CHAPTER IV.

THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE—THE EARLY WAR.

The Albigensian Crusade lasted for twenty years, from the original mobilization and march of the crusading army to the treaty which finally ended hostilities. Naturally, for the greater part of this long period there was no heavy fighting, the resources of the opponents could not have supported any such continuous performance; indeed throughout considerable intervals there seems to have been no actual fighting at all. Nevertheless, for twenty years there were hostile forces in being and a state of war existed.

The chief single episode of these twenty years is the astonishing battle of Muret. It will be best, therefore, to consider separately, first the earlier stages of the war, and second the campaign of Muret and the subsequent events which that action made possible.

The early war falls naturally into two periods of unequal length. The first, of only two months, comprises the original crusading march with its overwhelming numbers, and the capture of Beziers and Carcassonne. It ends with the appointment of Simon de Montfort to govern the conquered territories, and the return of the great majority of Crusaders to their homes. The second period lasts for four years. Throughout this time de Montfort commands the Crusade, maintains a government in Languedoc, and extends his power. This he does, in spite of his slender resources, by virtue of high personal ability. The period ends with the military intervention of King Pedro of Aragon against the Crusade, and the general expectation that de Montfort, with his greatly inferior forces, would be annihilated forthwith.

All warfare, it is axiomatic, is merely a means to a political end. One group attempts to impose its will upon another which asserts a contrary will of its own and resists.

We have seen in the first chapter that the Middle Ages were politically decentralized to a high degree, but that, on the other hand, they had a strong sense of moral unity. Christendom was one big family. Mediæval warfare was conditioned by these two political factors. On account of decentralization in all its forms, the central governments had only a slight power to compel the entire body of their nominal subjects to move, irrespective of the individual wills of those subjects with regard to the particular matter in dispute; slight, that is, compared with the power of modern governments. On account both of decentralization and also of the moral unity of Christendom, wars between Christian men in the Middle Ages seldom involved any great point of principle. There could be no opposition between different and mutually exclusive types of civilization, as between the French and German types to-day. Usually the dispute concerned merely the opposing claims of two parties to ownership of, and therefore feudal administration over, a patch of land. Accordingly campaigns were apt to be short and inconclusive, and warfare in general somewhat of an adventurous sport. It is true that in the thirteenth century, a time still simple, war had not yet taken on the unreality of aim and the elaborate trappings which are the mark of the later Middle Ages. Already, however, it had become something of a “gentleman’s game,” as were the dynastic wars of the eighteenth century. Naturally, therefore, when a vital principle was involved (as in the Crusade which we are about to study), operations were always tending to relapse into the haphazard fashion fostered by the contemporary idea of war as an affair in which nothing of great moment to society as a whole was at stake.

As far as the technique of operations is concerned, the important features are mail-clad cavalry and permanent fortification. Axiomatically, infantry is worth more than cavalry in combats between disciplined bodies of troops, but less than cavalry in raids and in defence against raids, as in our own Indian wars, and in the Boer War. Thus, in late Roman times and the Dark Ages, cavalry gradually became preponderant over infantry, throughout the greater part of Europe. The Franks who ended by setting up their chieftain as successor to the Western Emperors, were an exception. It was not until the great Viking harry of the ninth century, in which our tradition almost went under, that the defenders of “Francia” began to rely mainly upon cavalry. That arm alone was fast enough to overtake the pirates whose first act on landing was to steal horses for themselves. And it was in the repulse of the Viking, as we have seen, that mediæval society crystallized.

Fortified points, as well as cavalry, take on additional importance when the resources of one’s opponent seldom permit him to sit down before them and maintain a blockade and regular siege for a long time. A great deal of nonsense has been talked about the “impregnability” of fortification before the discovery of gunpowder. Any man acquainted with military things knows that, even irrespective of blockade, any fortress must fall before besiegers in sufficient numbers and possessed of armament and engineering skill equal to the defenders, unless the defence can receive relief from outside. Thus Philip Augustus took Chateau Gaillard, the strongest fortress of its time, not by blockade but by regular siege.

On the other hand, it has been truly observed that mediæval commanders of Philip’s type, and with his resources, were rare. The value of fortification is that it gains time, and few men of the Middle Ages had their troops well enough in hand to hold them long at the monotonous drudgery of siege work—even if they had resources sufficient to keep their force continuously in being at all. The well-provisioned fortress could usually count on starving out its besiegers before being starved out itself. Accordingly, if one party to a quarrel felt himself to be weaker than his enemy, he was apt to shut himself up promptly behind walls.

Furthermore, fortifications played a large part in mediæval warfare because a fortress covering only a small area could resist a regular siege as well as one of great extent. The importance of comparatively small fortified points, that is of castles, sprang from the lack of missile weapons capable of battering down stone walls. Obviously, as the power, accuracy, and effective range of missile weapons increase, the circumference of the first-class fortress must correspondingly increase if it is to escape being overwhelmed by the converging fire of the greater number of engines which the concentric position of the besiegers enables them to bring to bear upon it. Conversely, when the problem (as in the Middle Ages) is of close-in defence only, the area to be defended matters little with reference to the siege work involved. Whereas, on the other hand, the expense of construction mounts as the circumference to be fortified increases. The resources of the besiegers were sapping or battering the base of the walls; or escalade from behind the cover of movable towers which could be set up out of range, and then rolled up so as to let down drawbridges on a level with the battlements.

Finally, the mediæval was no fool. I have made this point in my first chapter; nevertheless, I repeat it here. We have seen that the importance of cavalry and of fortification, especially of castles (i.e., small highly-fortified points) resulted not from folly, but from the conditions of the time. Social and political conditions, again, were unfavorable to regular discipline, but no more so than in our own American Revolution. Less so, in fact. It is true that there was no regular study of war as an art. Nevertheless, our modern staff colleges could not easily improve on the decisions of many mediæval commanders. Even the lack of maps on which modern staff work is built up did not necessarily blind the eye of the commander operating in familiar or partially friendly country.

The men of the Middle Ages sometimes show the power of sizing up the strategic essentials of a large theatre of war which they had never seen, and had never even seen mapped. For instance, take the case of Philip Augustus’s advice to his son with regard to the campaign of 1216 in England, that is that the Prince should first of all seize the castle of Dover which commanded the English terminus to the shortest possible sea route between England and France.

In the present instance, the mobilization point and the line of march were intelligently chosen. It was clearly out of the question to cross the “Massif Central,” the mountains of Auvergne, since armies are compelled to seek the lines of geographical least resistance, and must avoid, whenever possible, thinly peopled districts which cannot keep them in food and shelter. The choice which faced the leaders of the Crusade was whether to outflank the mountainous country by the west or by the east.

It is only a guess, but I think that the decision to march by the easterly route was mainly for political reasons. To march by the west would have brought the crusading army close to territory still held by John of England. That monarch was still firmly planted on both sides of the lower Garonne, and had even held on to parts of Poitou well to the north of that river. The much widowed Raymond of Toulouse had married John’s sister Joan, who had since died. John had broken with the Pope over the candidacy of Stephen Langton, later of Magna Charta fame, for the archbishopric of Canterbury; and when Innocent had replied by interdicting all England, John had been able to compel most of the English clergy from enforcing the sentence. Since the Crusade was obviously directed against Raymond, John might move. It would be well, therefore, for the Crusaders not to give him an opportunity of falling upon their flanks or rear while marching south on the westward route.

Furthermore, there were geographical points to be considered. Crusaders from Germany and the Slavonic lands east of the Adriatic could more easily reach Lyons than, say, Limoges. Of course, most of the Crusaders would be “French,” that is North French, but German and Slavonic contingents were expected and did, in fact, turn up. East of the mountains, the expedition would be in closer touch with Rome, which might prove important in those days of slow couriers. Finally Lyons, being a large town, would be more suitable for a mobilization point than any smaller city further west, for cities draw armies like magnets since only in cities is there enough surplus food and shelter for large bodies of men. Lyons was, therefore, wisely chosen as the concentration point, and the Rhône Valley as the line of march.

The main force which assembled at Lyons was extremely large. The “Chanson de la Croisade” says twenty thousand knights and men-at-arms plus two hundred thousand “villeins” on foot. Until recently it has been fashionable for historians to disbelieve mediæval high numbers, but fashions change. At any rate, a huge army assembled.

The weakness of the great force was that only forty days’ service sufficed to fulfil the crusading vow. Hence the Crusade, if prolonged, was bound to suffer (like so many American armies from Washington’s to the Civil War) from the plague of short enlistments.

Besides the papal legates Arnaut Amalric and Milo, there were with the army the Archbishops of Reims, Sens, and Rouen, the Bishops of Autun, Clermont, Nevers, Bayeux, Lisieux, and Chartres, the Duke of Burgundy, and the Counts of Nevers and St. Pol.

Just how the higher command was organized we do not know. Arnaut Amalric seems to have been the strongest personality.

Inconspicuous, no doubt, among the lesser nobles was a Baron of the Isle of France, also Earl of Leicester in England, Simon de Montfort by name. Possibly people pointed him out as the only man in the Fourth Crusade five years before to refuse to march against Zara, so that when the Venetians persuaded the other Crusaders to pay for their passage to the East by taking this Christian city he had left the expedition and gone home. It seems quite clear, however, that at the beginning he was of little authority in the Crusade.

In the last week of June the Crusaders moved south from Lyons, keeping, apparently, to the east bank of the river where the main Roman road ran.

In their march down the valley of the Rhône, with its glare and white dust, they were met at Valence by Raymond of Toulouse himself. Without hesitation, virtually on the morrow of his humiliating penance at St. Gilles, with the welts of the monkish lash unhealed on his back, this man, against whom the Crusade was principally directed, himself took the Cross and joined the army which had mustered to destroy him. Following out Innocent’s plan of “divide et impera” (divide and conquer) he was permitted to join the army, which continued on its march. Of course the Crusade was, officially, aimed at the heretics of the south, and Raymond, with all his shiftiness, was no heretic. Protestant historians have blamed the Churchmen in charge of the policy of the Crusade for duplicity in this matter. Of course, Raymond’s submission was accepted merely because it was temporarily convenient for them not to have him for an open enemy, although it was intended in the long run to ruin him altogether. Still I confess that I cannot see that severe condemnation is justified. He had played fast and loose too often.

Where the army crossed the Rhône we are not told; possibly at Orange or Avignon, but more probably from Tarascon to Beaucaire, where the main Roman crossing had been. Once across the Rhône, it took up again the old road by Nismes into Spain which so many armies had followed since Hannibal. At Montpellier, Raymond Roger Trencavel, Viscount of Beziers and Carcassonne, and nephew to Raymond of Toulouse, came to meet the chiefs of the Crusade, as his uncle had already come to them at Valence, to make his peace. He was refused a hearing. It was necessary that the great army should not disband without striking terror into the heretical south and giving some, at least, of its feudal lordships into the hands of proved and zealous Catholics. Otherwise the effort involved in organizing the expedition would have been wasted. Accordingly, for Raymond Roger to plead his own personal orthodoxy and claim that only irresponsible subordinates had favoured heresy, was not to the point. The “Chanson” says that Raymond of Toulouse, with his usual shortsighted cunning, suggested an attack on his nephew, with whom he had recently quarrelled. It would have been so like the wretched Count of Toulouse to have done so, that we may accept the story.

Raymond Roger hurried back from Montpellier to his own lands. Why the Crusaders, after once having had him in their power, let him go in peace to organize resistance against them is not clear. Perhaps he had come in under some sort of guarantee like the modern flag of truce, and was therefore protected by the highly developed military courtesy of the day, which had grown up around the idea of knighthood.

At any rate, he was allowed to go, and made haste to put his two chief towns, Beziers and Carcassonne, in a state of defence, following the usual custom for the weaker party in a mediæval conflict, i.e., to stand on the defensive behind walls. The Crusaders sat down before Beziers on the 20th or 21st of July. They had started from Lyons between the 24th and 30th of June, and had marched close to 230 miles, making an average march of between 10 and 8¾ miles a day, a very creditable showing, and one which deserves to be called to the attention of despisers of things mediæval. No doubt it was desired to waste as little as possible of the short forty-day enlistment before coming to grips with the heretics and their noble patrons.

Before Beziers they were joined by two detachments, one from the neighbourhood of Agen and the other from Auvergne. Each detachment had won certain successes of its own on its way. The Agenais had held to ransom two towns in the Aveyron Valley, Caussade and St. Antonin, and were looked upon with some disfavour (mingled perhaps with envy) by the other Crusaders, for having compounded with wickedness for a money payment. One of the commanders of the Auvergnats bore the great name of Turenne. His detachment had captured a strong castle and burned the heretics found therein, the first but not the last time that we shall hear of burning in connection with the Crusade.

Incidentally, the military aspect of this concentration deserves a word. Lyons and Agen are 225 miles apart as the crow flies, with the mountainous country of Auvergne between. Anyone with the slightest military experience knows how hard it is to synchronize the movements of distant columns so that they may meet at a common centre, even with accurate maps and with all modern means of communication. In this case, maps, telephone, telegraph, and all means of mechanical rapid transit were lacking. Probably an advance concentration point in the neighbourhood of Beziers was selected before any of the columns commenced its march, and during the march communication was kept up by an inter-weaving system of mounted couriers. The risk of the comparatively weak centre and right columns being cut off before they could join was practically nil because of the submission of the Count of Toulouse, and because the entire countryside was terror-stricken by fear of the Crusaders. Even so, the accurate concentration of the three columns on Beziers was a feat of considerable military skill.

Beziers, like most Mediterranean towns, had been an organized city throughout the time of recorded history and before. Under mediæval conditions it was easy to defend, being built on a hill. Heresy was particularly strong there; we have seen in the last chapter how de Castelnau, in 1205, had had to leave the place because of the fury stirred up against his person and his defence of the faith. There is even some reason for believing that the great majority of the citizens were heretical, which was by no means the case in places like Toulouse, where the utmost that the heretics dared do was to hold their services at midnight. If there were only a few Catholics within the walls, it is not surprising that the city refused to surrender. Its bishop was with the Crusaders, and was allowed to propose that the town should capitulate and hand over its heretics for punishment in return for guarantees on the part of the Crusaders for the persons and property of the Catholic citizens. This most fair and liberal offer, from the crusading point of view, was rejected. The besieged preferred to run the chances of war, probably not because of any great solidarity between the heretical and Catholic citizens (as certain modern Protestant historians do vainly talk), but no doubt because the Catholics were few in numbers, and did not control the decisions taken by the defence.

Having refused to treat, the inhabitants made a sortie across the bridge over their river, killed a Crusader and threw his body into the stream. The sortie was repulsed, and thereupon, according to the account generally received, the camp followers of the Crusade succeeded in rushing the defences. This surprising success was achieved without orders, by divine inspiration as the legates piously put it, while the chiefs of the Crusade were deliberating as to their next step. Those in search of secular explanations may well suppose that the assailants entered on the heels of the inhabitants driven back in the repulse of the sortie before the gate could be closed, or that defective dispositions of the defence had left some point unguarded, or, finally, that a local panic among the men told off to guard a particular tower or bit of wall had permitted the success of the attack.

After the storming of the walls there took place in the crooked, steeply sloping streets of the town, the massacre for which Beziers and the Albigensian Crusade itself are principally remembered. Priest and layman, woman and child seem to have suffered equally. Of a great crowd which had taken sanctuary in the church of St. Mary Magdalene, not one survived. With the sword came fire. Since, as we have seen, the camp followers, probably mixed with the peasant infantry, had been the first to enter, the knights began to drive them out by force, for fear that they themselves would get no loot. In their anger at this, the “villeins” set fire to the town, which burned fiercely. The cathedral of St. Nazaire got so hot that the stone vaulting cracked and fell in.

One admiring Cistercian contemporary makes Arnaut Amalric answer the question as to whether the Catholic citizens should be spared with the famous “Kill them all, for God will know His own,” for fear that many heretics might escape by feigning orthodoxy. Certain modern Catholic writers maintain that the lay chieftains of the Crusade had determined beforehand upon a massacre, as a military measure, to terrify the country. It would seem as if no such decision could have been made by the lay nobles if the legates had opposed. Still the point is not worth labouring, inasmuch as it has over and over again on these occasions proved impossible to restrain armies much more regularly and firmly disciplined than the Crusaders. The definite reasons for doubting the completeness of the massacre are that the church of St. Mary Magdalene, where the slaughter was heaviest, is so small that not a third of the seven thousand supposed to have been killed in it could possibly have packed into the place, and further, that the corporate life of the town was so quickly reconstituted that it was soon able to resist the Crusaders again.

At all events the impression caused by the massacre was tremendous. As many as a hundred castles, some say, were abandoned by their garrisons who fled to the mountains. The turbulent city of Narbonne made haste to put itself on record by executing some heretics, by contributing generously to the expenses of the Crusade, and by allowing certain of its castles to be garrisoned by Crusaders as pledges of good faith.

The next objective of the Crusade was the strong hill-fortress city of Carcassonne. Thither Raymond Roger Trencavel had gone, leaving Beziers before its investment. The massacre had strengthened his determination to resist, and he had gone so far as to destroy all mills near Carcassonne so as to hinder the provisioning of the Crusaders should the expected siege be prolonged. The “soldiers of Christ” appeared before the place on or about July 24, 1209, having left Beziers the morning of the 22nd, the day after the massacre, and covered the intervening distance of over fifty miles in forty-eight hours, assuming that they went through Narbonne along the line of the Roman road and the modern railway—another good piece of marching.

Carcassonne was a much tougher nut to crack than Beziers. The steep escarpements of its hill were crowned by the remarkable circuit of late Roman walls and towers which we see to-day. Only the château, the outer town wall, the gates in the main wall, and a few large towers easily distinguishable from the older work have been added since 1209. The customary first assault to feel out the defence was repulsed with loss, although the defenders also suffered. Another attack carried the slightly fortified suburbs on the lower slopes of the hill crowned by the city proper. This success was followed by a pause of some weeks, during which siege engines of different sorts were constructed.

Meanwhile diplomacy was active. King Peter of Aragon intervened in the hope of making peace between the Crusaders and his vassal, Trencavel. He was a picturesque person, a great lover of tournaments and of women, what we should call to-day a sportsman; also a great fighter against the Moslem. In language and culture Aragon was then closer to Languedoc than Languedoc to Northern France. Peter, himself a troubadour and a generous patron of troubadours, held the Roussillon in his own right, and claimed from many of the southern nobles a homage difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile with the homage they owed to the far-off king “of Paris.” Like the other southern leaders, who sooner or later opposed the Crusade, he was no heretic. On the contrary, he delighted to be known as “the Catholic,” and had in person done homage to the Pope for his kingdom, as recently as 1204, and received in return the title of “First Standard Bearer of the Church.” His ferocious legislation against heretics in general has been noted in the last chapter. On the other hand, Spanish religious enthusiasm, in the early Middle Ages, was generally directed far more towards belabouring the infidel than towards discussing doctrine. Politically, King Peter necessarily disliked any extension of North French influence in the south, and could not sit still and see his kinsman and vassal Trencavel destroyed merely because he had not been active enough in putting down heresy. Finally, he was now brother-in-law to Raymond of Toulouse, whose fifth and last wife was his sister. While there was no question at this time of his resisting the Crusade by arms, he made haste to offer his services as peacemaker.

Accordingly Pedro appeared at the crusading camp followed by a handsome suite, and made straight for Raymond’s tent. It was soon arranged that the Aragonese should enter the town to treat with Trencavel. The Crusaders’ terms were hard. The young viscount would be permitted to leave accompanied by twelve knights, but the town must surrender unconditionally. Therefore, although a prolonged drouth was causing the besieged in their hill city to suffer from want of water, terms were refused; and King Peter, whose dignity seems to have been ruffled, went off in a rage against the crusading leaders.

Another assault was delivered, but was repulsed with the aid of boiling oil and melted lead. To console them for their failure, the Crusaders could boast of an act of personal gallantry on the part of de Montfort, who went back into the ditch after the repulse and rescued a severely wounded Crusader.

Meanwhile time was working against the besieged through disease, aggravated by the want of water. They had expected a bread shortage in the crusading camp, the mills having been destroyed far and wide, but the expectation was not realized, on account of aid given by certain nearby castles whose owners were friendly to the Crusades. Calling the legates sorcerers, and the Crusaders “devils in human form who could live without food,” failed to help matters, so that at last the besieged surrendered, and were allowed to leave the town in peace, abandoning all their goods. Trencavel was held a prisoner.

The legates apologized by letter to the Pope for the comparative mildness shown in not burning the place and massacring its people, as at Beziers. The nobles, they said, could not control their troops in the matter; which may well indicate that there had been a shortage of food, so that the rank and file saw severe privations staring them in the face if any more destruction was indulged in. As far as Trencavel was concerned, from the crusading point of view, the aftermath of the siege left nothing to be desired. The young viscount promptly died in his prison. Dysentery was officially given as the cause of death, but some suspected poison.

The month of August was now well along. Having accomplished the prescribed forty days and won the crusading indulgences, the great body of the army were preparing to return home gorged with spiritual graces and not altogether lacking in temporal booty. The great force was about to melt away (as Washington’s militia so often melted away). But before the crusaders could return to their homes, they had first to provide for the continuance of the campaign against heresy. Someone must be set up in the viscounty of Beziers and Carcassonne, left vacant by the death of Trencavel. Furthermore, several other towns, including Albi and Pamiers, together with a number of castles, had surrendered without fighting. These places had been garrisoned, and the garrisons needed a central command. The Duke of Burgundy, the Counts of Nevers, and of St. Pol, to whom in turn the fief was offered, refused on the pretext that they had lands enough already; but really, says the “Chanson de la Croisade,” because they felt that they would dishonour themselves should they accept the spoils of such a conquest. Perhaps the corpses of Beziers were already beginning to stink in their nostrils, as they have stunk in the nostrils of so many historians to this day. Furthermore, dishonoured or not, the new viscount would be in an exposed position, alone—a northerner, confronted by Raymond of Toulouse and Peter of Aragon, with only the Church to back him. The Church had the feeble Christians of Palestine to support; it had taken five years to launch the Albigensian Crusade, and might take as long to organize another. Altogether, there is nothing improbable in the story that only after considerable pressure from the legates and much prayer on his own