Besides this general reservation, there were four lesser specific ones. De Montfort was to hold his dignities on condition of swearing homage to his proper overlord, the King of France. Thus, if the crusading leader had ever seriously hoped to make himself an independent sovereign, the hope was denied him. Raymond’s wife was to retain the lands of her dowry. Raymond himself, although condemned to exile, was to have an annuity of 400 marks a year payable from the revenues of his former possessions. Most important of all, the younger Raymond was confirmed in possession of so much of the Toulousain fief as was not in the hands of the Crusaders, that is to say Nismes, Beaucaire, and the “Marquisate of Provence” to the east of the Rhône. Finally, a papal letter of December 21 put in question the legitimacy of the measures taken by de Montfort against Raymond Roger of Foix, directing the Bishop of Nismes and the Archdeacon of Conflans to take over the Castle of Foix and hold an inquest to decide whether the place should be returned to its original owner, which was later actually done.
Innocent’s letter reopening the matter of Foix was the great Pope’s last recorded act in Languedoc. Six months later, too soon for him to hear of the anti-French reaction there, he lay dead in Perugia, in the full vigour of middle age, for he was not yet fifty-seven. He had lived only for his passion to make the papacy and (through the papacy) the Church, supreme; and he had raised the See of Peter to a height of unquestioned power which it had never before, and has never since, attained.
Shortly after the young Raymond’s departure from Rome, the two Raymonds reappeared in the unconquered part of their diminished holdings. There they found the people, especially the townsmen, so hot against the “French” that it seemed possible to continue the struggle. Beaucaire, Avignon, Tarascon, declared for their former lords, and Marseilles showed sympathy with his cause. The elder Raymond went off to Spain in the hope of recruiting reinforcements there. In Beaucaire the castle was held by a garrison of de Montfort’s, put there no doubt during his operation east of the Rhône after Muret. The citizens now rose and besieged this garrison, and de Montfort accordingly moved to relieve it.
On the way to Beaucaire, Count Simon appeared before Narbonne, and there the quarrel between him and his old ally Arnaut Amalric came to a head. The walls ordered to be destroyed the previous year must have been patched up after a fashion, for Arnaut ordered the gates shut against de Montfort. The time, I repeat, controlled no agents of demolition except fire and human muscle. Still, the new defences were weak, for the Crusaders promptly broke in and, having entered, threatened Arnaut Amalric himself with violence for opposing them. The redoubtable old man excommunicated de Montfort, publishing the sentence twice over, and interdicted all the churches of the city as long as the excommunicated leader of the Crusade should remain in the place. Whereupon the Christian warriors stoned the archbishop’s palace and the champion of Catholicism joked about the anathema laid upon him, and even showed himself at mass as usual!
After this exchange of compliments at Narbonne, de Montfort moved on Beaucaire, where the inhabitants had declared for Raymond, and besieged the place. The situation was complicated, as the citizens were at the same time besieging the garrison of “Crusaders” in the castle on its bluff over the Rhône. Repeated assaults by de Montfort failed for want of a sufficient number of catapults and other siege machinery. Meanwhile, in the castle, the woodwork of the roofs and hoardings (i.e., wooden galleries projecting outward from the tops of walls and towers so as to command their base) was badly damaged by the catapults of the men of Beaucaire. Nevertheless, the castle garrison held out stoutly, catching the battering ram with a noose of rope which prevented the heavy ram from being drawn back to gain momentum for its blow and keeping the sappers from the base of the walls by lowering burning bundles of tow and sulphur by means of chains from the battlements. Presently word came that Toulouse was about to declare for Raymond. Whereat de Montfort, in a fury, raised the siege of Beaucaire, abandoning his siege machinery and much of his equipment in his haste to meet the new danger.
In angry haste he concentrated all the force he could move from the Razes country on the upper Aude, the Carcassonne district, the Lauraguais region between Toulouse and Carcassonne, and the Toulousain district itself. Then, his concentration made, he promptly appeared before the town more like an enemy than like a rightful lord returning to his own. Now Toulouse, like most important thirteenth-century towns, was a “free city,” a practically independent little republic, whose elected magistrates were accustomed to sit in conference with their nominal feudal lord and follow his lead by their own consent rather than be commanded by him. Accordingly, they asked de Montfort to enter peaceably, unarmoured, and mounted on a palfrey. He replied fiercely that message after message had told him of their conspiracies and treasons against him, and that he would put off neither his hauberk of mail nor his helmet of Pavian steel until he had taken hostages of the flower of the city.
After more high words, the magistrates were inclined to yield, and prepared to confer with de Montfort outside the walls, but were restrained from putting themselves in his power by public opinion, which began to run high. About this time a number of squires, young gentlemen, and pages from de Montfort’s army, entered the town and began to break in and pillage. This was too much. A typical mediæval riot started. Men of all ages and classes, and even women, seized whatever was handy that might serve as a weapon. Barricades of furniture, stakes, and barrels sprang up before every house, and piles of stones and beams appeared on the balconies ready to be thrown down on the heads of the “French.” Battle was joined to the cry of “Montfort” on one side, “Toulouse! Beaucaire! Avignon!” on the other, and matters became so hot that de Montfort’s people, forced to give way under the rain of missiles from the houses, could scarcely make good their retreat over more barricades thrown up to cut them off. Seeing that the place could not be held, Count Simon ordered it to be set on fire in several places. The “French” had become scattered, and the energy of the Toulousains put them in danger of being crushed, so that they had to concentrate and cut their way through in deep columns. By nightfall only the citadel, the “Chateau Narbonaise,” was still in de Montfort’s hands. He himself was “full of rage and anxiety” at the heavy losses his troops had suffered.
On the following day, however, Bishop Fulk persuaded the Toulousains to submit, and give not only hostages but also a huge ransom of 30,000 marks. De Montfort accepted the hostages and the ransom, and then pillaged the place once more, “destroyed” its fortifications (after he had officially demolished them in the previous year), filled up the ditches and disarmed the inhabitants. The uneasy peace lasted through the rest of the year.
The new Pope, Honorius III, was of a mild nature, so that even had he wished, he would hardly have been able to struggle against the extreme party in Languedoc. Instead, the new legate whom he sent there—a Cardinal Bertrand of San Giovanni e Paolo—was more bitter than any of his immediate predecessors.
Now that the party of violence had nothing to fear from Rome, the Crusade was again preached, so that new Crusaders appeared in Languedoc in the spring, and with them a small royal force sent by Philip Augustus. With these reinforcements de Montfort was operating east of the Rhône when, for the second time, word came that Toulouse had declared against him. This time it was not a matter of suspicion and secret conspiracies. The citizens had joyfully welcomed back the two Raymonds and massacred all Frenchmen who failed to gain the shelter of the Château Narbonaise. The counts of Foix and Comminges and many nobles had rallied once more to fight the “French.” De Montfort’s wife, the Countess Alice, and one of his sons were in the Château Narbonaise, which held out, although seriously threatened by the Toulousains. Messengers were sent to tell Count Simon that he must make haste to relieve the garrison. This he did, and in the month of September began the third siege of the capital of Languedoc.