Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Seeing CHAP.

legate Arnaud merely referred them to Rome. Seeing at once from this reply that the legate was determined to proceed to extremities, Raymond Roger advised the Count of Toulouse to unite with him in vigorous defence. The latter wanted the resolution. His character partook of the softness of an intellectual country civilised beyond its age, and instead of taking up arms, he made supplication to Rome. The Pope demanded of the envoys of the count, that he should surrender his chief castles and strong places; and on their consenting, he charged a certain Milon to received them from the count. This papal lieutenant proceeded to Provence, but unfortunately dying, the count was again thrown upon the legate. To the latter he displayed the act of absolution given him by the Pope, and the treaty of reconciliation, on the condition of his surrendering his castles: the legate, for reply, commanded Raymond of Toulouse to guide the crusading army into the territories of the Viscount of Beziers, who had been making preparations for resistance. It was indeed not in the legate's power to stop the crusade. In addition to the army around him, another had collected in Agen, under the Counts of Auvergne and of Turenne, and several prelates, and another at Puy. The auxiliary armies set themselves in motion, carried towns by assault, and delivered heretical captives to the flames. The legate advanced against Beziers, which the count had garrisoned, but did not defend in person, having shut himself for preference in Carcassonne. The Albigenses were evidently inferior to their northern opponents in hardihood and military skill. There was a remarkable reason for this, in the fact, that feudalism, with its organisation of land and men, had not penetrated into Languedoc. Lands there were generally held not in fief, but were allodial. There were thus none to defend the land, but those who volunteered it. The only resistance to the crusaders was that, offered by the

[blocks in formation]

V.

V.

towns, which had not, as in Italy, organised a militia, because the citizens had never been at war with the nobles. Thus it was that the happiness, the union, the mutual forbearance and attachment of high and low for each other, instead of proving a blessing, as it would in a time of peace and justice to the southerns, betrayed them on the contrary, and made them a more easy prey to the ferocious and feudal northerns.

So little skill and energy did the inhabitants of Beziers show, that although they manned the walls at the appearance of the crusaders, they did not, or could not, prevent them filling the fosse, and planting ladders for an immediate assault. Beziers seems not to have been supplied with any of the engines of defence usual at the time. The poet of the crusade represents them as waving white flags to frighten the crusaders; as if this, or their shouts, could avail. The town was accordingly taken by assault; and a merciless massacre followed. The legate summoned to protect the innocent was said to have answered with the cry of "Kill, kill all. The Lord will protect his own." None were spared, not even those who had taken refuge in the cathedral. Women and children were slaughtered with the men. And to complete the holocaust, the town was set on fire. The poet compares it to that perpetrated by the Saracens upon the Christians at Edessa. Such an atrocious example of wholesale murder had never before occurred in European annals. It was reserved for the Church, and its especial armies, serving too principally for Heaven's pardon and indulgences, to perpetrate atrocities, only equalled but not surpassed by the Hun or the Mogul.

From the smoking ruins of Beziers the crusading army marched against Carcassonne, which they also endeavoured to take by a first assault. Carcassonne, however, was strong, and the presence of the viscount gave courage to the besieged, who repelled the cru

saders in several attacks. The King of Arragon, suze-
rain of these southern lands, arrived soon after, and
tried to mollify the legate, for he had not the courage
to resist the crusaders. His intervention was useless,
and the siege continued until the legate, after repeated
repulses, despairing of reducing the town, had recourse
to artifice, and sending an embassy to the viscount,
persuaded this chief to come forth to parley, and to
enter into personal intercourse with his foes. He soon
had cause to regret this act of confidence; for, being
enticed from the town on the pretext of a safe conduct,
he was immediately arrested and conveyed to prison; on
learning which the inhabitants abandoned Carcassonne
to the occupation and plunder of the crusaders. The
conquest of the two chief towns of the viscounty of
Beziers being thus accomplished, the legate proposed
transferring the possession and the title to one of those
who had aided in the enterprise; but the chiefs who
had engaged in the crusade could not adopt the views
of the legate. The viscount, they said, had been over-
come by treachery, not by arms.
He had made every
offer to put down heresy in his possessions, and had
disavowed any such doctrines himself. One and all,
therefore, the Duke of Burgundy, the Count of
Nevers, and the Count of St. Pol,-refused to accept
the viscounty of Beziers, or sanction any further seve-
rity to the betrayed noble.

The legate found no reluctant candidate in Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester by marriage, chief of that remarkable family, whose sons aimed less at founding or aggrandising an aristocratic family than at rivalling princes and assuming the power of kings. It was the son of the chief of the crusade against the Albigenses, who, after the aristocracy of England had triumphed over John, introduced the popular interest and party into the struggle, and strove by their means to retain. mastery over the kingdom. His father, Simon, who

CHAP.

V.

CHAP.

V.

now accepted from the papal legate the title and domains of the Viscount of Beziers, with the guard of that unfortunate noble's person, was an iron fanatic, the most apt instrument that Rome could have chosen ; and he took Beziers less for itself than as the commencement and the means of deposing the Count of Toulouse, and rendering himself the immediate lord, and Rome the suzerain, of Languedoc.

He was disappointed or retarded in these views by his brother nobles of the crusade, who withdrew as from a task fully accomplished. Simon, however, retained the service of 5000 Germans and Burgundians, and brought recruits from his own distant estates; and, fortifying himself in Beziers, as well as in the Limousin, he awaited till the churchmen should find him fresh armies and new pretexts of aggression. Raymond Roger, Viscount of Beziers, soon after expired in prison, the usurper of his territories being, not unnaturally, suspected of hastening his death. Simon's next step was to ask of Raymond of Toulouse to act in amity and concert with him, no doubt for the extermination of heretics; in other words, receive the nascent inquisition into Toulouse. Raymond declining, the legate excommunicated him. To escape from this sentence the count hastened to Rome, where he was to all appearances benignly received, but still referred to the legate for the terms of final reconciliation. The legate, too, received Raymond on his return from Rome with much blandness, so that the count was wheedled into giving up to De Montfort the castle which defended Toulouse. Even this could not bend the legate from his purpose of maintaining the excommunication and reviving the crusade against Raymond. The latter, when made certain of such inveterate hostility, burst into tears. The legate observed they were but tears of malice, and added the expression of the Psalmist, "that did they amount to the floods of great waters, they should not come nigh

unto the Lord." The King of Arragon again interfered, and sought to obtain some terms for the Count of Toulouse; but the legate demanded the surrender into his hands of all the Toulousans whom he should denote as heretics; no noble or gentleman of the count's territories should be permitted to dwell in a town, but should withdraw to the country, and put on the frieze of the peasant. This sufficiently marks the hostility of the Church to the civilisation and education of the Country. De Montfort, moreover, was to be master, and Raymond was to enter the order of the Templars, and depart for the Holy Land.

Such conditions were a provocative to resistance. And at length, even the poor-spirited Raymond was driven to adopt it. He prepared for war, whilst several of the ecclesiastical peers of France marched with their vassals to the support of De Montfort. The latter opened the campaign of 1211 by the siege of Lavaur, a strong place within five leagues of Toulouse, defended by the most eminent of the Albigensian chiefs, and commanded by Amaury, of Montreal, and his sister Giralda, dame of the castle. Whilst the papal party in Toulouse itself, organised by the Bishop Foulques, lent all aid to the besiegers, Count Raymond still hesitated, and visited their camp in anger, indeed, but not in hostility. In consequence of his irresolution Lavaur was captured, Amaury de Montreal hanged from a gibbet, his sister Giralda precipitated into a well, and the remaining Albigenses committed to the flames. Encouraged by this success, De Montfort laid siege to Toulouse. But his force was not equal to the investment of the city; Count Raymond entering it with the Counts of Foix and Comminges, De Montfort was worsted in several attacks, and obliged to desist from the enterprise. This failure disheartened and sent away many of the supporters of De Montfort; and the Count of Toulouse, thus emboldened to assume the offensive,

CHAP.

V.

« AnteriorContinuar »