God's War: A New History of the Crusades

by Christopher Tyerman

  Cheated of their expected victim, the crusaders turned their attention to the Trencavel lands, incontestably riddled with heretics, even though the young and engaging viscount himself was recognized as orthodox. This made little difference. The crusade needed an enemy; Raymond of Toulouse short-sightedly promoted an opportunity to destroy a troublesome vassal while escaping attack himself. Viscount Raymond Roger’s attempt to deflect his fate by submitting to Arnold Aimery was brushed aside; the legate’s Christian lexicon seemed to lack charitable forgiveness. Advancing from Montpellier, the crusaders entered Trencavel territory on 21 July. Raymond Roger fell back before them, leaving Béziers at their mercy. On 22 July, the crusaders began to dig in outside the walls of Béziers. The bishop of Béziers attempted to persuade the citizens to hand over or abandon the heretics in the city, of whose names he claimed to have a list. His overtures were rejected. The inhabitants believed their defences and food supplies would withstand assault. Reinforcements were expected. There were probably at most only 700 heretics in a population of 8–9,000. Béziers saw the besiegers in political and military, not Christian, terms; their city and their independence were being attacked. This, they reckoned, accurately as it turned out, the sacrifice of a few eccentric neighbours was unlikely to alter. However, the offer made by the bishop formed a crucial element in Catholic apologetics for what followed. The Christians of Béziers had placed themselves beyond the pale of humanity by consciously rejecting the bishop’s terms and choosing to harbour and sustain heretics. In the words of the legates’ subsequent report to the pope, their blood was on their own heads.57

  Even so, Catholic reports on the sack of Béziers were keen to emphasize that the attack was not led by the nobles and knights but by the servientes, sergeants, and the unarmed mass of camp-followers, a reversal of social norms suggesting literary uneasiness with events. Whoever began the attack, it seems most of the army joined in to make it quick, ruthless and devastating. The legates laconically recorded ‘our men spared no one, irrespective of rank, sex or age’.58 The citizens appear to have panicked and put up little resistance. In a later, possibly apocryphal, anecdote, when asked by priests how they could distinguish whom to kill, Abbot Arnaud Aimery, worried lest heretics escaped by pretending to be Catholics, ordered, ‘Kill them. The Lord knows who are his own.’59 Even the crowds who sheltered in the main churches were not spared. The legates estimated that 20,000 died in the carnage and called it a miracle.60 The true figure was almost certainly far less. The massacre may have been premeditated. Rumours suggested that discussions at the papal Curia in 1208 had authorized the destruction of any who resisted the crusade. The Navarrese cleric William of Tudela (d. c.1213), who composed a Provençal verse account of the early stages of the Albigensian crusades, noted that the crusade leaders decided to make examples of the inhabitants of any town taken by storm pour encourager les autres. ‘They would then find no one daring to resist them, so great would be the terror produced… that is why the inhabitants of Béziers were massacred; they were all killed, it was the worst they could do to them.’61

  In that respect, the massacre at Béziers initially worked. Narbonne immediately sent in its unconditional submission and the army met no resistance as it advanced towards Carcassonne, as the countryside, towns, villages and castles were evacuated by terrified locals. In the longer term, however, the sack of Béziers hardened Languedoc opposition to the invasion across religious divisions. Thereafter adherence or opposition to the crusaders was determined largely by secular considerations. The chief religious element in the campaigns of the following two decades found expression in periodic military atrocities and regular mass execution, usually by burning, of captured heretics. However, despite the gaudy rhetoric of holy war and Simon of Montfort’s carefully constructed reputation as a warrior of Christ, between his appointment as crusade leader in 1209 and death in 1218, Cathars were hardly his main target. Most of the places where Cathars are known to have lived he left untouched, and at only a small minority of the castles and towns Montfort captured was the presence of heretics recorded.62 As Béziers demonstrated, strategy rested on realpolitik, not religion.

  Béziers set the tone for what developed into one of the nastiest of medieval wars, partly because of the high stakes of dispossession and conquest, partly because of the collapse of social order and erosion of the rule of civil law in a region that became a perpetual war zone. The religious gloss wore thin. In May 1213, Innocent III admitted that ‘their protectors and defenders… are more dangerous than the heretics themselves’.63 Little trust existed between opponents as surrender terms were breached. Guerilla warfare and local exploitation of the absence of settled political authority spread violence far beyond the paths of the main campaigns. The presence of mercenaries, a staple of Languedoc warfare for decades, ensured that many engagements ended with the slaughter of defeated troops, despised as paid soldiers. Stubborn garrisons received little mercy. Massacres became regular events, from most of the inhabitants of the modest castrum of Les Touelles near Albi (January 1212) to the 5,000 civilians despatched at Marmande on the Garonne in the Agenais in June 1219 by the army of Prince Louis of France after the town had surrendered.64 Captured heretics went to the flames. The first was burnt without trial on Simon of Montfort’s orders at Castres in August 1209.65 Thereafter, the holocaust flickered intensely rather than raged across the province. At Minerve in July 1210, Abbot Arnold Aimery tried to scupper a negotiated surrender, so keen was he to make sure the heretics burnt; at least 140 of them did. Over 300 perfecti were burnt at Lavaur in May 1211 and at least sixty at Les Casses a few days later, places, the great historian of the Inquisition H. C. Lea memorably remarked, whose names ‘suggest all that man can inflict and man can suffer for the glory of God’.66 The relative dearth of such horrors as the war dragged on might indicate a lack of persecuting zeal on the part of the invaders or the chroniclers’ growing indifference.

  Atrocities were not the sole preserve of the crusaders. At the end of 1209, Giraud of Pépieux had captured the castle of Puisserguier from the crusaders. At the approach of Montfort he abandoned the place, burying alive the captured sergeants under debris in the moat. He also had two of Montfort’s knights blinded and mutilated. At about the same time, William of Rocquefort, whose brother was the bishop of Carcassonne, murdered the abbot of Eaunes and a lay brother apparently ‘for no reason except they were Cistercians’. During the siege of Moissac in September 1212, the defenders regularly mutilated crusaders’ corpses. Bernard of Cazenac and his wife Elise – a ‘second Jezebel’ – conducted a reign of terror in the Dordogne valley in the years to 1214, including leaving 150 mutilated men and women in the Benedictine abbey of Sarlat with hands cut off, feet amputated or eyes put out. Elise specialized in removing women’s thumbs to prevent them working and ordering the nipples of the poorest peasant women to be ripped off. Behind such lurid sadism lay a sustained attempt by this local noble couple to preserve their independence. One critic of the invaders portrayed Bernard as an epitome of chivalry.67 The ‘business of faith and peace’ managed, if only temporarily, to brutalize a society that had not been exactly peaceful and harmonious before. Under the cover of war, when allegiances could shift with ease and rapidity, and with the region full of dispossessed nobles (known as faidits), lawlessness could prove the best source of profit. Two Montfort loyalists in the Toulousain, Foucard and Jean from Berzy in the Ile de France, tortured, starved, degraded and extorted money from prisoners of war on a regular basis as an adjunct to their normal pursuit of sustained banditry. As a later pro-crusade commentator from the area they ravaged acidly remarked: ‘they did not perform the tasks for which they had come originally; the end did not match the beginning’.68 Others might argue it did precisely that.

  THE CONQUEST OF LANGUEDOC

  The initial phase of the crusade that had begun at Béziers ended when Carcassonne surrendered on 14 August 1209 after a fortnight’s siege. The international significance of these eve
nts was recognized by the brief appearance in the crusader camp of Peter II of Aragon, the nominal overlord of the Trencavel lands. The crusaders’ decision to spare Carcassonne the destruction of Béziers was prompted not by humanity but by a realization that whoever was to inherit the lordship of the area needed to rule more than ruins and smouldering charnel houses. The inhabitants of Carcassonne were expelled and Viscount Raymond Roger deposed and incarcerated, to die in prison of dysentery three months later. Some felt outrage at his fate; the Dauphinois troubadour Guillem Augier lamented what he saw as his murder.69 The viscount’s removal proved highly convenient for the crusaders as they redrew the political map of the region.

  The first step came within days of the occupation of Carcassonne with the election of Simon of Montfort to rule the Trencavel lands. By no means the first choice, Odo of Burgundy and Hervé of Nevers having declined, Simon became the secular leader of the crusade. A self-righteous, sanctimonious prig, Simon possessed qualities, lineage and reputation far beyond his modest lordship of Montfort l’Amaury in the Ile de France. A bull-like man of great physical presence, like many successful leaders he boasted a mane of lustrous hair. His single-minded piety and unusually strict personal morality were matched by remarkable military skills: tenacious on campaign, resourceful in logistics, audacious in battle, inspiring to his followers, ruthless to his enemies. Without him, the war could have foundered through rivalry, lack of men and money, awkward terrain and stubborn opposition, all of which Simon managed to scramble though and ultimately surmount often by sheer determination. His principled stance at Zara in 1202–3 and subsequent crusading in the Holy Land established his credentials for self-confidence, conviction and commitment. Before 1209, he had held a vicarious claim to the English earldom of Leicester through his mother. By 1210, his exploits in the south had gained such prestige for him to be discussed as a possible replacement as king of England. His appointment as ruler of the Trencavel lands, by 1210 accepted formally by Raymond Roger’s widow and son, subtly changed the nature of the crusade.70 While the enterprise continued to be promoted by the church in northern France, Germany and the Low Countries as a holy war, in Languedoc the conflict became increasingly an assertion of one lordship over another, of powerful centripetal authority over a traditionally fissiparous and independent nobility, and of dispossession and land seizure. The casus belli of heresy lent a sharp edge to rhetoric and occasionally action, but Simon of Montfort, however sincere an ‘athlete of Christ’, fought to establish a realm on earth.

  The Albigensian crusades fell into four distinct phases; the annexation of the Trencavel lands (1209–11); the conquest of the county of Toulouse and the Pyrenean counties (1211–15); the revival of southern resistance (1216–25); and the Capetian conquest (1226–9). Not all the fighting could be classed as crusading, and the full panoply of the war of the cross was temporarily suspended in 1213.71 Nevertheless, the tinge of holy war coloured the entire conception and operation of the war, even though its aims revolved around a series of essentially secular objectives. As a major political enterprise, the wars sucked in those with rights in the area. The king of Aragon, no friend to heretics but fearful of a new Montfortian power in the region, intervened diplomatically for years before he tried to assert his interests against the crusaders by force in 1213. He was defeated and killed at Muret by people with whom he had been closely negotiating only a few months earlier. In 1214, King John of England toured northern Languedoc as part of his campaign to regain his ancestral lands lost to Philip II of France in 1204. As overlord of the Agenais, he received the homage of locals at La Réole in April and visited Périgord the following August. John had no wish to see a strong pro-Capetian Montfort principality dominating his southern frontier. Direct confrontation was usually avoided, but in the summer of 1214 Montfort’s assault on Marmande on the Garonne was resisted by a garrison of John’s troops commanded by Geoffrey of Neville, one of the king’s chamberlains.72 It is likely that had John been more successful in defending his French lands in 1202–4 or in trying to retrieve them in 1214 he would have intervened more aggressively in Languedoc. In such ways, the Languedoc war touched on the politics of most of western Europe. Philip II’s victory over Otto IV of Germany and his English allies at Bouvines in July 1214 secured Montfort’s hold in the south almost as certainly as the victory at Muret a year earlier.

  At every stage, the fighting revolved around sieges, the physical seizure of territory, valley by valley, castle by castle. There were very few pitched battles; Castelnaudary (1211), Muret (1213), Baziège (1218). A key figure in Montfort’s entourage between 1210 and 1214 was Archdeacon William of Paris, his siegecraft expert, quartermaster, engineer and designer of siege engines. Montfort was constantly short of funds. Church taxes failed to cover expenses. Revenues from the conquered land fell short of requirements. Montfort ran the crusade on a shoestring; at the siege of Termes in 1210 it was said he was ‘beset by extreme poverty’ and short of food.73 Booty thus remained an important element in the crusades’ viability, especially as ravaging was precluded in lands under Montfort’s control. In 1216, to pay for his siege of Toulouse, Montfort levied a tribute on his Languedoc lands hoping to raise 30,000 marks, earning a rare rebuke from a local chronicler that he was ‘blinded by money’.74 The crusade was habitually short of manpower. Each winter’s preaching effort produced only a trickle of grand recruits who usually stayed for the barest minimum period of under six weeks regardless of the military situation. When the French contingent abandoned Montfort during the siege of Termes in 1210, the crusaders were only bailed out by the subsequent arrival of a company of Lorrainer infantry.75 Recruitment attracted individuals from across north-western Europe and as far east as Austria, but little continuity was effected, squabbling was endemic, commitment was consistently feeble. Montfort was often reduced to relying on a very small cadre of household knights; apparently only thirty knights remained in the autumn of 1209.76 Only a clear tactical sense, driving optimism, careful harbouring of resources and the divisions among his opponents saw Montfort through. The effort was complicated by the fast cross-currents of local allegiances and shifting perceptions of advantage. The war was never as simple as a northern invasion of the south yet increasingly at the higher levels of society it appeared to be, as the numbers of dispossessed and outlawed faidits grew. Securing the acquiescence or loyal submission of the local baronage proved elusive, hardening the cultural, linguistic and hence political barriers. Repeated betrayals persuaded Montfort of the intrinsic untrustworthiness of the people of Languedoc, one of whom commented that he ‘began to eschew association with knights who spoke our tongue’.77

  The parting of the ways had come early in 1211, when, in the face of deliberately excessive demands by the legates, Raymond VI had refused to be reconciled with the crusaders, who promptly turned the war of the cross against the county of Toulouse, signalling a contest for the future of the whole of the region. At the same time Peter of Aragon, having failed to broker a compromise between Raymond, Montfort and the legates, reluctantly accepted Montfort’s homage for the Trencavel lands. This final split with Count Raymond had been long prepared. The count had withdrawn from the crusader army at Carcassonne in August 1209 and had been re-excommunicated the following month. The central issue, according to the legates, concerned the count’s refusal to persecute the Cathars, while Raymond saw his authority being compromised by the punitive demands of vindictive churchmen. The pope was far more prepared to allow Raymond’s reconciliation than his legates, who displayed almost visceral hatred of the count. Repeatedly, papal compromises foundered on the rock of legatine intransigence. Montfort, sensing his own advantage, backed the legates.

  After the last Trencavel lands had been subdued in May 1211, Montfort turned his attention to Raymond’s county of Toulouse and the Pyrenean lands of his allies, the counts of Foix and Comminges. Although unable to capture Toulouse, because of an insufficient number of troops, Montfort defeated a Toulouse – Foi
x army at Castelnaudary in September 1211 and the following year made sweeping gains from the Agenais to the Pyrenees. To show his confidence in the permanency of the northern French settlement, in December 1212, at an assembly of his lay and ecclesiastical followers at Pamiers, he issued statutes regulating the government of his conquests.78 These secured the rights of the church and insisted on the strict obedience to public and tenurial comital rights, including military service from his vassals. Clear distinctions were drawn between ‘French’ and locals: heiresses could marry the former freely but the latter only with Montfort’s permission. Treatment of heretics and former heretics was specified, as were regulations concerning inheritance and the economy. The underlying colonial purpose emerged in a codicil to the statutes Montfort added regarding the customs to be observed by those to whom he had given property, the incoming barons, knights, burgesses and peasants, who were guaranteed the ‘usages and customs observed in France around Paris’. Although still technically only viscount of the former Trencavel lands, Montfort’s Pamiers statutes were clearly intended to apply to all his conquests.