THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADES AND THE FRENCH CROWN
The renowned medieval historian Joseph R Strayer*, writes evocatively:
“The Albigensian Crusades slash through the history of France and of the Church like a gaping wound. From 1208 to 1226 the papacy sent army after army to the South of France to crush the Albigensian heretics and to punish their supporters. The Albigensian Crusades were religious wars and like all religious wars they were bloody and cruel. They began with a calculated act of terror, the massacre of Béziers; they ended with the establishment of the Inquisition, one of the most effective means of thought control that Europe has ever known. They were completely successful: The losing faith, the Albigensian heresy, was exterminated.”
The Cathar (Albigensian) Heresy and the Albigensian Crusades
The problem, if you saw it as one, and most in the Languedoc didn’t, was the growth and toleration in the Languedoc of the “heresy” of Catharism.
The Cathars believed that the world was the creature of Satan and all that was in it was evil. They accused the Catholic church of worshipping Satan, in revering the God of the Old Testament who had created the evil material world. They disputed the Church’s teachings on the New Testament, claiming that the Cathars alone preserved the true message of Jesus. They were puritanical, teaching their followers to reduce their contact with the material world to an absolute minimum, in pursuit of salvation. The Cathar heresy had many adherents in the Languedoc. But for every Cathar believer, there were many more sympathisers: people of the south, friends and relatives of the Cathars, who knew and admired them as good and caring people who lived their beliefs; not like what they saw as the rich, distant and arrogant representatives of the Roman Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church believed this heresy would lead its adherents to hell. The Church was determined to obliterate the heresy and to make an example of all those who allowed it to fester.
It was an age of Crusades called by the Pope, not all with pure motivation and rarely with pure execution. In 1204 the Fourth Crusade had left, blessed by the Pope, to rid the Holy Land of the heathen Saracens. But this Crusade never even laid eyes on the Holy Land. Instead it was diverted by its leaders to their own grasping ends; sacking and looting Christian brothers in Constantinople.
A few years later, the Pope called for another Crusade, this time to destroy the Cathar heresy in the Languedoc. This became known as the Albigensian Crusade, named after the city of Albi, home to many Cathars.
In 1209, much of northern Europe, mostly from France, had headed south in the name of God.
The Catholic Crusaders made short work of the town of Béziers, massacring the entire population, down to the last man, woman and child. Even Catholic priests at the altar fell, slaughtered in the bloodlust.
The Crusaders then turned to Carcassonne, settling down outside, expecting a long siege. However it was August and very hot. With the increased numbers sheltering inside the walls, Carcassonne soon began to run out of water. The townspeople of Carcassonne were only saved the fate of Béziers by the surrender of their Viscount, who was imprisoned in dreadful conditions and died soon after. The rest of the defenders were lucky to escape with their lives; forced to leave on foot, taking nothing with them: “in shifts and breaches”, as the Crusaders boasted.
After the fall of Carcassonne, the church appointed Simon de Montfort as the Crusaders’ general, charged with conquering obdurate regions and eliminating the heresy.
In spring 1210, the Crusaders arrived in their thousands to fight under Simon de Montfort’s banner; spurred on by Papal urging and preaching in the north promising the remission of all sins.
The castle of Bram soon fell and the Crusaders in their retribution blinded and mutilated the entire garrison. Simon de Montfort and his army continued their rampaging campaign throughout the summer. Unstoppable. Many castles and towns surrendered; undoubtedly out of terror of what would happen if they resisted.
But some did resist, such as the castle of Termes, under its renowned seigneur, Raymond de Termes. In late July the Crusaders besieged Termes. The castle garrison managed to hold out for four months, fighting bravely but with heavy loss of life. The castle finally fell when illness hit. Fortunately most of the surviving defenders, including Raymond’s ten year old son, Olivier, managed to escape during the night.
After Termes fell, a large crusader army had headed to Puivert. This castle resisted, but soon fell. Colin Windeyer has written a short story about this attack.
King Peire of Aragon and Catalonia was the nominal overlord of much of the Languedoc. In 1213, King Peire brought his army to the Languedoc: to expel the northern Crusaders and restore the Languedoc to its rightful owners, many of whom were his nominal subjects, although the feudal bonds in the Languedoc were notoriously weak. The King joined in a roughshod alliance with the independently minded Counts of Toulouse, Foix and Comminges and the Viscount of Béarn, all traditional southern rivals, against the Crusader army. Battle was joined at Muret, below Toulouse. But it was a shambles. A rout. The southerners were decimated and King Peire himself was killed.
Following the battle of Muret, the southern cause sank deeper than any of them could have imagined, even in their blackest moments. Everything everywhere was lost. All the leaders of the south were dead or vanquished: humiliated.
Somehow for a while, there was a resurgence of the southerners, which gradually gathered momentum until, unbelievably, the whole of the Languedoc was won back.
But it didn’t last long. The Pope called yet another Crusade; and in the summer of 1226 the southerners were humbled by the arrival of a huge overwhelming army of northern Crusaders under the command of the King of France. Virtually only Toulouse held out.
Finally, well into 1228, the Count of Toulouse began to negotiate a truce. Most of the Languedoc had been simply worn down. The people had lost the will to continue the fight. It led to what was called a treaty, but was really a humiliating surrender. After nearly 20 years, the fight was over. The south had been trounced. There were royal garrisons everywhere, full of Frenchmen with their foreign language and customs. The Church was free to root out the Cathars. While the fighting war was over, this part of the war was only just beginning. It soon ratchetted up and in less than 5 years the infamous Inquisition had begun its remorseless work.
The Albigensian Crusades and the Inquisition form part of the backdrop for Colin Windeyer’s Call the Intention Good and Call the Acts Chaos.
The Languedoc becomes part of France
By the end of 1229, the map had been reshaped. Huge areas of the south, formerly largely independent, some nominally under the overlordship of the King of Aragon and Catalonia, had become part of France; most unwillingly and resentfully, but part of France nevertheless.
As Joseph R Strayer* says:
“…….the Albigensian Crusades ….. made France a Mediterranean power and the greatest power in Europe. Before the Crusades, the King of France had no authority in the southern third of his country, no seaports on the Mediterranean, no direct contacts with Spain and Italy. Moreover, he showed no desire to move towards the south. It had been all that he could do to establish his control over the north and he was still consolidating his position there in the early 1200’s. It was the Crusades that forced the King to take an interest in the south. The crusading armies were almost entirely composed of men from northern France; their leaders were royal vassals. The King avoided involvement in their campaigns as long as he could, but when the first phase of the Crusades ended in a stalemate, he felt he had to intervene. He did not want princes who were heretics, or at least fellow travellers, as his neighbours…... So he invaded the South and annexed a great block of territory, running from the Pyrenees to the Rhone. It was this annexation which made France for the next five centuries the most powerful, the wealthiest, and the most populous state in Europe."
* Joseph R Strayer, in the preface to his book “The Albigensian Crusades”. The University of Michigan Press, 1995
Medieval Carcassonne