years earlier, “oppressors of orphans and widows, murderers and violators of churches, robbers of the property of others, vultures drawn by the scent of battle.”

The real motive of those people who participated in the Albigensian crusade, the northern French, Burgundians, Flemish, even Austrians, was pure greed. As well as offering salvation, remission of sins, cancellation of debt, and all the plunder they could amass, rather than having to travel years to arduous outremer, (overseas) crusaders could now fulfill their quarantaine (forty days of service) in the immediate vicinity and plunder from “a civilization higher than their own, wealthy cities and splendid castles, a people whose physique astonished them and of whose language they were ignorant” (9).

The crusading army assembled in June 1209 at Lyons. It was enormous. Various sources put the number at anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000, but realistically it was probably about 30,000.  It stretched out for four miles and was a terrifying sight (10). Count Raymond of Toulouse, realizing the threat, had already submitted to the pope, been publicly beaten, lost seven of his castles, dismissed all Jews from his service, given the legates full authority over him and promised to in future treat all those as heretics who the church so designated (11). More afraid for the destruction of his own lands rather than through any crusading zeal, he dashed out to join the crusading army.

This put Arnauld-Amaury in somewhat of a quandary for he had been hoping to attack Toulouse itself, the richest city in the region.  Forced to accept Raymond’s offer of help and whether in collusion with him or in spite of him, Arnauld-Amaury turned his attention to the lands of the Viscount of Carcassonne and Beziers, the twenty-four year old nephew of Count Raymond, Raymond-Roger de Trencavel.  At the news of the encroaching army, Raymond-Roger rode out to submit his lands to the authority of the Church. Arnauld-Amaury would have none of it: he refused point blank for he wanted to make an example of Beziers.

In desperation Raymond-Roger rode furiously back to Beziers where he announced the impending disaster. A message came from Arnold-Amaury with one final offer: that the burghers of Beziers hand over the 222 parfaits who were known to reside in the town. The burghers were proud of their fiercely won independence and refused: they believed that they had enough provisions to be able to withstand a siege until Raymond-Roger returned from Carcassonne where he would amass more troops. Raymond-Roger promptly left to seek reinforcements with all the Jews of the town, many of whom were in his employ.

July 22, 1209 was the feast of St. Mary Magdalene, the most loved and admired of the saints in Occitania. It was this day the crusaders decided to attack. When asked how they should distinguish the 222 parfaits from the other 20,000 inhabitants, Arnauld-Amaury replied with chilling barbarity, “Kill them all, God will recognize his own!” (12) The streets ran with blood. As the mob progressed further into the town, thousands of inhabitants took sanctuary in the Church of Mary Magdalene.  There was no holy sanctuary that day; the mob broke down the doors, burned the church, and slaughtered everyone inside; their bones were discovered under the floor of the church during the renovations in 1840 (13).

It is very possible that the massacre of the entire town was premeditated in Rome between the pope and his henchman, for Arnauld-Amaury in a self-congratulatory letter to the pope wrote, “Nearly twenty thousand of the citizens were put to the sword, regardless of age and sex. The workings of divine vengeance have been wondrous” (14).  Such was his idea of Christian love and compassion.

The crusaders marched on to besiege Carcassonne in August. Disease and thirst finally drove Raymond-Roger to negotiate. Although he was promised safe conduct by the papal legates, instead he was thrown into a dungeon, manacled to his cell, and found dead three months later with no explanation. Every inhabitant was forced to flee with nothing but the clothes on his or her back. Rather than burning the city as he had done in Beziers, the “self-righteous and sanctimonious prig” (15) Simon de Montfort realized that he would need the urban infrastructure to serve his own purpose, whose first goal was the annexation of all Raymond-Roger’s lands. 

Those who would fight for their land, the increasingly dispossessed nobility of the Languedoc obliged to resort to guerilla warfare (faidits), and the pacifist parfaits sought refuge in the rocky citadel of Cabaret, whose inhospitable terrain proved difficult for crusaders to besiege. In April 1210, the people of Cabaret saw a line of people moving hesitantly towards them. It was the remaining inhabitants of the castle of Bram who had their eyes gouged out, their noses sliced off, their lips mutilated, save for the only man allowed to keep one eye to lead them twenty miles across the mountains and so horrifyingly demonstrate the terrorist tactics of Montfort.

The people of the region, including the parfaits, fled in terror before the crusading army. Castelnaudary, Fanjeaux, Montreal, Limoux, Casters, Albi and Lombers all surrendered to the crusaders as they destroyed every crop in the their path. Some took refuge in far off Montsegur, a seemingly impregnable fortress in the mountains; others sought shelter in nearby Minerve, which underwent all the terrors of the latest medieval siege engines of the expert Archdeacon William of Paris. After weeks of suffering, in July 1210 William of Minerve realized that his position was untenable and offered all his lands to Montfort in exchange for the lives of the town’s inhabitants. Montfort was just about to agree when Arnauld-Amaury arrived and insisted that everyone be forced to take an oath of allegiance to the Church. Although most of the people agreed to do this, the parfaits and parfaites refused. They would be betraying their honor to do so. A mass execution was ordered by Arnauld-Amaury, and all 160 parfaits were burned alive at the stake, again on July 22, the feast of Mary Magdalene.

A few days later more than sixty more parfaits were burned at Les Casses.  Montfort went on to besiege Termes, which held out for four months before running out of water and forcing its lord to surrender. He was taken to a dungeon in Carcassonne, where he died. Terror, hangings and burnings ravaged the land, and the parfaits no longer sought refuge in castles, apart from Montsegur, but rather in houses and caves.  

In January, horrified at the extent of damage to the Languedoc and its people, Raymond V of Toulouse asked his overlord Pedro of Aragon for help. The two tried to negotiate with Arnauld-Amaury, but the outrageous conditions of a truce demanded the total annihilation of the region’s way of life and its replacement by foreign occupiers, foreign taxes, and foreign oppression.  It was unacceptable.

In April, Simon de Montfort began the siege of Lavaur. Its walls were finally breached in May and all eighty knights who had fought in its defense were hanged, which was against the rules of warfare. The most shocking fate was reserved for the widow Lady Geralda of Lavaur. “The most beloved noblewoman in the Languedoc” was thrown down a well and stoned to death (16).  The crusaders completed their butchery with the largest mass burning of the period. All four hundred parfait taking shelter within its walls were burned alive on one bonfire.

Montfort’s aim was to carve out a personal secular empire while Arnauld-Amaury enforced his religious one as they sought to conquer Toulouse and its surrounding counties, slowly picking off castle after castle. The extent of their ambitions became clear in 1212 at Pamiers: it was complete political and social upheaval, the eradication of southern law and the substitution of “usages and customs observed in France around Paris” (17). Occitania essentially regressed from an open autonomous land to a closed feudal one.

In 1212 King Pedro of Aragon had won a significant victory against the Moors of Spain at Las Navas de Tolosa and became a hero in the eyes of the pope. Pedro was also the overlord of much of the Languedoc and did not take kindly to Montfort’s blatant ambitions. He complained to Innocent, who in January 1213 called for an end to the crusade charging Monfort and Arnauld-Aimery, “You have extended greedy hands into lands which have no ill reputation for heresy…you have usurped the possession of others indiscriminately, unjustly and without proper cause” (18).

Arnauld Amaury’s ambitions were not to be thwarted, and he dashed to Rome to persuade the pope otherwise. He may well have inferred that Pedro himself was seeking the unification of Catalonia and Occitania, which would increase the chances of continuing the Cathar heresy. He virtually browbeat Innocent into changing his mind and, so as not to lose a season of murder and mayhem, the crusade was reinstated in May 1213.

Montfort lost no time in taking up the sword. Both sides formed their battalions at Muret, twelve miles north of Toulouse. In the ensuing battle, Pedro was killed and his men lost heart. The ensuing carnage was dreadful, as the crusaders rode down and butchered the survivors. Low estimates put the figure at 7,000 when a mass grave was discovered in the nineteenth century (19). In all probability, it was far greater. Count Raymond fled to England with his young son. Montfort had succeeded in his aim and in 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council, he was formally chosen as ruler over all the lands of the Languedoc, with Toulouse as his capital.

A triumphant tour of the Languedoc by Louis, Crown Prince of France was undertaken that summer.  Meanwhile, the real nobles of the Languedoc were preparing anew for battle led by the son of Count Raymond, Young Raymond, who captured Beaucaire from the crusaders and repulsed the efforts of Montfort to recapture it. Toulouse was growing restive, and Montfort arrived on the scene in full battle dress to start a siege.

The Catholic Bishop of Toulouse was Fulk, who had turned to religion after the failure of his career as a troubadour and harbored deep grudges. He persuaded several hundred of the town’s richest and most influential citizens to negotiate with Montfort out of the city, promising them safe conduct (20). The treacherous Fulk had made a deal with Montfort to keep them as hostages and return them only after the defensive walls were torn down. When the citizens demurred, Montfort ordered a massive sack and rape of the city. Everything was destroyed or stolen, although there were no mass killings as Montfort and Fulk had decided to bleed the people to death with taxes rather than kill them outright. Resentment against Montfort and Fulk was enormous; the latter was seen as a stooge of the French in having turned against his fellow countrymen. 

In September 1217 Count Raymond returned secretly to Toulouse and was met with great rejoicing by its citizens, who immediately started reinforcing the city walls against the inevitable forthcoming siege by Montfort.  As soon as he heard the news, Montfort came charging back to inflict the same punishment on the Toulousains as he had on the citizens of Beziers, “to let neither man nor woman escape alive” (21). The siege lasted for nine months, and Montfort decided to build an enormous siege engine to destroy the fortifications. That morning as it was being rolled into place, a stone from a mangonel aimed by a woman shattered Montfort’s skull.  So overjoyed were all the people of Toulouse that it was the Catholic priests who rang the bells (22). His instantaneous death decidedly shifted the balance of power, for his son Amaury de Montfort was no leader. 

Young Raymond pressed the advantage and took Baziege. Innocent had died in 1216, and the new Pope Honorius III decided in 1218 that a new crusade should take place. This was led by Crown Prince Louis of France whose only triumph was the barbaric slaughter of the entire 7,000 inhabitants of the market town of Marmande. Although Louis made a desultory attempt at besieging Toulouse, as soon as his quarantaine was up, he removed to Paris, leaving Amaury to deal with the South as best he could. 

It was not good enough. Slowly, the castles were regained, the towns refused to allow the French to enter, the hated Catholic bishops fled, and the parfaits began to preach again. Montfort and Innocent were dead and Count Raymond in 1222, Raymond Roger de Foix in 1223, Philippe Augustus in 1223, and the loathed Arnauld Amaury in 1225 followed them to the grave.  Amaury de Montfort made his retreat to Paris in 1224 and renounced all his claims in favor of the new King of France, Louis. 

Louis was far more interested in consolidating his rule in Occitania than was his father, and he persuaded the pope to call yet another crusade in 1226. Avignon fell after a long and costly siege, and many other towns in the lowlands readily capitulated before the young king, in whom the people saw that in his position as King of France he was their legitimate overlord. Returning to his capital, Louis fell ill and died in November. Although the young king was only twelve years old, his mother Blanche of Castille was a devout Catholic who saw her mission as exterminating any remaining heretics.

She sent Humbert de Beaujeu to lead the northern army in an ugly and savage war. In 1227, he set fire to and massacred the town of Labecede. Yet he was unable to defeat the people of the region. He, and the vengeful Fulk, decided instead to wage war on the land itself. They turned the entire countryside into a huge desert by destroying orchards, vineyards, and olive groves, by poisoning wells, by burning the land and razing the villages. After two decades of sustained vandalism, Count Raymond of Toulouse, like his father was forced to sue for peace under similar terms in the Treaty of Paris of 1299. As was his father, he was publicly beaten, then imprisoned in the Louvre while the fortifications of Toulouse were destroyed. He lost of all his castles, and his wife was expelled from Toulouse. His lands would eventually pass to the French king.   

This was the real end of the crusade and the beginning of the Inquisition, which through fear, intimidation, and torture accomplished what mass slaughter and carnage could not. Popular uprisings against these excesses took place, and the young Raymond-Roger de Trencavel won victories in Limoux, Alet, and Montreal before being defeated in 1240 while trying to besiege Carcassonne. Roger Bernard de Foix sued for peace with the French. Count Raymond of Toulouse led a small insurrection in 1242 but was forced to submit again to the French king a year later.

In May 1242 two of the hated Dominican inquisitors were murdered with axes in Avignonet. The murderers, led by Peter Roger de Mirepoix fled to Montsegur, which was the Cathar fortress where the remaining parfaits spent their days praying, fasting, and working.  As had the murder of Peter of Castelnau presented an ideal opportunity to begin the crusade, this act was the ideal opportunity to end it.  

The siege of Montsegur was to last for ten months before a troop of shepherds led the way to the top, the bastion was overrun, and Peter Roger forced to sue for surrender. A period of two weeks was allowed, after which time the lay people were allowed to go, including the murderers, but only if they promised to submit to a full interrogation by the Inquisition (23). The parfaits had no choice.  During those two weeks, twenty-one of the lay people asked to become parfait, fully realizing the dreadful consequence. On Sunday, March 13, 1244 all two hundred and twenty-one were burned alive at the stake in the crusades’ final tribute of man’s inhumanity to his fellow men and his disdain for God.   

In retrospect, the Crusades were not about "God, Gold and Glory." Apart from the gold, the schoolchildren were deceived. Without love, there is no God, without honor, there is no glory: and most certainly both those attributes were missing. Rather than an attempt to fashion a shared sense of belonging to a Christian society, the crusades were sustained campaigns of genocide: holocausts of carnage and suffering where hordes of greedy and savage men were driven by their own ambition, bloodlust, and self interest - and the goading of a power-driven pope and his henchmen - to the rape, torture, and murder of other human beings and the total destruction of their belief system and culture.

Footnotes.
1. Tyerman, Christopher. God’s War, (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006).xviii.

2. Figures based on J. C. Russell, Late Ancient and Medieval Population (Philadelphia, 1958.)
 http://www.tulane.edu/~august/H303/handouts/Population.htm

3. María Rosa Menocal, The Culture of Translation, a translation and adaptation of "La culture des traductions: l'arabisation invisible de l'Europe et l'invention du moderne," one in a series of six lectures given during May and June 2003 at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris. http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article.php?lab=Culture

4. New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org

5. Tyerman, p. 65

6. Medieval Sourcebook. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/raymond-       
cde.ht6l#jerusalem2

7. Tyerman, p 583-588

8. ibid, p.588

9. Daniel-Rops, Henri. Cathedral and Crusade, vol II  (New York: Image Books, 1963) 301

10. O’Shea, Stephen, The Perfect Heresy, (London: Profile Books: 2001) 71

11. ibid, p. 69

12. The Albigensian Crusades. http://xenophongroup.com/montjoie/albigens.htm

13. O’Shea, p. 85

14. Tyerman, p. 591

15. ibid., p. 593

16. O’Shea, p. 131

17. Tyerman, p. 592

18. ibid. p. 597

19. O’Shea, p. 149

20. ibid. p. 160

21.  ibid. p. 163

22. ibid. p. 172

23. ibid., p. 218

The Albigensian Crusade ©2007 Laconneau/Crewe