de Montfort, neither saw the end of it. During these fifteen years, in the region situated between the Rhone, the Pyrenees, the Garonne, and even the Dordogne, nearly all the towns and strong castles, Beziers, Carcassonne, Castelnaudary, Lavaur, Gaillac, Moissae, Minerve, Termes, Toulouse, &c., were taken, lost, retaken, given over to pillage, sack, and massacre, and burnt by the crusaders with all the cruelty of fanatics and all the greed of conquerors. We do not care to dwell here in detail upon this tragical and monotonous history; we will simply recall some few of its characteristics. Doubt has been thrown upon the answer attributed to Arnauld-Amaury, Abbot of Citeaux, when he was asked, in 1209, by the conquerors of Beziers, how, at the assault of the city, they should distinguish the heretics from the faithful: “Slay them all; God will be sure to know His own.” The doubt is more charitable than reasonable; for it is a contemporary, himself a monk of Citeaux, who reports, without any comment, this hateful speech. Simon de Montfort, the hero of the crusade, employed similar language. One day two heretics, taken at Castres, were brought before him; one of them was unshakable in his belief, the other expressed a readiness to turn convert: “Burn them both,” said the count; “if this fellow mean what he says, the fire will serve for expiation of his sins, and, if he lie, he will suffer the penalty for his imposture.” At the siege of the castle of Lavaur, in 1211, Amaury, Lord of Montreal, and eighty knights, had been made prisoners: and “the noble Count Simon,” says Peter of Vaulx-Cernay, “decided to hang them all on one gibbet; but when Amaury, the most distinguished amongst them, had been hanged, the gallows-poles, which, from too great haste, had not been firmly fixed in the ground, having come down, the count, perceiving how great was the delay, ordered the rest to be slain. The pilgrims therefore fell upon them right eagerly and slew them on the spot. Further, the count caused stones to be heaped upon the lady of the castle, Amaury’s sister, a very wicked heretic, who had been cast into a well. Finally our crusaders, with extreme alacrity, burned heretics without number.”
In the midst of these atrocious unbridlements of passions supposed to be religious, other passions were not slow to make their appearance. Innocent III. had promised the crusaders the sovereignty of the domains they might win by conquest from princes who were heretics or protectors of heretics. After the capture, in 1209, of Beziers and Carcassonne, possessions of Raymond Roger, Viscount of Albi, and nephew of the Count of Toulouse, the Abbot of Citeaux, a legate of the pope, assembled the principal chiefs of the crusaders that they might choose one amongst them as lord and governor of their conquests. The offer was made, successively, to Eudes, Duke of Burgundy, to Peter de Courtenay, Count of Nevers, and to Walter de Chatilion, Count of St. Paul; but they all three declined, saying that they had sufficient domains of their own without usurping those of the Viscount of Beziers, to whom, in their opinion, they had already caused enough loss. The legate, somewhat embarrassed, it is said, proposed to appoint two bishops and four knights, who, in concert with him, should choose a new master for the conquered territories. The proposal was agreed to, and, after some moments of hesitation, Simon de Montfort, being elected by this committee, accepted the proffered domains, and took immediate possession of them on publication of a charter conceived as follows: “Simon, Lord of Montfort, Earl of Leicester, Viscount of Beziers and Carcassonne. The Lord having delivered into my hands the lands of the heretics, an unbelieving people, that is to say, whatsoever He hath thought fit to take from them by the hand of the crusaders, His servants, I have accepted humbly and devoutly this charge and administration, with confidence in His aid.” The pope wrote to him forthwith to confirm him in hereditary possession of his new dominions, at the same time expressing to him a hope that, in concert with the legates, he would continue to carry out the extirpation of the heretics. The dispossessed Viscount, Raymond Roger, having been put in prison by his conqueror in a tower of Carcassonne itself, died there at the end of three months, of disease according to some, and a violent death according to others; but the latter appears to be a groundless suspicion, for it was not to cowardly and secret crimes that Simon de Montfort was inclined.
From this time forth the war in Southern France changed character, or, rather, it assumed a double character; with the war of religion was openly joined a war of conquest; it was no longer merely against the Albigensians and their heresies, it was against the native princes of Southern France and their domains that the crusade was prosecuted. Simon de Montfort was eminently qualified to direct and accomplish this twofold design: sincerely fanatical and passionately ambitious; of a valor that knew no fatigue; handsome and strong; combining tact with authority; pitiless towards his enemies as became his mission of doing justice in the name of the faith and the Church; a leader faithful to his friends and devoted to their common cause whilst reckoning upon them for his own private purposes, he possessed those natural qualities which confer spontaneous empire over men and those abilities which lure them on by opening a way for the fulfilment of their interested hopes. And as for himself, by the stealthy growth of selfishness, which is so prone to become developed when circumstances are tempting, he every day made his personal fortunes of greater and greater account in his views and his conduct. His ambitious appetite grew by the very difficulties it encountered as well as by the successes it fed upon. The Count of Toulouse, persecuted and despoiled, complained loudly in the ears of the pope; protested against the charge of favoring the heretics; offered and actually made the concessions demanded by Rome; and, as security, gave up seven of his principal strongholds. But, being ever too irresolute and too weak to keep his engagements to his subjects’ detriment no less than to stand out against his adversaries’ requirements, he was continually falling back into the same condition, and keeping off attacks which were more and more urgent by promises which always remained without effect. After having sent to Rome embassy upon embassy with explanations and excuses, he twice went thither himself, in 1210 and in 1215; the first time alone, the second with his young son, who was then thirteen, and who was at a later period Raymond VII. He appealed to the pope’s sense of justice; he repudiated the stories and depicted the violence of his enemies; and finally pleaded the rights of his son, innocent of all that was imputed to himself, and yet similarly attacked and despoiled. Innocent III. had neither a narrow mind nor an unfeeling heart; he listened to the father’s pleading, took an interest in the youth, and wrote, in April, 1212, and January, 1213, to his legates in Languedoc and to Simon de Montfort, “After having led the army of the crusaders into the domains of the Count of Toulouse, ye have not been content with invading all the places wherein there were heretics, but ye have further gotten possession of those where-in there was no suspicion of heresy. … The same ambassadors have objected to us that ye have usurped what was another’s with so much greed and so little consideration that of all the domains of the Count of Toulouse there remains to him barely the town of that name, together with the castle of Montauban. … Now, though the said count has been found guilty of many matters against God and against the Church, and our legates, in order to force him to acknowledgment thereof, have excommunicated his person, and have left his domains to the first captor, nevertheless, he has not yet been condemned as a heretic nor as an accomplice in the death of Peter de Castelnau, of sacred memory, albeit he is strongly suspected thereof. That is why we did ordain that, if there should appear against him a proper accuser, within a certain time, there should be appointed him a day for clearing himself, according to the form pointed out in our letters, reserving to ourselves the delivery of a definitive sentence thereupon: in all which the procedure hath not been according to our orders. We wot not, therefore, on what ground we could yet grant to others his dominions which have not been taken away either from him or from his heirs; and, above all, we would not appear to have fraudulently extorted from him the castles he hath committed to us, the will of the Apostle being that we should refrain from even the appearance of wrong.”
But Innocent III. forgot that, in the case of either temporal or spiritual sovereigns, when there has once been an appeal to force, there is no stopping, at pleasure and within specified limits, the movement that has been set going and the agents which have the work in hand. He had decreed war against the princes who were heretics or protectors of heretics; and he had promised their domains to their conquerors. He meant to reserve to himself the right of pronouncing definitive judgment as to the condemnation of princes as heretics, and as to dispossessing them of their dominions; but when force had done its business on the very spot, when the condemnation of the princes as heretics had been pronounced by the pope’s legates and their bodily dispossession effected by his laic allies, the reserves and regrets of Innocent III.
