book 9, chapter 8.

_J. Alzog, Manual of Universal Church History, period 2, epoch 2, part 1, chapter 3 https://archive.org/details/manualofuniversa02alzo_.

See, also, INQUISITION: A. D. 1203-1525.

ALBIGENSES: A. D. 1210-1213. The Second Crusade.

"The conquest of the Viscounty of Beziers had rather inflamed than satiated the cupidity of De Montfort and the fanaticism of Amalric [legate of the Pope] and of the monks of Citeaux. Raymond, Count of Toulouse, still possessed the fairest part of Languedoc, and was still suspected or accused of affording shelter, if not countenance, to his heretical subjects. ... The unhappy Raymond was ... again excommunicated from the Christian Church, and his dominions offered as a reward to the champions who should execute her sentence against him. To earn that reward De Montfort, at the head of a new host of Crusaders, attracted by the promise of earthly spoils and of heavenly blessedness, once more marched through the devoted land [A. D. 1210], and with him advanced Amalric. At each successive conquest, slaughter, rapine, and woes such as may not be described tracked and polluted their steps. Heretics, or those suspected of heresy, wherever they were found, were compelled by the legate to ascend vast piles of burning faggots. ... At length the Crusaders reached and laid siege to the city of Toulouse. ... Throwing himself into the place, Raymond ... succeeded in repulsing De Montfort and Amalric. It was, however, but a temporary respite, and the prelude to a fearful destruction. From beyond the Pyrenees, at the head of 1,000 knights, Pedro of Arragon had marched to the rescue of Raymond, his kinsman, and of the counts of Foix and of Comminges, and of the Viscount of Béarn, his vassals; and their united forces came into communication with each other at Muret, a little town which is about three leagues distant from Toulouse. There, also, on the 12th of September [A. D. 1213], at the head of the champions of the Cross, and attended by seven bishops, appeared Simon de Montfort in full military array. The battle which followed was fierce, short and decisive. ... Don Pedro was numbered with the slain. His army, deprived of his command, broke and dispersed, and the whole of the infantry of Raymond and his allies were either put to the sword, or swept a way by the current of the Garonne. Toulouse immediately surrendered, and the whole of the dominions of Raymond submitted to the conquerors. At a council subsequently held at Montpellier, composed of five archbishops and twenty-eight bishops, De Montfort was unanimously acknowledged as prince of the fief and city of Toulouse, and of the other counties conquered by the Crusaders under his command."

_Sir J. Stephen, Lectures on the History of France, lecture 7._

ALSO IN _J. C. L. de Sismondi, History of Crusades against the Albigenses, chapter 2._

ALBIGENSES: A. D. 1217-1229. The Renewed Crusades. Dissolution of the County of Toulouse. Pacification of Languedoc.

"The cruel spirit of De Montfort would not allow him to rest quiet in his new Empire. Violence and persecution marked his rule; he sought to destroy the Provençal population by the sword or the stake, nor could he bring himself to tolerate the liberties of the citizens of Toulouse. In 1217 the Toulousans again revolted, and war once more broke out betwixt Count Raymond and Simon de Montfort. The latter formed the siege of the capital, and was engaged in repelling a sally, when a stone from one of the walls struck him and put an end to his existence. ... Amaury de Montfort, son of Simon, offered to cede to the king all his rights in Languedoc, which he was unable to defend against the old house of Toulouse. Philip [Augustus] hesitated to accept the important cession, and left the rival houses to the continuance of a struggle carried feebly on by either side." King Philip died in 1223 and was succeeded by a son, Louis VIII., who had none of his father's reluctance to join in the grasping persecution of the unfortunate people of the south. Amaury de Montfort had been fairly driven out of old Simon de Montfort's conquests, and he now sold them to King Louis for the office of constable of France. "A new crusade was preached against the Albigenses; and Louis marched towards Languedoc at the head of a formidable army in the spring of the year 1226. The town of Avignon had proferred to the crusaders the facilities of crossing the Rhone under her walls, but refused entry within them to such a host. Louis having arrived at Avignon, insisted on passing through the town: the Avignonais shut their gates, and defied the monarch, who instantly formed the siege. One of the rich municipalities of the south was almost a match for the king of France. He was kept three months under its walls; his army a prey to famine, to disease and to the assaults of a brave garrison. The crusaders lost 20,000 men. The people of Avignon at length submitted, but on no dishonourable terms. This was the only resistance that Louis experienced in Languedoc. ... All submitted. Louis retired from his facile conquest; he himself, and the chiefs of his army stricken by an epidemy which had prevailed in the conquered regions. The monarch's feeble frame could not resist it; he expired at Montpensier, in Auvergne, in November, 1226." Louis VIII. was succeeded by his young son, Louis IX. (Saint Louis), then a boy, under the regency of his energetic and capable mother, Blanche of Castile. {34} "The termination of the war with the Albigenses, and the pacification, or it might be called the acquisition, of Languedoc, was the chief act of Queen Blanche's regency. Louis VIII. had overrun the country without resistance in his last campaign; still, at his departure, Raymond VI. again appeared, collected soldiers and continued to struggle against the royal lieutenant. For upward of two years he maintained himself; the attention of Blanche being occupied by the league of the barons against her. The successes of Raymond VII., accompanied by cruelties, awakened the vindictive zeal of the pope. Languedoc was threatened with another crusade; Raymond was willing to treat, and make considerable cessions, in order to avoid such extremities. In April, 1229, a treaty was signed: in it the rights of De Montfort were passed over. About two-thirds of the domains of the count of Toulouse were ceded to the king of France; the remainder was to fall, after Raymond's death, to his daughter Jeanne, who by the same treaty was to marry one of the royal princes: heirs failing them, it was to revert to the crown [which it did in 1271]. On these terms, with the humiliating addition of a public penance, Raymond VII. once more was allowed peaceable possession of Toulouse, and of the part of his domains reserved to him. Alphonse, brother of Louis IX., married Jeanne of Toulouse soon after, and took the title of count of Poitiers; that province being ceded to him in apanage. Robert, another brother, was made count of Artois at the same time. Louis himself married Margaret, the eldest daughter of Raymond Berenger, count of Provence."

_E. E. Crowe, History of France, volume 1, chapter 2-3._

"The struggle ended in a vast increase of the power of the French crown, at the expense alike of the house of Toulouse and of the house of Aragon. The dominions of the count of Toulouse were divided. A number of fiefs, Beziers, Narbonne, Nimes, Albi, and some other districts were at once annexed to the crown. The capital itself and its county passed to the crown fifty years later. ... The name of Toulouse, except as the name of the city itself, now passed away, and the new acquisitions of France came in the end to be known by the name of the tongue which was common to them with Aquitaine and Imperial Burgundy [Provence]. Under the name of Languedoc they became one of the greatest and most valuable provinces of the French kingdom."

_E. A. Freeman, History Geography of Europe, chapter 9._

The brutality and destructiveness of the Crusades.

"The Church of the Albigenses had been drowned in blood. These supposed heretics had been swept away from the soil of France. The rest of the Languedocian people had been overwhelmed with calamity, slaughter, and devastation. The estimates transmitted to us of the numbers of the invaders and of the slain are such as almost surpass belief. We can neither verify nor correct them; but we certainly know that, during a long succession of years, Languedoc had been invaded by armies more numerous than had ever before been brought together in European warfare since the fall of the Roman empire. We know that these hosts were composed of men inflamed by bigotry and unrestrained by discipline; that they had neither military pay nor magazines; that they provided for all their wants by the sword, living at the expense of the country, and seizing at their pleasure both the harvests of the peasants and the merchandise of the citizens. More than three-fourths of the landed proprietors had been despoiled of their fiefs and castles. In hundreds of villages, every inhabitant had been massacred. ... Since the sack of Rome by the Vandals, the European world had never mourned over a national disaster so wide in its extent or so fearful in its character."

_Sir J. Stephen, Lectures on the History of France, lecture 7._

ALBIGENSES: End----------

ALBION.

"The most ancient name known to have been given to this island [Britain] is that of Albion. ... There is, however, another allusion to Britain which seems to carry us much further back, though it has usually been ill understood. It occurs in the story of the labours of Hercules, who, after securing the cows of Geryon, comes from Spain to Liguria, where he is attacked by two giants, whom he kills before making his way to Italy. Now, according to Pomponius Mela, the names of the giants were Albiona and Bergyon, which one may, without much hesitation, restore to the forms of Albion and Iberion, representing, undoubtedly, Britain and Ireland, the position of which in the sea is most appropriately symbolized by the story making them sons of Neptune or the sea-god. ... Even in the time of Pliny, Albion, as the name of the island, had fallen out of use with Latin authors; but not so with the Greeks, or with the Celts themselves, at any rate those of the Goidelic branch; for they are probably right who suppose that we have but the same word in the Irish and Scotch Gælic Alba, genitive Alban, the kingdom of Alban or Scotland beyond the Forth. Albion would be a form of the name according to the Brythonic pronunciation of it. ... It would thus appear that the name Albion is one that has retreated to a corner of the island, to the whole of which it once applied."

_J. Rhys, Celtic Britain, chapter 6._

ALSO IN _E. Guest, Origines Celticae, chapter 1._

See SCOTLAND: 8TH-9TH CENTURIES.

ALBIS, The. The ancient name of the river Elbe.

ALBOIN, King of the Lombards, A. D. 569-573.

ALCALDE.--ALGUAZIL.--CORREGIDOR.

"The word alcalde is from the Arabic 'al cadi,' the judge or governor. ... Alcalde mayor signifies a judge, learned in the law, who exercises [in Spain] ordinary jurisdiction, civil and criminal, in a town or district." In the Spanish colonies the Alcalde mayor was the chief judge. "Irving (Columbus, ii. 331) writes erroneously alguazil mayor, evidently confounding the two offices. ... An alguacil mayor, was a chief constable or high sheriff." "Corregidor, a magistrate having civil and criminal jurisdiction in the first instance ('nisi prius') and gubernatorial inspection in the political and economical government in all the towns of the district assigned to him."

_H. H. Bancroft, History of the Pacific States,