accepted Montfort’s homage for the Trencavel lands. This final split with Count Raymond had been long prepared. The count had withdrawn from the crusader army at Carcassonne in August 1209 and had been re-excommunicated the following month. The central issue, according to the legates, concerned the count’s refusal to persecute the Cathars, while Raymond saw his authority being compromised by the punitive demands of vindictive churchmen. The pope was far more prepared to allow Raymond’s reconciliation than his legates, who displayed almost visceral hatred of the count. Repeatedly, papal compromises foundered on the rock of legatine intransigence. Montfort, sensing his own advantage, backed the legates.
After the last Trencavel lands had been subdued in May 1211, Montfort turned his attention to Raymond’s county of Toulouse and the Pyrenean lands of his allies, the counts of Foix and Comminges. Although unable to capture Toulouse, because of an insufficient number of troops, Montfort defeated a Toulouse – Foix army at Castelnaudary in September 1211 and the following year made sweeping gains from the Agenais to the Pyrenees. To show his confidence in the permanency of the northern French settlement, in December 1212, at an assembly of his lay and ecclesiastical followers at Pamiers, he issued statutes regulating the government of his conquests.78 These secured the rights of the church and insisted on the strict obedience to public and tenurial comital rights, including military service from his vassals. Clear distinctions were drawn between ‘French’ and locals: heiresses could marry the former freely but the latter only with Montfort’s permission. Treatment of heretics and former heretics was specified, as were regulations concerning inheritance and the economy. The underlying colonial purpose emerged in a codicil to the statutes Montfort added regarding the customs to be observed by those to whom he had given property, the incoming barons, knights, burgesses and peasants, who were guaranteed the ‘usages and customs observed in France around Paris’. Although still technically only viscount of the former Trencavel lands, Montfort’s Pamiers statutes were clearly intended to apply to all his conquests.
Early in 1213, a combination of neat diplomacy by Peter II of Aragon with Innocent III’s desire to promulgate a new, general Holy Land crusade briefly threatened Montfort’s authority. Failing to overcome the settled refusal of the legates to accept reconciliation and an end to the war at a council at Lavaur in January, Peter succeeded in persuading the pope that Montfort and the legates had exceeded their brief. In a series of letters dated 15–17 January, Innocent cancelled the granting of crusade indulgences, effectively ending the crusade, and ordered Monfort to return the lands of Foix, Comminges and Bearn to their rightful rulers (all vassals of the king of Aragon) and insisted that Raymond’s lands and rights be restored. His previous doubts over the crusaders’ motives now crystallized into harsh words directed at Arnaud Aimery and Montfort: ‘you have extended greedy hands into lands which have no ill reputation for heresy… you have usurped the possessions of others indiscriminately, unjustly and without proper care’.79 This diplomatic coup encouraged Peter to break with Montfort and the legates, taking Toulouse, Foix and Comminges under his protection. However, in May, Innocent, now fully apprised of what had happened at Lavaur, after intense lobbying by Montfort and the legates revoked his letters of January. This did not revive the crusade on quite the same basis as before, as in April, Innocent’s great bull
The diplomatic manoeuvres of the first half of 1213 ended with at least partial vindication for Montfort, witnessed at Amaury’s knighting in June. They left Peter of Aragon, if he wished to influence events and prevent Montfort’s annexation of south-west France, no option but war. His defeat and death at Muret on 12 September appeared to some providential.81 A much smaller force under Montfort had seized their chance and through bold, well-disciplined action had routed a larger, complacent enemy. God had spoken. Peter lay dead on the field, his infant son a hostage and his ally Raymond VI in flight, to Spain and then England. Yet the consequences were more equivocal. While Montfort, with new recruits from the north, tightened his grip towards the Dordogne valley in 1214, Innocent III tried once more to broker a settlement based on justice, not force. A new legate, Peter of Benevento, secured the release of the child King James of Aragon and the absolution of Raymond VI. However, the count’s lands were administered by Montfort, who ignored attempts at compromise. In January 1215, a large church assembly at Montpellier, presided over by Legate Peter, recommended that Montfort be chosen as ‘chief and sole ruler’ of all the count of Toulouse’s lands. However, Montfort remained unpopular: at Montpellier he narrowly avoided assassination by disaffected citizens.82
The Montpellier decision required papal ratification. The dispossessed, led by Raymond VI and Raymond Roger of Foix, who had been deprived in 1214, took their case to Rome, where their fate would be decided at the general church council. Montfort’s position was recognized by Louis of France, who, free since Bouvines from the threat of John and Otto IV, visited Languedoc from April to June 1215 in fulfilment of his 1213 vow. His large and distinguished army conducted a triumphal tour, rather than a crusade, seeing no military action but demonstrating, for the first time, active Capetian overlordship of the region. With such powerful support, it came as a surprise that the Montfort cause had such a stiff challenge at the Lateran Council in November, a reflection of the unease felt by the curial lawyers at Montfort’s and successive legates’ pugilistic exercise of church authority. The count of Foix, a vituperative but effective debater, at least in one sympathetic poet’s imagination, challenged the legitimacy of the transfer of power as well as impugning the motives and methods of Montfort, the papal legates and the crusaders.83 He clearly had some effect as the pope ordered the return to Raymond Roger of lands occupied by the invaders. However, with the county of Toulouse, the logic of Innocent’s previous acquiescence produced a judgement in favour of Montfort, except the pope reserved the comital lands east of the Rhene in Provence to be held by Montfort in trust for Raymond’s young son, the future Raymond VII.84
As in 1209, 1211 and 1213, no sooner won than victory slipped from Montfort’s grasp. Although he received Philip II’s investiture of the Languedoc counties at Melun in April 1216 and managed by the end of that year to have secured control over the troublesome Toulouse, rebellion, led by the younger Raymond, had already begun to sap his control. Montfort’s failure to relieve Raymond’s siege of Beaucaire in August 1216 encouraged further insurrection across the south. As well as the presence of a large pool of disinherited noblemen who knew the people and the country, later pro-crusade commentators pointed to the unpopularity of Montfort’s subordinates fuelling discontent. ‘They held the land for their own satisfaction, not for the purposes for which it had been acquired, or in Christ’s interests, but for their own ends, slaves to lusts and pleasures’.85 The Montfortians steadily lost ground as the dire cycle of violence and hard campaigning renewed itself. Despite increasing depression recorded by a writer close to his entourage, Montfort slogged on, notching significant successes without managing to prevent Raymond VI and his son re-establish a political presence across the county. The French monarchy gave no help to its new vassal, being distracted by its adventure in 1216–17 to place Prince Louis on the English throne. In September 1217, Raymond VI re-entered Toulouse, restricting the Montfortians to the citadel of the Narbonnais castle on its southern wall. Montfort began yet another siege of the city. Despite reinforcements arriving in January 1218, little progress was made. After nine months, the city, fearful of massacre, showed no signs of capitulation. The deadlock was resolved on 25 June. While inspecting forward siege engines, Montfort was struck on the head by a stone thrown from one of the city’s mangonels, operated, some said, by women, crushing his skull. He died instantly, one of the most revered and reviled men ever to have fought for the cross.86
The removal of Montfort shifted the balance of power. Encouraged, young Raymond took the offensive, defeating the crusaders at Baziege late in the year. Pope Honorious III read the auguries and renewed the crusade indulgences in August 1218. A counter-offensive in 1219 led by Louis of France, who had again taken the cross in November 1218 and remained allied to the surviving Montfortians, captured Marmande on the Garonne in June with Montfort’s son and heir Amaury, before laying siege to Toulouse. However, on 1 August, Louis abandoned the struggle, returning to France, as one writer laconically and perhaps without irony remarked, ‘after continuing his crusade for the required period of service’.87 It is hard to see in this foray much more than Capetian flag waving to remind whichever side emerged triumphant of where the ultimate suzerainty lay.
Louis’s withdrawal from Toulouse exposed the full weakness of the Montfortians, dependent on French royal indifference and a pope engaged in prosecuting the crusade in Egypt (1218–21). The main support came from the largely new southern episcopacy, who owed their places and revived finances to the crusade. Amaury of Montfort, lacking his father’s ability, could do little to prevent the unravelling of Simon’s achievement. The clerical tenth proposed in 1221 to assist him provoked fierce resistance.88 By 1222, the year he died, Raymond VI had recovered most of his lands, mainly though the efforts of his son, who succeeded as Raymond VII (1222–49).
