In Troubadour-Land: A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc

by S. Baring-Gould

In 1208 Innocent summoned the King of France to sweep from southern France these heretics, "worse than the Saracens," and he promised to the leaders of the crusade the domains they won of the princes who favoured the heresy. The war lasted fifteen years (from 1208 to 1223) and of the two leading spirits, one ordering and the other executing, Pope Innocent III. and Simon de Montfort, neither saw the end of it. During the fifteen years of this religious war, nearly all the towns and strong castles in the regions between the Rhone, the Pyrenees, the Garonne were taken, lost, retaken, given over to pillage, sack, and massacre, and burnt by the Crusaders with all the cruelty of fanatics and all the greed of conquerors. In the account of the war by a Provençal poet, we are told that God never made the clerk who could have written the muster-roll of the crusading army in two or even three months. One of the first victims was the young and gallant Viscount of Béziers, who, the same author assures us, was a good Catholic, but whose lands and towns the rapacious horde lusted to acquire. When they sat down before Béziers, then the Catholics within the walls made common cause with the heretics, and refused to surrender.

[Illustration: Fountain in the cloister of S. Nazaire, Béziers.]

Then the city was stormed, the walls scrambled up by a rabble rout of camp-followers, in shirts and breeches, but without shoes, who burst over the parapets whilst the envoys of the town were being amused by mock conferences with Montfort and the other leaders of the crusading host. A general massacre ensued; neither age nor sex were spared, even priests fell. It is said that news of what was being done was brought to Arnauld, Abbot of Citeaux, one of the commanders of the crusade, and he was told that faithful and heretics were being slaughtered alike. "Slay them all," said he, "God will know His own."

The story is told by a contemporary, but only as an on-dit, and may therefore be quite untrue. But Simon de Montfort, the hero of the crusade, employed like language. One day two heretics, taken at Castres, were brought before him, one of whom was unshakable in his belief, the other expressed himself open to conviction. "Burn them both," said the count; "if this fellow mean what he says, the fire will expiate his sins; and, if he lie, he will suffer for his imposture."

An attempt has been made to exculpate the leaders of the crusade from the atrocities committed at the capture of Béziers, and to clear them of the charge of treachery. It is so far certain that the town was captured and the massacre begun by the camp-followers, but the Crusaders soon joined in and accomplished the work begun by the "ribauds;" and no attempt was made by the leaders to stay the carnage. In the cathedral church of S. Madeleine some seven thousand who had taken refuge there were butchered without regard to the sanctity of the spot. The city was then set on fire and the cathedral perished in the flames.

After all, it was well that the cathedral should be purged with fire, and rebuilt. One could not pray, one would not like to see the service of God rendered in a building that had been thus bespattered with blood. S. Nazaire is later. It was almost wholly rebuilt in the fourteenth century, and within it one can forget the horrors of that hateful siege and butchery.

As I travelled on to Narbonne, there entered the carriage in which I was two girls with remarkable profiles, and I wondered whether they bore the features of the Ligurian race that first peopled all this coast, now probably represented by the Basques—a race akin to the Lap. These girls had fine dark eyes and hair, sallow complexions, and their full faces were not unpleasant, but their profiles were certainly most remarkable. Now curiously enough, on entering the cathedral at Narbonne, I saw a tomb of the eighteenth century with mourners represented on it—some six to eight, and they had all the same type of face. Not only so, but in the museum of the town is a Classic bust, found among the remains of Roman Narbona, and the same type is there.

[Illustration: Types of faces, Narbonne. Modern. Sixteenth-century tomb in
Cathedral. Classic bust in museum.]

Narbonne was once a great capital. It stood on a lagoon, and did a large trade in the Mediterranean. It was a Roman colony, founded at the same time as Arles, and had its forum, capitol, baths, amphitheatre, theatre, and temples. But, alas! the necessity for fortifying the city in the Middle Ages induced the inhabitants to go to these Roman buildings and pull them to pieces in order with them to construct the walls and towers surrounding the town, and now not one of all these monuments remains. The walls have served, however, as a rich quarry of antiquities that have supplied the two great collections in the town, one in the Hôtel de Ville, the other in a ruined church. These collections are only second to the Avignon museum, and abound with objects of interest.

Among the monumental stones for the dead are several with caps figured on them. The like are to be seen at Nimes, Avignon, and elsewhere. These are freedmen's caps. When a noble Roman died he left in his will that so many of his slaves were to be given their liberty, and then this was represented by caps sculptured on his tombstone.