For a time it looked as if the peace would stand. Under the tutelage of Arnaut Amalric, Raymond VII agreed to enforce anti-heretical legislation as thorough as even the grim old Cistercian could desire. With the Count of Foix and the Bishop of Beziers to confirm his signature, the young Count promised banishment, confiscation of goods and physical punishment of heretics, dismissal of all bandit mercenaries, internal peace and order, restoration of Church privileges and an indemnity of twenty thousand marks to be used partly for repayment of damage to ecclesiastical property in Languedoc during the fighting, and partly (in case the Pope obtained a formal and complete renunciation of the Montfortist claims) to Amaury as compensation. If all this was not enough, Raymond VII agreed to put himself entirely in the Church’s hands, reserving only his allegiance to the King. All of which was agreed to by an Ecclesiastical Council, which Arnaut Amalric attended, at Montpellier in June. Amaury vainly protested, before this decision was taken, saying that Louis was about to act and that the whole Church would be scandalized by such compounding with the House of Toulouse. Unlike his father, Raymond VII made some attempt to confirm promises with deeds, for he restored the See of Agde to Theodisius. Everything seemed to point to confirmation of the settlement by the Pope and an end to the whole Albigensian war.
Again, as had so often happened, Rome reversed the decision of the Languedocian Church, only this time the local clergy were for peace and it was the Curia that was for war. Toulousain promises had too often proved broken reeds. Heresy was again raising its head; another public debate like those of the years just before the Crusade had even been held, and heretical “bishoprics” were multiplying. All this must have been well known at Rome. Moreover, not a few of the local clergy had increased their possessions during the war and had no wish to go back to the status quo. Finally, Louis sent Guy de Montfort to oppose the settlement. From October, 1224, until after the new year Honorius refused to move.
When at last the Pope’s decision was made it was hostile to Raymond. Cardinal Romano of St. Angelo was again sent as legate to France to threaten the young Count and to try to patch up a truce so that Louis might be free to use his whole strength in Languedoc. During this year, nothing happened. Raymond VII, who had permitted the Dominicans to preach in Toulouse against heresy, and welcomed the Franciscan Saint Anthony of Padua, offered a national Church council at Bourges such unreserved submission that the council could not bring itself to condemn him, but broke up without giving a decision. To meet the situation, Cardinal Romano the legate ordered each archbishop to take counsel with his suffragans and give him written decisions to transmit to Louis and the Pope. The strictest secrecy was to be kept in the matter of these decisions. Anyone who revealed them was to be excommunicated on the spot. Clearly such a system would enable Pope and King to do exactly as they pleased. Raymond could not flatter himself that the attack would be delayed much longer, especially as the English had decided to leave Louis free to weaken himself by taking on the difficult job of breaking the high spirit of a district removed by so great a distance from his base of operations. Further, old Arnaut Amalric, who had helped play the Toulousain game ever since becoming a Languedocian Archbishop himself, chose this unfortunate moment to die, and to be succeeded in the Archbishopric of Narbonne by Peter Amiel, a bitter enemy of the young Raymond.
In January, 1226, a grand parliament of the kingdom was held in Paris. An address from the nobles was presented to Louis asking that he undertake the Crusade. This he accordingly did, with the reservation that he must be free to break off the campaign when he should so desire. Raymond’s full submission at Bourges two months before had prejudiced many French nobles in his favour, but nevertheless nearly all of them took the cross with their King. The one interruption to the proceedings was the Pope’s action in ordering those of the nobles of Aquitaine and Poitou who had changed their allegiance from English to French to change back again. The action of the Pope was entirely defensible on moral grounds but had been brought about (so the chroniclers say) by liberal use of English and Toulousain money at Rome, as any trouble between the two crowns at this time would benefit Toulouse enormously. Louis promptly went to work to show even greater liberality to the Curia; the Papal orders were suspended, and the preparations for the Crusade were resumed. At a parliament held on March 29 orders were issued to concentrate at Bourges on May 17. Service was to be for the duration of the King’s stay in the South, instead of for forty days as before. The ruinous effects of short enlistments had been as much of a curse to former Crusades to Languedoc as to Washington in the American Revolution. Raymond VII was supported only by the Count of Foix. Comminges had made his peace, and Louis had taken diplomatic precautions to prevent any intervention from Spain. Everything pointed to a complete conquest of the South, except the delicate health of the King, on whom the whole enterprise depended, since his presence in the field was necessary to keep the army together.
On the appointed day, the army mustered at Bourges. Louis was deaf to the pleas of the numerous clergy who begged of him remission of the heavy tithe laid on them. He further swelled his war-chest by accepting money payments instead of field service from certain nobles not keen for the expedition. Even after these exemptions had been granted, the army was enormous for the time. There were fifty thousand knights and mounted men-at-arms, and “innumerable” infantry it is said. The line of operations was on Lyons, and thence down the Rhône, as in 1209.
There was no resistance until Avignon was reached on June 10. There the citizens refused the “French” entry and manned their walls, although they promised not to harass the army in its march if they were left in peace. The place was within the Holy Roman Empire, but Cardinal Romano, the legate, urged Louis to destroy it inasmuch as it had remained ten years excommunicate and impenitent for tolerating Waldensianism, so the King laid siege to it. The incident shows how easy it was to influence Louis and draw him away from the central matter in hand, and also, very significantly, how Waldenses were now attacked as readily as Manicheans. The siege dragged on throughout the summer and into the autumn. Raymond of Toulouse cleverly seized his opportunity to move up and lay waste the country from which the besieging army must draw food and forage. Disease and a plague of flies in the French camp made matters worse. On top of this Pierre Mauclerc, Louis’s second cousin, quarrelled with the King and left the army. Philip Augustus had made this man Count of Brittany by marrying him to the heiress of that fief, and now that she was dead he was out to marry the heiress of Flanders and was angry when Louis thwarted him. So he went off, after serving for forty days, and began strengthening his castles and intriguing with the disaffected Counts of Champagne and of La Marche in Poitou, both of whom were supposed to have an understanding with Raymond. But Louis, although easy to persuade, was not easy to discourage. He stuck to it until, after three months’ siege, Avignon surrendered on September 10. The citizens had been brought very low by the long blockade. They therefore consented to pay ransom, demolish or dismantle their fortifications, and accept from the legate a bishop pledged to suppress heresy.
After the long delay at Avignon the army was at last directed against Toulouse. Almost all the Languedocian cities, including Nismes, Narbonne, Carcassonne, Albi, Beziers, Marseilles, Castres, and Puylaurens had already declared for Church and King. But, just as the end seemed in sight, the hardships of the campaign forced Louis to turn homewards, sick with dysentery. At Montpensier, in Auvergne, on November 8, he died. Within a little over three years after Philip Augustus’s death, his fear had been realized: the kingdom he had given his life to build was in the hands of a woman and child.
Despite this perilous state of affairs, the ideas of centralization and nationality had been so quickened that their growth was hardly checked. At first, to be sure, there was confusion, during which Raymond was able to recover some ground. Louis’ widow, the able and pious Blanche of Castille, was busy getting her 11 year old son, Louis IX, crowned at Rheims. Meanwhile the Counts of La Marche, Champagne, and Brittany intrigued busily with each other and with England, and prepared for open rebellion. Blanche’s position was so difficult that operations on a large scale in Languedoc could not be continued. Nevertheless the ground already won was held by the royal troops, under the energetic Humbert of Beaujeu who had been left in command in the theatre of war by Louis when he turned homeward to die. As long as Humbert’s force was kept “in being” in the South, the crusading tithes on Church property continued to flow into the royal treasury. During Lent in the year 1227, a local Church council at Narbonne excommunicated those who had broken their oaths sworn to Louis and ordered stricter persecution of heretics, showing therefore that some oaths had been broken and that persecution was not being carried on as faithfully as it might have been. Throughout the year the fighting swayed back and forth. Humbert de Beaujeu, with Archbishop Peter Amiel, of Narbonne, and Bishop Fulk, of Toulouse, at his side, took the castle of Becede, massacred the garrison and joyously burned some heretics. Raymond VII, for his part, recovered the town of Castel Sarrasin on the middle Garonne, but was not strong enough to keep the royalists from laying waste the countryside clear up to the walls of Toulouse.
Both sides were weary of war. The drain on the royal resources was serious, especially in view of the hostile attitude of the three northern Counts, and the Church tithes came in slowly and caused endless friction to collect. On the other hand, Raymond saw his position in the eyes of the world steadily going from bad to worse as his overlord continued to make war against him in the name of the Church. Clearly, if he could save anything at all by submission, he had better make haste to do so. Finally, the third party to the matter, the papacy, had also become anxious for peace in Languedoc. In March, 1227, the mild and aged Honorius III had died and been succeeded as Pope by Gregory IX, equally aged but far harsher than his predecessor. In spite of his eighty years, Gregory was determined to oppose the Emperor Frederic II, who had been growing ever more powerful and readier to oppose the Church ever since his guardian Innocent III had died. For a collision with Frederic, the Church must concentrate all her strength. The Languedocian business, therefore, was better out of the way.
With all three parties to the dispute equally determined upon a settlement, there remained only the question of ways and means. Raymond VII had no son and only one daughter, Jeanne. To betroth her to one of the younger brothers of the King would assure the ultimate reversion of the entire Toulousain heritage to the Crown. The Church would back the Crown in obtaining a settlement favourable to the King of France, granted that strong and systematic measures were taken against heresy. A papal letter of March, 1228, to Cardinal Romano the legate, shows that the proposed marriage was the heart of the negotiations. A second letter, of October 21 in the same year, renewing the crusading indulgences, shows that pressure upon Raymond was necessary in order to make him accept the terms proposed. To the same end, it seems that there was further devastation of Toulousain territory. In December Raymond gave in, and named Count Thibaut of Champagne as his agent with full power to negotiate in his behalf. In January, 1229, the parties in interest, including representatives of the municipality of Toulouse, met at Meaux and signed a preliminary agreement. On Holy Thursday, before the great western doorways of Notre Dame de Paris, was enacted the last scene of the long drama. There Raymond came before the legate, bare-footed like his father twenty years before at St. Gilles and clad only in his shirt. He then walked the length of the church to be “reconciled” as a penitent before the high altar. This done, he yielded himself the King’s prisoner in the Louvre, until such time as his daughter and five of his castles should be in royal hands, and five hundred “toises” (over a thousand yards) of the long-suffering walls of Toulouse should be demolished. The end had come.