THE PYRENEES IN SPRING.
Seen from a gorse-covered common near Pamiers.
who, according to some writers, were condemned to leave the town by St. Louis (IX.) for having supported Raymond Trencavel, the last Vicomte of Carcassonne, in his unsuccessful efforts to regain the city which his father had lost. The new town was called the Ville Basse, and its position being more suited for commercial expansion than the feudal one, it took a comparatively short time to outgrow the ancient Cité. Being entirely separated from each other by the River Aude, the growth of the new town did not mean the disappearance of the old, as at Tours and Périgueux, and thus in the twentieth century it is possible to see a practically perfect medieval city, completely encompassed by massive tower-studded walls. Within them the beautiful Church of St. Nazaire, the former cathedral, still stands; the castle also remains in complete preservation, and probably a resurrected townsman of the thirteenth century would find his way through the streets and along the defensive walls without the smallest difficulty.
The story of the Cité is told in its walls, for the lower portion belongs to the Roman occupation in the fourth century. Immediately above comes the different work of the Visigoths, into whose sinewy hands the place fell when the Gallo-Roman power had weakened. In 713 the conquering Saracens took the place of the Visigoths, but Pepin-le-Bref, the founder of the vast Frankish Empire over which his son Charlemagne was to reign, drove out the Mohammedans in 759.
Great building activity took place in the eleventh and twelfth centuries under the powerful dynasty of the Vicomtes Trencavel, which was only terminated by Simon de Montfort (father of the leader of the English barons), who, by treachery, was enabled to seize the young Vicomte, Raymond Roger, during the fierce fighting in the Albigensian War.[I]
As already mentioned, the efforts of Raymond Roger’s son to recover Carcassonne led to the founding of the new town, which outgrew the ancient city, which has now become a source of revenue as an attraction to visitors from all parts of the world.
The restoration of the Cité was carried out by Viollet-le-Duc with that thoroughness which characterizes the archæological undertakings of the French, and in the buildings-up and pullings-down
