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 part did de Montfort, the fourth candidate, finally accept the office.
With the acceptance by de Montfort of the viscounty of Beziers and Carcassonne, and with the prompt disbandment of the original crusading army, the first period of the Crusade comes to an end. It had lasted little over the forty days required to win the indulgences, and had been marked by the overwhelming superiority in numbers of the crusading forces in the field. Throughout the second period this superiority no longer exists, and for nine years the military strength of the Crusade is found principally in the qualities of its leader.