Kill Them All

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This may be the best, recent book on the Albigensian Crusade that is currently available.

I've read several books on the Cathar Crusade and the related inquisition, and I found this one to be the best I've read. It was mercifully free of the anachronistic desire to anachronistically present the Cathars as forerunners of tolerance or feminism or some other modern trope that they weren't. McGlynn offers a useful corrective to the politically correct presentation of the Cathars:

“Something of a benign myth has been created around the Cathar faith, whose adherents are known to us as gentle, vegan pacifists who would not even allow animals to be harmed. Yet their ultimate goal – as extreme in its belief as its chances of success – was the elimination of the human race through the ending of procreation. As mentioned above, the perfects constituted a very small group; followers might try to imitate them, but as a whole they do not seem to be that different from their neighbours in displaying nastiness and discriminatory behaviour; indeed, the slightly cultish feel of Catharism led to some unsympathetic treatment of those less fervent or inferior in their devotions. It is important that this less favourable picture is depicted, as it helps us to understand why the Albigensian Crusade was not a one-sided act of extreme violence with atrocities meted out just by those wearing the cross.”

McGlynn adds this:

“Ermessinde Viguier was a Cathar wife who lived in the village of Cambiac on the eastern side of Toulouse. In 1222 she was present at a Cathar meeting where other women mocked and belittled her for being pregnant. Having been told she was carrying a demon and bringing forth wickedness into the world, she understandably left the church, even though her Cathar husband beat her with a rod to force her stay. Some Cathar women were coerced into abortions. This attempt to counter maternal instincts ensured that male followers outnumbered female ones.”

In fact, the Cathars don't play a particularly large role in this presentation because the author's thesis is that the Albigensian Crusade was less about religion and more about extending French power into the Languedoc. This seems like a more than fair approach when the reader considers that the first engagement involved the mass slaughter of Catholics at Beziers and a significant turning point in the crusade was the crusader victory at Muret, where King Peter of Aragon, the Christian victor over the Muslims at Las Navas de Toledos, was killed while fighting with the Cathar side.

Author Sean McGlynn's analysis of Beziers is interesting and inspired. Beziers is famous as the city where the Christian crusaders slaughtered every inhabitant - Cathar and Catholic - after the papal legate Arnald Almaric allegedly said “Kill them all. God will know his own.” McGlynn believes that this statement was probably said by Almaric. It is first attested to about twenty years after Beziers, which is not so distant as to make it apocryphal. More importantly, McGlynn explains that the mass slaughter of inhabitants after a siege was accepted and traditional, and intended to serve the purpose of terrifying future towns that might think about defending. McGlynn explains:

“The order for no mercy was a strategic decision. William of Tudela recognises the wisdom of it: by setting an example at the start the crusaders hoped to cow otherwise impregnable fortresses, ones they could not hope to storm, into surrender. Béziers provided them with the opportunity to do this and they seized it. It worked. The road to Carcassonne was left open as garrisons deserted their posts for fear of suffering the same fate as the sacked city. Thus it is misleading to focus, as many historians do, on the extreme religious prejudice of Arnald Amalric as the main factor behind the slaughter.”

However, for all the horrific logic of terrorism, one cannot read this book and not come away with the impression that the Christians were unChristian barbarians. The litany of the slaughter of civilians, torture, murders should be depressing to anyone with the hopes that Christian morality means something better.

After Beziers, many towns swore fealty to the crusade in order to avoid the fate of Beziers. Almaric's statement to “kill them all,” including Catholics, also offers a window into the thinking of the crusade, which accepted the issue of the crusade as political rather than purely religious. Catholics in Bezier might not be heretics, but they were certainly part of the political system that was promoting Languedoc's cultural independence.

McGlynn does a good job of presenting the players of the war in a way that could be followed fairly easily. Following the players will never be easy, since virtually everyone on the southern side was named “Raymond.” As I sussed it out, the first phase of the war was against the Trencavel family holdings around Carcassonne. The Trencavel claim was essentially wiped out with the capture of Carcassonne. The crusade was then handed to Simon de Montfort, who then created an empire in the Languedoc. The main struggle was against the Count of Toulouse (with the assistance of the Count of Foix.) The tides of the war shifted between the Montfort's tenacious attacks and the incomparable size and power of Toulouse.

A difficult concept for me to wrap my mind around was how loosely Languedoc - southern France - was tied to France. The crusaders were generally regarded as the French and foreign. For the early part of the crusade, it seemed that Languedoc was more closely connected to Aragon than to France. For example, many of the lords - including Raymond of Toulouse - owed fealty to King Peter of Aragon. Ultimately, King Peter would come to the aid of the southerners in order to protect Spanish interests in southern France.

This leads to another odd feature of the crusade, namely, the confused religious loyalties of the time. Montfort regularly received reinforcements because of the indulgence that was offered by Pope Innocent III to those who would fight the heretics of southern France. However, it was not clear that the people they were fighting were heretics. McGlynn very occasionally identifies Cathar heretics who were captured after a siege, refused to recant and were burned. But for the most part, it seems that the real issue was that, initially, the southern lords were not willing to enforce religious orthodoxy, and, subsequently, that they were fighting for Languedoc independence.

Things get even more confused at the Battle of Muret in 1213 where Simon de Montfort defeated a substantially larger coalition of southern lords and Aragonese knights. The Aragonese were led by King Peter of Aragon, who the previous year of 1212, had defeated the Muslims at the watershed battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, which essentially gave Spain back to Christianity. However, in 1213, he is one of the “Cathars” defeated by de Montfort. In other words, one year, King Peter is an orthodox Catholic and the next he is a heretic.

Obviously, the point is that the issues of the crusade were largely political, not religious.

The other interesting factoid is how many “nation-building battles” were fought in such a short time: Las Navas de Tolosa, Muret and Bouvine were all fought within a five year period. Las Navas de Tolosa (1212) meant that the Iberian peninsula would belong to the Spanish. Bouvines (1214) meant that France would belong to the French (and not the English.) Muret (1213)meant that Southern France would belong to the French and not to the Spanish. These battles also overlap in that La Navas de Tolosa freed up Aragon to fight at Muret. Bouvines, on the other hand, freed up the French to end the crusade and make Languedoc part of France.

After Simon de Montfort was killed by a fortuitously placed catapult missile, crusader fortunes waned. During this time, it appears that England, from its base in Gascony, might be the lifeline to Languedoc's independence. The French victory over the English at Bouvines, however, soon meant that the Angevin Empire in Gascony was no longer viable. The final phase of the crusade involved a revived French monarchy moving into Languedoc in force to make southern France a part of France.

McGlynn notes that there were continuing problems in Languedoc. The last Cathar stronghold, Montsegur, fell in 1244. Revolts were attempted in 1235 and 1240, which failed.

This is a well-written and engaging book. I think it provided good and objective material on the Albigensian Crusade in an informed and objective way.