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MEDIEVAL HISTORY LIBRARY |
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BOOK
III.
HENRY VI—PHILIP—OTHO IV.CHAPTER XII.OTHO IV. [1209—1213.
The Crusade against the Albigenses—Innocents Views—Bigotry
of the Legates—Simon de Montfort’s Ambition—Innocent repeatedly
deceived—Atrocities of both parties—Battle of Lesbordes—Interference
of Pedro of Aragon—Battle of Muret
Whether the unpersuadable adherence of the Albigenses
to their own opinions had convinced Innocent that they wilfully played the deaf
adder, or had simply exhausted his longanimity, a lamentable change about this
time appears in his views relative to heretics and their treatment. He now
declared that, in order to guard the still sound from contagion, all
intercourse with heretics must be prevented. To this end, and the thorough
extirpation of heresy in the South of France, the expulsion of the Albigenses
was indispensable, and now seemed feasible only by war. To the war which he
therefore declared he gave the character of a Crusade. He granted to all who
bore arms in it the same exemptions, protections, indulgences, and prospective,
contingent absolutions, as to Crusaders. He sanctioned the performance of
crusading vows for the recovery of Jerusalem, in the South of France, and
against the Albigenses. He did not, indeed, permit crusading princes to tax
their clergy for the expense of this war, undertaken at his command, but he
somewhat authoritatively invited all persons, lay or clerical, who did not
personally share therein, to contribute largely towards the cost. He allowed
the warriors who obeyed his call to assume both the title of Crusaders and the
Crusaders’ badge, the Red Cross, distinguishing them from the champions of the
Holy Land, only by affixing it to the breast instead of the shoulder. As there
was neither Crusade then in course of organization, nor immediate prospect of
raising one, Innocent was, probably, unsuspicious of the degree to which he was
blighting his own eager hopes of the recovery of the Holy City under his
auspices, or, indeed, under any. The guerdons, spiritual and temporal, of a
Crusade, were so much more easily earned in France than in Syria, that all
French, and most Germans, whom devotion, or the necessity of atoning for their
sins, might have driven to the defence of Palestine, now relieved their
consciences in Languedoc. Even Templars and Hospitallers, resident in Europe,
held their duty to be fully discharged by fighting against the Albigenses.
It is mortifying to the pride of human intellect to
see a man endowed with the pure and lofty character of Innocent III, abandoning
his equally rational as clement principles, at the instigation of minds so
inferior to his own. But can it be matter of surprise or of harsh censure,
when, as late as in the sixteenth century, which disdained the blind ignorance
and ferocity of the thirteenth, even the revered reformer Calvin, far from
having learned under persecution the lesson of toleration, taught that heretics,
i.e., dissenters from his creed, must be coerced with the sword? Ay, and
acted up to this sanguinary principle. Whilst Innocent, if he adopted
intolerant maxims, sought, even by his Crusade, not the death, or even
punishment, but, the expulsion of heretics, in order to separate them from the
orthodox. It was by his subordinates, his Legates, through whom alone he could
carry out his views, that his intended expulsion was turned into extermination.
They, in a Synod, or provincial Council, held at Avignon, early in 1209,
authorized every bishop to require from all nobles and knights in his diocese,
an oath to exterminate excommunicated heretics.
Thus called upon by angry bigotry, and spurred by
ambition and rapacity, an army of from 50,000 to 100,000 Crusaders assembled at
Lyons at Midsummer, 1209. Of these, 15,000 were equipped and paid by Philip
Augustus, well pleased to see a vassal, so formidable as Raymond, Earl of
Toulouse, Marquess of Provence, and Duke of Narbonne, likely to be brought into
a more manageable condition. His profound policy induced him, nevertheless, to
decline, for his son as well as for himself, the command of the crusading host,
upon the plea of danger impending over the kingdom from Otho IV and John; the
latter of whom, instead of dreading, he was even then preparing to rob of his
remaining French provinces. Upon the King’s refusal, the command was, by the
influence of the Legates, given—although many great and warlike nobles were
present at the head of their vassals—to the Cistercian Abbot of Abbots; thus
the more strongly to stamp the war with a sacred character.
As the army advanced, Earl Raymond, conformably to his
compulsory oath, hastened to meet it, and submit to the Legate’s will. He
promised to supply provisions, with all else demanded of him, and was received
as an ally into the ranks of the Crusaders. Raymond Roger, Viscount of Beziers,
followed his example, but with a different result. Whether his toleration of
the heretics—his own orthodoxy was unquestioned—had been more flagrant, or that
the Legate Milo, and Abbot Arnold, were resolved that their Crusaders should
have one enemy, at least, to conquer and despoil,—and the Viscount, as one of
the King of Aragon’s chief French vassals, was an especial object of ill
will—his excuses and his offers were alike rejected. He returned home
determined to defend himself to the uttermost.
The tide of war, sweeping all before it, poured over
the viscounty. Beziers, a strong place, well garrisoned, and expected by all
parties to stand a tedious siege, fell the very day after the Crusaders sat
down before it. The besieged, making a rash sally, were defeated, as, against
such superior numbers, they might have foreseen, and so closely pursued in
their retreat, that the pursuers entered the town pell-mell with them. A battle
in the streets ensued, wherein they had the advantage; but whilst this struggle
engrossed the attention of the besieged, other corps of besiegers forced
neglected gates, scaled the sparsely manned walls, and on all sides bursting
in, extinguished resistance. The butchery that ensued was indiscriminate; men,
women, and children, orthodox and heretics, even Roman Catholic priests at the
altar, all were massacred! The venerable Bishop, whose only offence was fealty
to his natural Lord, was burnt with his Cathedral, in which he was endeavouring
to protect the feeble and the infirm, helpless age and infancy. The number of
the victims is calculated at 20,000 by the Legates in their report to the Pope;
while some contemporary writers materially reduce the estimate; which others,
again, raise to 60,000, and even to 100,000. It is upon this occasion that the Cistercian
Abbot of Abbots, Arnold, is reported to have said, in answer to an inquiry as
to the means of distinguishing true believers from heretics during the sack, “Slay
all! God will know his own.” But happily this speech, atrocious beyond
credibility, as abandoning fellow-worshippers to the fate of those deemed God’s
enemies, does not rest upon contemporaneous authority. No mention of it occurs
in the chronicle of the Monk of Vaux-Sernay—who, as he records the joy extreme,
and the joie indecible, with which he and his
comrades burnt heretics, found in places that had surrendered, would hardly
have suppressed this proof of eager zeal—or in the evidently contemporary
rhymed history of this Crusade, lately edited by Fauriel,
where the author, beginning as an ardent crusader, gradually changes sides as
he narrates the atrocities committed: and, yet stronger negative evidence, it
is unnoticed even by anticrusade writers, who
recorded what they personally knew. It is first named by a considerably later
historian; and may, therefore, fairly be considered as a mere child of popular
exaggeration, suggested by the slaughter of the Romanist priests. The town,
when plundered, was burnt with the corpses of the slain.
The fall of Beziers and the fate of its inhabitants
spread terror around. Towns, castles, villages, were deserted, the people
seeking a refuge in the most obscure recesses of the mountains. Carcassonne
alone—mindful of the tradition telling that Charlemagne lay seven years before
her walls ere she was his—prepared for resistance. There the Viscount took his
station; thither repaired the knightly portion of his vassals, when they
forsook their own castles, as indefensible against invaders seemingly numberless;
thither hurried the most martial of the lower orders, and thither,
inconveniently for the prospect of a long siege, flocked fugitives of all
classes, who from age, sex, or infirmity, were unequal to the hardships of
concealment amongst the mountains.
Upon the 1st of August, the Crusaders encamped before
Carcassonne, and the King of Aragon—either as Earl of Barcelona or as husband
of the heiress of Montpellier the Viscount’s suzerain, feeling strength in the
favour of the Pope, visited the besiegers to mediate between them and his
vassal. He was permitted to enter the town, where Raymond Roger declared to him
that were he and his fighting men alone in Carcassonne, never 'would he, upon
any terms, capitulate; but in consideration of the helpless throng, for whom
food already began to run short, he consented to treat. Such considerations
were not, as has been seen, of a kind to weigh with the Legate and Abbot; and
the only conditions Don Pedro could obtain for the Viscount, were safety of
life, limb, and baggage, for himself and twelve companions of his choice.
Indignantly Raymond Roger rejected them, exclaiming that, rather than desert
one of his people, he would be flayed alive.
The King’s regard for his vassal was insufficient
inducement to risk embroiling himself with Crusaders, and he went home. ’ The
siege proceeded, and gave occasion to one of the chivalrous feats relieving
tales of horror. The besiegers being repulsed in an attempt to scale the walls,
one knight fell, with a broken leg, into the moat, where, deserted by his
retreating comrades, he lay defenceless, at the mercy of the triumphant foe.
Simon de Montfort heard of his situation, and returning alone to the spot, carried
off the wounded man upon his shoulders, in full view of the besieged, who,
charmed with the gallantry of the action, forbore to use bow or engine until he
had reached his own ranks with his burthen. The siege lasted not long. That
food ran short was not the worst evil the town suffered: a scorchingly hot
summer dried up the springs and wells that supplied Carcassonne with water, and
to capitulate was inevitable. With a safe conduct the Viscount visited the camp
to negotiate the terms, when he was perfidiously detained; and the only terms
granted the garrison and inhabitants, were liberty to depart with such clothing
as decency required. The booty found here was immense, and the place being
taken by treaty, its riches were secured by the leaders for the purposes of the
Crusade.
Abbot Arnold, judging the object of his assuming
military duties accomplished, now desired to lay down the unclerical office.
The Legate assented, and offered the conquered viscounties, with the command of
the army, to the Duke of Burgundy, as the noblest of the Crusaders. He declined
to enrich himself with the spoils of a brotherprince,
or to undertake the leading of an army from which, having performed his vow, he
was about to withdraw. The same offer was successively made to the Earls of
Nevers and St. Pol, and by them in like manner rejected: when it was proposed
to the more bigoted as well as more unscrupulously ambitious Simon, Earl of
Montfort in France and of Leicester in England, who at once accepted both
responsibility and remuneration.
Simon de Montfort’s fidelity to his vow and to the
Pope’s commands during the perverted fourth Crusade, might have entitled him to
be something more than the Legate’s pis-aller,
whilst his birth and position sanctioned the pretensions resting upon
character. The de Montforts claimed to descend by
females from Charlemagne; and, if their wealth had for some generations been
very inadequate to their nobility, the last Earl, the father of the Crusader,
had, by a fortunate marriage, more than recovered their former station. He had
obtained the hand of the eldest daughter of the Earl of Leicester; and she, by
the death of her only brother without children, had succeeded to his titles and
estates. Her son, Earl Simon, whatever may be thought of him in the nineteenth
century, was deemed by his contemporaries the very impersonation of chivalry.
Tall and stalwart in person, handsome in face, with abundance of long flowing
hair, he was active, vigorous, skilled in all martial exercises, valiant even
to excess, whilst habitually prudent and persevering amidst difficulties; he is
further represented as upright, devout, humble, eloquent and courteous. The
friend of kings and of St. Dominic, he was a chosen arbitrator even when one of
the parties was his wife’s brother. His liberality to the Church was limited
only by his means, and his prodigality of life in the cause of his friends and
comrades, of which an instance has just been given, insured him their
attachment. But these fine qualities were not, as even his eulogists admit,
without alloy. The savage cruelty and perfidy towards misbelievers, indeed,
which in modern eyes counterbalance his best qualities, in those of his
contemporary co-religionists, yet more enhanced their splendour; but they
impute to him as faults, inordinate ambition, arrogance, vindictiveness,
harshness, and an innate indifference, if not propensity to bloodshed.
Upon the 22nd of August, de Montfort was installed
Viscount of Beziers and Carcassonne, whilst Raymond Roger still pined in a
dungeon. The detention so deeply offending the honest Crusaders was of brief
duration. In the course of a very few months, at the early age of twenty-four,
Raymond Roger died in his dungeon. The Albigenses affirmed that he was poisoned
by de Montfort’s order; and Barrau gives a
melodramatic dungeon scene, in which Earl Simon himself deludes his captive
into swallowing the fatal dose. No proof of murder is adduced; and, however
frequently historical facts may deteriorate the a-priori formed ideal of
the mediaeval chivalrous character, “an impersonation of chivalry” must not be
branded with a basely atrocious, unproved crime. The accusation must,
nevertheless, be allowed more plausible than most of those that have been named
only to be rejected; since the rightful Viscount, idolized by his vassals, was
a formidable rival, from whom an usurper must have longed to be freed. And now
the chief princes of the Crusade, highly dissatisfied with the Legate’s
perfidious treatment of their unjustly despoiled brother prince, quitted the
army, followed by the bulk of the Crusaders, who thought they had abundantly
performed their vow.
But murderer or not, de Montfort’s acquisitions had
rather whetted than satisfied his appetite, whilst the Legates felt that, zealously
as he enforced all edicts against heretics in his heretical viscounties, the
Albigenses were still unsubdued. The spiritual Chiefs of the Crusade looked
upon the Earl of Toulouse as a dissembler, and his princely domains keenly
stimulated the cupidity of the lay general. They jointly resolved to renew the
attack upon the Earl, despite his submission and obedience; and, as their first
move, required him to deliver up to them all heretics in Toulouse, threatening
war in case of refusal. The demand being communicated to the municipal
authorities, was answered by a solemn asseveration that all Toulousan heretics had long since been exiled, and the former Legate satisfied of the
city’s orthodoxy. The Earl transmitted their declaration to the Legate as his
justification, adding the remark, that, if, after all his services to the
Crusaders, he were still to be persecuted, he must appeal to the Pope. De
Montfort and the Legate persisted; invaded and overran the principality with
forces still sufficient for that purpose; and, when they found it impossible to
prevent the proposed appeal, by their letters and misrepresentations prejudiced
Innocent against their destined victim.
Raymond determined to make his appeal in person, and
set out for Rome, carrying with him earnest letters in his behalf, not only
from the French King—who, if pleased to see a too powerful vassal somewhat
reduced, had no wish to destroy him, that another yet more powerful might take
his place—but also from some of the Crusaders—as the Duke of Burgundy and the
Comte de Nevers—who had been disgusted with the conduct and result of the war.
They had felt religion desecrated into an instrument for enabling de Montfort
to usurp Beziers and Carcassonne, and attempt the county of Toulouse. Such
letters were not superfluous. Raymond found the Pope more prepossessed against
him than he had apprehended; he was, nevertheless, admitted to plead his cause,
and his statements, complaints, and arguments were fairly if not favourably
heard. Nor, whilst he was struggling against prejudice at Rome, was his enemy
undisturbedly enjoying his and his nephew’s spoils. The King of Aragon refused
to receive de Montfort’s homage for the viscounties, encouraging the subvassals to throw off his yoke and proclaim the infant
son of Raymond Roger, left to the guardianship of de Montfort’s implacably
bitter enemy, the Comte de Foix. Before the end of the year 1210, the whole of
the conquered principality had risen against its conqueror. Through the
Legates, de Montfort entreated the Pope to publish another Albigensian Crusade,
which, by maintaining him in his new dominions, might enable him to eradicate
heresy there.
The request was received at an unpropitious moment.
The Palestine Christians were even then soliciting similar assistance; Innocent
was again meditating the organization of such a Crusade as they asked, and,
amidst the difficulties that thwarted his exertions, was beginning to discover
the detrimental influence upon this main object, of having allowed the name and
honours of a Crusade to expeditions comparatively insignificant, as that
against the Livonians, and against Christians, if schismatic, as the Albigenses.
Besides, he had heard Raymond’s representations; and they corroborated his
growing suspicion as well of the insatiable ambition that actuated de Montfort,
as of the insane violence to which prejudice impelled his own Legates. He
perceived that the Comte de Toulouse had been unfairly treated by those who
coveted his dominions, and that he himself had been deluded by exaggeration and
false colouring. This change in his opinions appeared in his acts. In person he
now confessed the Earl; and in person, before the College of Cardinals,
relieved him from excommunication, pronouncing him a good Christian. He ordered
the restitution of the castles delivered up by Raymond to the Legate, as
pledges of his orthodoxy; observing: “The Church does not enrich herself with
the property of others.” He then dismissed Raymond with marks of favour, such
as the gift of a mantle, and a ring; but also with strict injunctions in all
points to obey the directions of the Legates, and legally clear himself from
the 'imputation of having instigated the murder of Castelnau.
In case, however, of any differences arising between him and the Legate, he
ordered such differences to be immediately referred to himself. The Earl’s
acquittal of heresy seems to have included that of the accused Toulousans.
The Legate Milo was dead; and Innocent, who had sent Tedisio, a Genoese Canon, to take his place, relied upon
the impartiality of a new judge, who, moreover, had his own instructions as to
the mode of conducting the inquiry into the Earl’s guilt or innocence. But
Bishop Folquet and Abbot Arnold quickly infused their
own prejudices into Tedisio; Raymond’s vindication
relative to the murder was evaded; and the terms dictated to him by the
Legate,—who was engaged in active hostilities with the Albigenses,—were, that
he must expel all heretics from his dominions disband his troops, dismantle his
fortresses, lay a tax upon his vassals for a tribute to the Legate, deliver up
to him every individual he should point out as heretically inclined, inflict
upon his nobles various petty vexations; and, having done all this, betake him
to the Holy Land, there to serve amongst the Knights Hospitallers, till the
Legate should please to recall him. His obedience was to be recompensed by the
restoration of his dominions, at such time as should seem good to the Legate,
and also to de Montfort, who was to occupy them in the interim.
Earl Raymond laid these conditions before his usual
counsellors, his great vassals and the municipality of Toulouse, who
unanimously declared they would die in the field rather than submit to such
oppression. That this was his own opinion hardly need be said: and, with the
cordial support of his people, most of whom, possibly, were heretics at heart,
he prepared to defend himself and his principality. Whether he did, as Innocent
had bidden him, appeal to Rome, and his enemies intercepted that appeal, or thought
to appeal useless, disobedience to the Legate being virtually disobedience to
the Pope, seems doubtful; but it is clear that no information reached the Holy
Father, which could enlighten him as to the misrepresentations of the Legate.
It is admitted by the most bigoted historians of this Crusade that Raymond was
unfairly dealt with; that the Legate, suppressing his own extravagant demands,
accused Raymond in his letters of disobeying the command to expel heretics and
undertake a Crusade; and represented his war of self-defence as a rebellion
against papal authority. Certain it, unfortunately, is, that Innocent, again
deceived, confirmed the excommunication denounced anew by the Legate against
Raymond, and sanctioned the war against him.
The King of Aragon, now again interposed, and, having
a personal interest in the issue, more energetically than before. He had, since
Queen Joanna’s death, given a sister in marriage to Earl Raymond, and affianced
another to the son the English princess had left him, Earl Raymond the younger.
He appealed to the Pope, in behalf of his brothers-in-law, and seems to have,
in some measure, again opened Innocent’s eyes to the artifices practised
towards him.
New Legates were sent, to investigate the points in
dispute between the Earl and his accusers. But now a class-spirit prevailed;
the new Legates imbibed the sentiments of those whom they were to supersede,
and confirmed their statements. Innocent naturally believed the learned and
uninterested ecclesiastics, selected by him for the duty of ascertaining the
facts of the case, in preference to a royal libertine warrior, laudably
prejudiced by affection for his sisters. He therefore charged Don Pedro to abandon
the cause of his brothers-in-law, on pain of sharing their excommunication; and
again sanctioned the Legates’ warlike operations.
This war, waged in a French province, though against
an Imperial vassal, and occasionally involving Imperial towns in the Arelat, may seem belong to the history rather of France
than of the Holy Roman Empire. Under two aspects, it, nevertheless, presents
itself as an integral part of the subject of the present volumes. It
demonstrates the utter impracticability of Innocent’s theory of the papacy, as controlling,
and therefore responsible for, the government of Christendom. This has already
been made manifest. Every circumstance characterizing the rise and conduct of
the Crusade against the Albigenses, has shown this sagacious and active
pontiff, completely deluded, hood-winked, and really made a cat’s paw—if the
colloquialism may be pardoned—by his delegates; upon whose reports he
necessarily depended for the information upon which he acted. Under its second
aspect, this Crusade is an important part of all mediaeval history, as
illustrating the intensity of theological hatred in those ages; reaching a point
that rendered toleration something actually inconceivable. With this view, as
an explanation of, if not a sort of apology for, the treatment of the supposed
enemies of God by the kind as well as by the hardhearted,
a few incidents of the war must be related, painful as the task may often be.
The peculiar composition of the army that enabled Earl
Simon to conquer the county of Toulouse must first be described. The component
parts were constantly changing. Every year different French and German noblemen
took the cross, raised their vassals, and hastened to gain the spiritual
advantages of a Crusade by claiming their six weeks’ feudal service against the
French heretics. Amongst the rest, Leopold the Glorious, of Austria, strove
thus to reconcile the Pope to his retaining his father’s share of the ransom
extorted from Richard Coeur-de-Lion; about which Innocent, probably, was less
earnest now that the contemptible John, instead of the royal Crusader, was the
claimant. These feudal Crusaders helped de Montfort to subdue districts which
their early desertion left him too weak, with only the small body of
mercenaries that he seems individually to have engaged, to preserve. Templars
and Hospitallers were his most permanent and most trusted auxiliaries; and so
decidedly did he feel this, that he always called a Knight of each Order to the
Council that disposed of conquests. Nor was their individual prowess the only
mode in which they strengthened the Crusaders. Their example excited emulation,
and a new, imperfect copy of the Templars arose in Italy and the South of
France, under the name of Frail Gaudenti, or della Madonna. These were laymen, living in the world, free
to marry, and bound by no vows save two; i.e., to do battle with
infidels, heretics, and violators of justice, wherever met with, and to abstain
from wearing gilt spurs, gilding their bridle, and the like, during their
service. The Frati Gaudenti were amongst the most
useful members of the crusading army.
The incidents of the war to be mentioned, chiefly
regard the treatment of prisoners. Marmande having surrendered by capitulation,
the Crusaders, in direct breach of their leaders’ plighted faith for the safety
of the heretic garrison, massacred the whole. The unchivalrous proceeding
shocked Earl Simon; and when Minerve was compelled to surrender, restraining
the sanguinary piety of his troops, he offered the inhabitants their lives as
the price of abjuring their heresy. Robert de Mauvoisin,
the chief of a band of Crusaders, enraged at such weakness, exclaimed: “ So
shall we have them all dissembling Christianity. We came here to annihilate
heretics, not to make hypocrites of them.” But the Cistercian Abbot of Abbots,
Arnold, thus soothed him: “Be of good cheer! We shall not have many converts.”
He judged well in the first instance, at least. With one voice warriors,
citizens, and women, all refused to apostatize; whereupon de Montfort sentenced
140 of them, including many of the weaker sex, to the flames. The whole 140
ascended the fatal pile firmly, some even joyously, and were burnt to death.
But the spectacle acted more powerfully upon the nerves of the survivors, than
the fire itself upon the senses of the victims. Whilst these all died
exultingly, professing their faith, the survivors returned to the pale of the
Church.
Upon the capture of Lavaur, Aimery de Montreal, who
had conducted the defence for the Lady of Lavaur, was brought, with eighty
noblemen, his comrades, before de Montfort, whose zeal for conversion seems,
upon this occasion, to have been momentarily overpowered by a taste for destroying
life; as he greeted them with: “You shall all be hanged!” The requisite number
of gibbets soon stood ready, one, loftier than the rest, designed for the
Commandant. This last, owing possibly to its unusual height, fell with Aimery,
when de Montfort, to spare the time and trouble of re-erecting it, ordered his
head to be struck off. The Lady of Lavaur he had thrown into her own draw-well,
and in order to kill her fair fame with herself, he accused her of incest with
her brother and her sons. Then, satisfied with slaughter, he offered the usual
choice between death and apostacy, to the remainder of the garrison and the
inhabitants. All chose martyrdom; and, more resolute than the Minervites, persevered in their choice. To the number of
400 they were burnt alive, amidst the joyous acclamations of the Crusaders. The
troubadour historian says, the plunder afforded de Montfort means of paying his
mercenaries.
Most of these transactions occurred whilst
negotiations between the Legate and the Earl were still pending: whilst the
latter still, perhaps, indulged hopes of a favourable result, from the
intervention of the one or the other of his royal brothers-in-law; certainly
whilst he was still endeavouring to conciliate the Legate and furnishing
provisions to the Crusaders. During the siege of Lavaur, a final interview with
de Montfort convinced him of the hopelessness of his efforts; and now, frankly
breaking with them, he forbade his people to supply the markets frequented by
the enemy. Towards the end of the year 1211, he withdrew to Toulouse. Bishop Folquet was there likewise, and in Passion week of 1212,
sent him an intimation that he must, rather than a request that he would,
absent himself from the city during these solemn days, to avoid preventing, by
his presence, which virtually laid the place under an interdict, the
celebration of the Easter rites of the Church. The answer of the offended Earl
was a command to the Bishop to quit his dominions; and the prelate’s rejoinder:
“It was not the Earl who placed me in my see; I am canonically elected. Let him
come, the tyrant! I am ready to drink the cup of suffering, to pass through
death to the glories of Heaven! Let him come with his myrmidons! He will find
me alone and defenceless. I fear not what man can do unto me.” After this very
gratuitous rant, since Raymond evidently meant him no harm beyond exile, Folquet remained some days unmolested in his episcopal palace:
then, leaving Toulouse, he fled to the Crusader’s camp, as though seeking
shelter from persecution.
These are sufficient samples of the conduct of men who
believed themselves to be especially engaged in the service of God. It must
not, however, be supposed that all the cruelty was upon the side of the
Crusaders. The bulk, indeed, was, because they were the successful party; most
able to indulge their wishes; but Albigenses and Romanists were alike ready to
inflict, as to receive, martyrdom; and the heretics, like their persecutors,
slaughtered and mangled such prisoners as fell into their hands. If they had
comparatively little opportunity for the wholesale butcheries of Abbot Arnold
and Earl Simon, they neglected none that offered, massacring garrison and
inhabitants of any place that surrendered at discretion. Priests and monks were
their favourite prey—a priest begging for mercy on account of his sacred
office, was bid to show, his tonsure in proof of his assertion, when the mortal
blow was aimed at the shaven crown—but laymen were not spared. The Crusader
Prince of Orange, being taken in battle, they flayed and cut to pieces.
Happily, there is a gleam of possibility that a fatal wound, fairly dealt in
the fight, had left only a senseless course to be thus dealt with, but this is
doubtful. The Albigenses stoutly defended Moissac sur
le Tarn, one of their fortresses, repulsed an attempt to storm it, and in that
repulse captured a nephew of the Archbishop of Rouen, who had brought to the
Crusade a body of his church vassals. The besieged celebrated their victory by
bringing their youthful captive on to the ramparts, and there striking off his
head, which, together with his body, they flung to his uncle. In retribution of
this foul deed, when the annoyances inseparable from a state of siege, and de
Montfort’s smooth promises induced the inhabitants to betray the garrison
defending them into the hands of the besiegers, that garrison was one and all
slaughtered, many of them with such tortures as the reverend crusading uncle
could devise.
But worse than an occasional murder, or even massacre,
is the perfidy that—as has been seen amongst the champions of Romanism—too
often appears amongst the reformers of creeds and churches and their disciples.
If, on the one side, the Bishop of Toulouse repeatedly betrayed part of his
flock into the hands of their executioners, on the other, Earl Raymond, having
reduced Pujol, a fortress of Earl Simon’s, to extremities, prevailed upon the
garrison, by swearing to spare all lives, to surrender. But no sooner were
fortress and garrison in his hands, than, regardless of his oath, he ordered
twenty-three of the principal persons amongst them to be hanged at the castle
gate; which done, his people fell upon the remainder, and massacred them all,
save one, who escaped to bear the tidings to his Lord. De Montfort was
hastening to the relief of Pujol; and this wholesale butcher of heretics is
said to have wept at the tale of his people’s fate. So little, in those days,
did revelling in the blood of God’s supposed enemies prove insensibility!
Raymond’s own brother, Earl Baldwin, being seduced to
desert him, a Sire de l’Ohne, another deserter from
Raymond to de Montfort, for some unexplained reason betrayed his fellow-traitor
into the hands of the Comte de Foix. Baldwin was commanded by his captors, as
he valued his life, to make Montluc—held against them by the Crusaders—surrender.
Baldwin, with a firmness not to have been anticipated in the deserter of his
brother, bade the besieged defend themselves, regardless of his fate. The
crusading garrison so far obeyed him as to disregard his fate. They
capitulated, bargaining for their own safety merely, without mentioning Earl
Baldwin’s; and it is some satisfaction to know that their selfishness availed
them not. The Albigenses, with the total want of respect for granted terms
displayed by both parties, hanged them to a man. Neither did Baldwin escape the
doom he merited, but it was more legally inflicted. After lying awhile in
prison, he was tried in the open air by a tribunal, composed of the two Earls
of Foix, father and son, and some Barons of the principality. They found him
guilty, and sentenced him to death; when the violent Earls of Foix, fearing
perhaps, fraternal relentings on Raymond’s part, took
upon themselves the executioner’s office, hanging him with their own hands to
an adjacent walnut tree.
Of the battles fought in this war, two, those of Lesbordes and Muret, are worth particularizing from their
great dissimilarity to modern engagements. De Montfort being besieged and hard
pressed by de Foix in Castelnaudary, summoned his
different corps and garrisons in all haste to his relief. They obeyed in
separate bodies, directed, perhaps, to meet and unite when near the scene of
action. De Foix had notice of their approach, and to forestall the danger of
being overwhelmed by numbers, leaving his entrenchments, he marched with one
division of his army, in search of the nearest detachment; thinking thus to
encounter and defeat each singly. With the first that he met he succeeded; but
was, in his turn, surprised by more of these detachments, and defeated.
Reinforcements were sent him from his camp, and after much hard fighting he
again triumphed. But now his men fell to plundering the baggage of the
vanquished; and de Montfort, who upon learning the danger of his expected corps
had broken at all risks through the weakened lines of the besiegers, burst
unexpectedly upon the disorderly victors; who, victors for the second time that
day, were for the second time defeated; when again, de Foix5s daring son, Earl
Roger Bernard, came up with his cavalry, to change, for the fourth time, the
fortune of the struggle. He routed de Montfort, and the twice vanquished de
Foix was for the third time master of the field. The whole of this battle of Lesbordes, like many of its fellows, resembles a congeries
of duels on a large scale. The father had, ere long, occasion to repay his son
in kind. Roger Bernard rashly pursuing a body of the besieged, who had as
rashly sallied and been beaten back, entered Castelnaudary with the vanquished, accompanied only by six comrades. Earl Simon assailed the
small party; stoutly they fought and six fell. Still Roger Bernard fought on;
possibly feeling the mode in which capitulations were observed no encouragement
to surrender. But he was exhausted; a blow dealt by Earl Simon broke his shield
from his arm, and his last minute seemed to be come, when the cry of “De Foix a
la rescousse!” rang behind him. The father had burst
in with a large body of his own men and recued his son.
The battle of Muret, almost as characteristic in
manner as that of Lesbordes, was far more important
in result, since it virtually ended the contest. The state of affairs that
produced it will therefore require a few explanatory words. The increasing
distress of the Christians in Syria, combined with the successful progress of the
Crusade against the Albigenses, and some little mistrust of its leaders,
determined Innocent to remove this, amongst other obstacles to a genuine
Crusade for the recovery of Jerusalem. He so far pronounced the Albigensian
Crusade at an end, that he prohibited its being further preached, and
prospectively cancelled most of the indulgencies granted for taking the cross
against the heretics. This measure deprived de Montfort of the useful if
transitory aid he had derived from the flights of gallant warriors who had
successively joined him, as the easiest and pleasantest of penances, whilst
about the same time the Earl of Toulouse was powerfully reinforced.
In the year 1212, Pedro of Aragon had, conjointly with
the Kings of Castile and Navarre, gained the splendid victory over the Moors,
known as the victory of las Navas de Tolosa, and still celebrated as a solemn
festival by the Spanish Church. Elated with his share in this Christian
triumph, Pedro deemed that his intervention in the character of a victorious
champion of the Cross, at home and a resolute enemy of heretics, must be held
entitled to respect; and he accordingly demanded peace upon reasonable conditions
for the husbands of two of his sisters. The younger Raymond was now a principal
in the war, the Earl having, upon the celebration of his marriage with the Aragonese princess, made the county of Toulouse over to
him, hoping, as he was hitherto free from accusation, thus to preserve it to
his family. Innocent listened favourably to his royal vassal; but again the
misrepresentations of the passionately prejudiced Legate, and of the
self-interested Simon, aided by the petitions of the Roman Catholic prelates of
Raymond’s dominions, to give them Simon for their Earl, prevailed, and no
conditions that could be accepted were offered. And now Don Pedro, incensed
almost as much at the Pope’s disregard for his mediation, as he had previously
been at his invincible refusal to cancel his marriage with Queen Maria,
resolved—hatred for the mother perhaps impairing his regard for the son she had
given him—that not even this only son’s being in the hands of de Montfort, to
whom, upon abandoning the cause of the Viscount of Beziers, he had committed
him, either as a hostage or as a future son-in-law, should longer prevent his
succouring his sisters and their oppressed husbands. He crossed the Pyrenees at
the head of an army, estimated by some writers at 40,000 men, by others at
60,000, made some trifling conquests on his road, and upon the 10th of
September, 1213, formed the siege of Muret.
Muret was a strong fortress, which the Crusaders had,
the preceding year, taken, through the casual result of an incident, again
illustrative of de Montfort’s best qualities. The Crusaders marching in its
vicinity had found the Garonne much swollen, the bridge broken, and the water
still rising. De Montfort with his knights and other horsemen, not without
great difficulty and danger, forded the river. After safely housing themselves
upon the other bank, they perceived not only that it was impassable for infantry,
but that the infantry remaining upon the other bank was attacked by the men of
Muret, whom an army of Toulousans had joined. The
Garonne was now no longer fordable, even for horse, but de Montfort, in spite
of all remonstrances and prayers, instantly urged his steed in, and swam back,
followed by some half dozen men, to share the fate of his infantry, if he could
not save them. The exulting shout raised when he returned to them persuaded
their antagonists that the communication was somehow or other reestablished.
Dreading, in that case, the numbers of the Crusaders, the conquering troops
fell back and separated: the Toulousans who had come
to defend Muret, if besieged, rapidly retreated to Toulouse, whilst the Muretans sought the protection of their walls. The communication
between the two divisions of the crusading army was now really reestablished,
and Muret, left to its own resources, speedily taken. De Montfort placed a
small , garrison there, and turned his arms against other towns still faithful
to their hereditary Lord.
Raymond, now supported by Don Pedro, trusted to
retrieve his losses; and they at once invested Muret, which was known to be
insufficiently garrisoned. The second day of the siege they took the suburb by
storm, forced their way thence into the town and drove the garrison into the
castle. They seemed to be upon the point of mastering that likewise, when a
report that de Montfort’s banners were in sight got. into circulation. The
King, who though the auxiliary only, was, from his rank and the numbers he had
brought into the field, really commander-in-chief, though a daring soldier was
a timid and unskilful general. He suspended the assault, hastening to the
defence of his camp. It was a false alarm, the Crusaders being still remote;
but the propitious moment had passed unused.
Earl Simon, when he learned the danger of Muret, was
some eight hours5 march distant, with a very small force about him. The highest
number allowed him by any of his partisans is 270 knights, 540 men-at-arms, and
700 imperfectly armed foot. Incredibly few for the result, but the opposite
party give him not many more. Even his boldest friends, whilst allowing that
the loss of Muret must be the ruin of their cause, pronounced that, until
reinforced, any attempt to relieve it would be insanity. De Montfort decided
that, sane or insane, the attempt must be made. His wife, a high spirited
Montmorency, who, upon one occasion, when he was nearly reduced to despair, had
raised, and in person brought him reinforcements which gave him victory, now,
alarmed, like Calphurnia, by a dream, strove to
dissuade him from encountering odds so fearful. But he, exclaiming: “Leave such
superstitious fancies to Spaniards and Provencals!”
broke from her detaining embrace. He then hastened to church, and laid his
sword upon the altar with this prayer: “Lord, unworthy as I am, you have
chosen me to fight in your name: I take this sword from your altar, grant that
fighting for your honour I may do so successfully.” From the church door he set
forward for Muret at the head of his little band, and accompanied by the
Archbishop of Narbonne, and the Bishops of Toulouse, Nimes, Usez, Lodeve, Beziers, Agde and
Comminges, who still hoped to mediate a pacification—in other words, to
persuade the King of Aragon to desert his relations, and the Earls of Toulouse
to surrender at discretion.
The distance was marched, and de Montfort would fain
have attacked the besiegers as soon as he saw them; but his captains all
declared that the troops required rest after their fatiguing march, and the
prelates demanded time to make overtures for negotiation. He gave way and
encamped. Next morning he confessed, made his will, which he ordered, in case
of his death, to be transmitted to the Pope, for his sanction; and accompanied
the prelates to church, to pray for victory. He then mounted, but at the bishops’
entreaty again paused to await the still unreturned answer to their overtures.
It came in the form of a taunt upon the smallness of their force, and he
marched. Unmolested he traversed a defile where he had much feared to be
overpowered; and passing a church, alighted and entered to give thanks for the
escape. The morning had been tempestuous, but, whilst he was at his devotions,
the weather cleared. His little band hailed the sunshine as an auspicious omen,
and clamoured for the onslaught. But Simon and the bishops still hoped to
separate the orthodox King from his heretical allies, and marched leisurely
forward. The bridge over the Garonne was like the defile, unguarded; Pedro
seeming to have thought such a handful of men undeserving of notice. Without
interruption de Montfort entered the town, which the besiegers had left
unoccupied, but he found there food insufficient for a single day’s
consumption. Again, therefore, the prelates made overtures, which again were
answered with taunts.
Still all hope of negotiation was not given up, and
now de Montfort made an offer, which, if made whilst the King was still in
Spain, pressing his mediation upon the Crusaders, would assuredly have
prevented his advance in arms. It was, conformably to the spirit of the command
issued by Innocent, but revoked upon his Legates’ representations, to restore
his conquests from Earl Raymond; an offer so contradictory to the whole conduct
of Earl Simon and to his character, as shewn by that conduct, and as received
from the eulogies of his partisans, that to believe it sincere, is very
difficult. The King and the Earl felt the difficulty insuperable, apparently;
for, whilst the prelates were arranging a barefoot procession, to work upon the
feelings of the favourite vassal and son of St. Peter; a storm of darts and
stones upon the house in which they were assembled, returned a very
intelligible negative to even this last, incomprehensibly liberal offer. De
Montfort, trusting that all would prefer a battle against the most desperate
odds to dying of hunger, now exclaimed: “Ye see it is hopeless; we must needs
fight!” and all, with one accord, seized their arms.
As de Montfort, at the head of his troop, passed a
church door, he heard the Bishop of Usez saying mass.
Again he alighted, entered, and cried with a loud voice: “To thee, Oh Lord, I
devote soul and body!” Then coming forth he was in the act of remounting, when
his charger rearing, threw him off backwards. It is not easy to conceive the
relative positions of besieged and besiegers, since the chroniclers seem to
represent the Spaniards and Toulousans, as witnessing
the accident, certainly as hailing it with shouts of exultation. Earl Simon
remounted, crying to them: “Ye may scoff at me now! At the gates of Toulouse I
trust to repay you!”
As he was drawing up his band, a knight who thought
the numerical disproportion too formidable, advised him to count his men. He
rejected the counsel, saying: “With God’s protection we are now;” committed the
defence of the town to his infantry, and with his horse, of course reinforced
from the Castle, went in search of the foe. The Bishop of Toulouse, a piece of
the true Cross in his hand, stationed himself at the city gate, consecrating
the warriors severally to heaven as they went through. Each knight as he
passed, dismounted to do reverence to the sacred relic ; till the Bishop of
Comminges, alarmed at the delay this ceremony was causing, took the hallowed
implement of benediction from his brother prelate’s hand, and waving it over
the whole troop, gave them in the mass absolution of all their sins, exhorted
them to begin the fight in that faith which gives strength against all enemies,
and promised Heaven to all those who should fall in the cause of the true
Church. As his intentions became apparent, the warriors one and all made
simultaneously a brief confession; forgave each other their offences, received
the Bishop’s audibly spoken collective blessing, and rode out exulting. The
prelates sent another message to entreat the orthodox King to forsake the
heretics; but hardly expecting an answer, they repaired to church there to pray
for victory to their champions.
Far, indeed, was Don Pedro from yielding to their entreaties.
In such utter contempt did he hold de Montfort’s small band, that he would not
even listen to Raymond’s advice to await the attack within their entrenchments,
deferring a general action until the arrival of the reinforcements from
Catalonia, expected the very next day. Leaving his infantry, consisting chiefly
of Toulousans, to guard the camp, he led forth his
cavalry to engage, without even troubling himself to array it for battle. His
own station he took amongst the foremost, but was prevailed upon to exchange
his well-known armour for that of a common knight, influenced in this
compliance, rather by the idea that he should thus be more at liberty to
indulge his pugnacious propensity, than by any desire to divert the attention
of the enemy from himself to another.
De Montfort, a better general than Don Pedro, marched
along the bank of the Garonne, at a distance from the besiegers’ camp, thus at
once avoiding the shafts of its defenders, and awakening a belief that he was
retreating; until at the very spot he had previously selected, he suddenly
turned and fell upon the disorderly mass of his foes. The battle is described
as obstinately contested, but seems, nevertheless, to have hinged entirely upon
the persons and prowess of the two leaders, the King and the Crusader Earl,
raging only around them. Don Pedro pertinaciously sought for de Montfort, upon
whose individuality he conceived the war to depend; whilst two of de
Montfort’s knights, Alain de Roucy and Florent de
Ville, actuated by similar ideas, as pertinaciously sought the King of Aragon.
Deceived by the exchange of armour, they attacked the royally attired knight.
He fought gallantly; but during their unequal combat, de Roucy’s attention was caught by the surpassing valiancy, the
fearful strokes of another warrior, and he exclaimed aloud to his partner:
“This is not the King!” The monarch heard the words, buried his spurs in his
charger’s sides, shouted: “ Of a surety is he not, but here you have him !” and
to prove his identity struck down with his battle-axe a knight who was pressing
to their assistance.
Roucy and de Ville appear to have been so overawed by the royal prowess, that they
felt, where Don Pedro was a party, two to one became insufficient odds. They
now collected a company of young knights, who, with them, looking upon the
King’s death and de Montfort’s victory as convertible terms, concentrated all
their efforts and energies upon this one object. The self-devotion of two
determined regicides had failed; but against a brigade of their peers neither
the equally self-sacrificing loyalty of Don Pedro’s noblest knights, nor his
own dreaded arm could avail. He sank under the blows of a troop of men who
valued not their own lives so they could take his; and thus, upon the field of
Muret, perished the victor in fifteen battles against the Spanish Mohammedans.
The Herculean of frame, the handsome, the valiant, the generous, the
magnificent, the joyous,—joyous over much, since it was even unto
profligacy,—the troubadour king, once Innocent’s especial favourite, and still,
notwithstanding his manifold offences, viewed by him with indulgence, there
fell, a victim to the Crusade, originating in bigotry, allied to, and fostered
by inordinate rapacity; and the anonymous historical Troubadour remarks, that
Christianity was lowered and shamed. He was regretted not only by his friends
and allies, but by all Christendom, as one of the most gallant champions of the
Cross against the Crescent; and his falling in defence of heresy was generally
pardoned, inasmuch as he only defended the heretics, because he could no otherwise
defend his sisters and their husbands.
After Don Pedro’s fall, there was none to resist de
Montfort, whose feats of arms rivalled the King’s; but he was in danger of
sharing his antagonist’s fate even before that fate was known. The encounter of
an Aragonese knight so nearly unseated him, that his
stirrup broke, his spur got entangled in the housings, and he hardly saved
himself from falling amidst the feet of the horses. Whilst he was recovering
his usually firm seat the stroke of a battle-axe fell upon his head; and was
repaid by a blow from his gauntletted hand that laid
his assailant, with a shattered jaw, upon the ground.
But by this time the news of Don Pedro’s death had
spread through his ranks, and resistance was no more. The confederated earls
were disheartened, and abandoned the contest; the army, including the guard of
the camp, fled in all directions. And now comes the most extraordinary part of
the tale, which, but from the frequent recurrence of the like in the history of
the middle ages, would be pronounced to be, as it seems, impossible. In this
hard fought battle of hundreds against thousands, in which on each side was a
champion- depicted as, in personal prowess, a sort of Amadis, the victors are
stated to have lost only one knight and at most eight men at arms, whilst of
the vanquished 18,000 perished, principally, of course, infantry, cut down
unresistingly in their flight.
When all was over, de Montfort desired to be conducted
to the spot where the King had fallen. The body was already stripped by the
human vultures that follow armies to prey upon the dead. But Earl Simon
recognised him, and dismounting wept over his slain antagonist. Such tears, yet
more startlingly unexpected than those shed for his slaughtered garrison,
flowing from eyes that had gazed unmoved at more massacres than have here been
even alluded to, must again be pointed out as irrefragable proof of the light
in which atrocities that curdle modern blood are to be regarded, when
practised, in the middle ages, upon persons deemed enemies of God. Don Pedro
having incurred excommunication by his intercourse with his excommunicated
brother-in-law, could not be buried in consecrated ground, until the prayers of
another sister, Constance, Queen-dowager of Hungary, and Queen-consort of
Sicily—of this hereafter—obtained that favour from Innocent.
With the battle of Muret the Crusade ended. The Earls
of Toulouse, father and son, fled to England to seek assistance from young
Raymond’s uncle, John; their Princess-Countesses retired across the Rhone, to
the marquesate of Provence, which yet remained to
them; and the vassal-earls, even de Foix himself, at the Legate’s command,
submitted to de Montfort. The bishops now demanded all Earl Raymond’s lands and
lordships for Earl Simon ; and the Legate, after a momentary hesitation caused
by the Pope’s previously expressed disapprobation, invested him with the whole.
Explanations and representations were sent to Rome. Innocent pronounced that the
Legate had exceeded his powers, not being authorized to interfere with rights
of sovereignty; but at length, in consideration of the great services of de
Montfort, and still reserving the final decision to himself, conjointly with
the oecumenic Council, which he had summoned to meet in the year 1215, he
granted him the provisional occupation of Raymond’s patrimony. De Monfort
thenceforward, with little regard to limitation or reservation, styled himself
Simon, by the Grace of God Earl of Toulouse and Leicester, Viscount of Beziers
and Carcassonne, and Duke of Narbonne.
He went on subjugating his principality, and at length
Toulouse itself submitted to him; but he saw little prospect of enjoying it in
peace. The King of France, who had not anticipated the complete destruction of
his vassal and nephew, complained loudly of such a violation of his
sovereignty, as disposing of a principality held in vassalage of his crown.
Accordingly, Prince Lewis, who three years before had assumed the cross against
the Albigenses, appointing Cardinal Robert de Courson his representative, prepared,
now the work was done, to perform his Crusade in person, by taking possession
of the Crusaders’ conquests as lapsed fiefs,—whether to grant them to him who
had usurped them, might be doubtful. Nor did perfect concord now reign amongst
the Crusaders. De Montfort’s former friend, the Cistercian Abbot of Abbots,
whose services had been recompensed with the archiepiscopal see of Narbonne,
claimed the duchy of Narbonne as incorporated with the archbishopric. Earl
Simon made head against this new adversary. He entered and occupied Narbonne,
despite the personal opposition of the prelate, who now, excommunicating his
late friend and ally, appeared inclined to support Earl Raymond against him.
That sentence—by the potency of which, as an instrument of coercion, he himself
had profited, to disregard the laws of God and man, in fact, all save his own
will—de Montfort compelled his clergy so completely to disregard, as to perform
the marriage rites for the union of his second son Guy, with the heiress of Bigorre, who was already married to the living son of the
Comte de Roussillon et Cerdagne. By a mixture of
immutable determination, overawing strength, conciliation, and, probably, bribery of those
about Prince Lewis, he ultimately got rid of the claims of the crown, got the
better of all opposition, and, in spite of pope, king, archbishop, and
Albigenses—who, if forced to dissemble, were anything but converted — he
maintained possession of county and viscounty, doing homage for both to the
French monarch.
Innocent, if still unconscious of the degree to which
he had been deceived by misrepresentations, was, nevertheless, cruelly
disappointed and mortified at the result of his exertions. Heresy was not
extirpated; his legates, disregarding his positive commands, had despoiled a
lawful prince, professing obedience to all papal injunctions, of his
patrimonial dominions; and a royal champion of the Cross, a devout son of the
Church, being involved by the ties of blood in the political portion of the
quarrel, had been slain, nominally in the defence of heretics. Still he did not
despair of retrieving all the errors committed, and accomplishing his object,
the actual conversion of the Albigenses, could he but find the fitting instrument.
This he now hoped that he possessed, in Dominic de Guzman, who, in 1212, had
refused the bishopric of Beziers, to devote himself to the sole duty of
converting heretics. And to him .the Pope now wholly committed this office, as
also the business of inquiring after heresy, ’wherever there was any suspicion
of its existence. The first step towards the development of the Inquisition,
BOOK
III.
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