Kill Them All (eBook)

INTRODUCTION

THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE: A BRUTAL WAR OF CONQUEST

Just over 800 years ago, the brutal Albigensian Crusade began as a war waged initially against the Cathar heretics in southern France. Much has been written about the Cathars, the progress of the crusade and the ultimate suppression of the heresy by the Inquisition – but the military history and warfare of the whole crusade has not hitherto received a book-length study.

The emphasis of this book is very much on the incredible drama of the battles and sieges of the crusade and the brutality with which the wars were fought. My intention has been to provide an exciting narrative of the military operations together with expert analysis of strategy and tactics, and an assessment of the leadership of the commanders – the famous Viscount Simon de Montfort and the arguably less familiar but equally important Louis the Lion and the Count Raymonds of Toulouse. Other books’ narratives of the crusade understandably intersperse its progress with politics and religion, but for my purposes this would be detrimental to conveying the intensity and drama of the warfare itself. I deal briefly with religion in the first chapter; important developments in politics are covered as and when they influence the military arena and therefore are discussed in their military context rather than as detailed studies of their own. My focus throughout is on the war, how it was fought and what it tells us about the nature of warfare in the High Middle Ages, making this book the first dedicated military history of the entire Albigensian conflict.

I intend to show that military operations took precedence over all else; religion and politics, vital as they were, depended on the outcome of the battlefield. Ultimately, this was a war not fought simply for religion (as is commonly supposed, even by many academics) but for territorial conquest. Thus, in 1213, at the pivotal battle of Muret, the crusaders under Simon de Montfort took on the forces of King Peter II of Aragón, acknowledged as a champion of the Catholic cause by the papacy. National identity was far more important than religion: in the south, Catholics and Cathars alike united to resist the French, whom they considered to be barbaric northerners. The south fought to preserve its customs, laws and language against the northern invaders and the military occupation of its cities.

The book is structured around chapters which relate pivotal and dramatic military events as well as the overall course of the fighting. The chapter titles are quotes from contemporary sources that reflect phases of the conflict for the period under discussion. These are related and analysed in considerable depth to reveal the tactics and strategy of crusading warfare. The book starts by looking at the origins of the crusade and its logistical preparations before covering its launch and horrific start with the massacre of Béziers and the fall of Carcassonne. The brutal progress of the early years of the war is then charted, marked by many massacres, climaxing with the remarkable battle of Muret in 1213, which saw the death of a king. We then continue with Simon de Montfort’s ruthless, relentless leadership during a period when the southerners co-ordinated a successful counter-attack, culminating in 1217–18 with the second (and most significant) siege of Toulouse, a huge military operation that resulted in grievous losses for the northerners. In the period that follows, Louis the Lion, heir to the throne and then King of France, takes up the crusaders’ cross with a major siege of Avignon, after which the scorched-earth operations of the French saw the land itself and the people who lived off it as the primary target in a period of anarchy. The final chapters examine the last phase of the war – no less bloody or less marred by massacre – and include important, extremely rare accounts of the siege of Carcassonne in 1240 and the battle of Saintes and Taillebourg in 1242; the latter, though fought outside Languedoc, were decisive in sealing the fate of the Cathars.

The title of the book derives from the infamous reported remarks of the papal legate heading the crusade in 1209. The immediate result was the dreadful massacre at Béziers. Historians have generally doubted that the legate actually gave the command ‘Kill them all! God will know his own’. Further to my detailed study in By Sword and Fire: Cruelty and Atrocity in Medieval Warfare of what we would today consider war crimes, I argue here that the order was indeed given and I explain why. The command set the tone for one of the bloodiest and most savage conflicts of the entire Middle Ages, during which commanders frequently ordered a policy of no quarter. The military thinking behind this and the implications of this strategy are explored.

It has recently been argued that the Albigensian Crusade was not as bloody as it has traditionally been depicted. The case has been made by a leading historian of the Cathars, but one who specialises in religious matters rather than military ones. This historian also doubts the extent of Catharism, which may well therefore inform his position of mitigation; however, as I argue here, the war was not primarily a confessional one but instead one about the land and its people. Other estimates reassert the terrible toll of the conflict. Harvard Professor Steven Pinker, in his recent bestseller The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity (2011), states his belief that the crusade claimed some 200,000 victims (some put the figure as high as an implausible 1 million). He writes that ‘The reason you have never met a Cathar is that the Albigensian Crusade exterminated them.’ He goes on to say ‘Historians classify this episode as a clear instance of genocide.’ Statistics are notoriously slippery creatures at the best of times; those relating to the medieval period are even more elusive. But as readers will discover, the vicious nature of the war and its numerous massacres kept the victim count consistently high.

As mentioned above, military concerns overrode all others and the crusade can only be fully understood if one comprehends the nature of medieval warfare. The Albigensian Crusade really was one of the most brutal conflicts in Western Europe in the entire Middle Ages, and perhaps the most brutal of all.

The massacres of the crusade are generally regarded as being religiously motivated, and are seen in terms of heretics killed in sieges and, more especially, burnt at the stake following the capture of a Cathar stronghold. Here I stress that most massacres were, in fact, motivated primarily by military considerations and were frequently indiscriminate as to the victims’ religious beliefs. This important aspect is reflected in the book’s title. Religious fanaticism certainly did add to the bloodiness of the war, but its shocking scale and extent were motivated more by pursuit of the military imperative to win at whatever cost and by the fact that this was a war of conquest and regional survival. It was the struggle for the control of land that made the conflict so bitter.

The war is made especially vivid by a number of factors. Some chronicles devote great attention to the conflict, recording the acts of war and brutality that marked the crusade. They also record the remarkable heroism of those involved on both sides: Simon de Montfort, who led his troops from the front, winning unexpected victories and rescuing his men from deadly situations; and southern Catholics who refused to hand over Cathars to be burnt by the crusaders, and fought bravely to defend their way of life.

The protagonists are imposing characters. Among these are the brave and ruthless Simon de Montfort, an experienced and highly capable general of great ambition, ready to risk his life in combat to inspire his men; the equally ambitious and even revolutionary Pope Innocent III, determined to support the spiritual presence of the Church with muscular and practical force; the neglected but colourful figure of Louis the Lion, King of France for only three years, who died while completing the main conquest of the south; and the resourceful counts of Toulouse, defending their territory from the northern invasion.

The crusade is replete with dramatic and detailed accounts of sieges and battles, many of which have received relatively little military analysis: Termes, Muret, Minerve, Toulouse, Beaucaire, Castelnaudary, Avignon; massacres from the war’s beginning to its end, from Béziers to Montségur; and, in the war’s final phases, the much-overlooked siege of Carcassonne (1240) and battle of Saintes (1242). This provides a rarely taken opportunity to analyse the warfare of the crusade in terms of battles, sieges and campaigns, and interesting features of these (such as the military innovation of the new, precision trebuchet, a siege machine with a reputation for demolishing the walls of cities and castles).

The war also marks the first use in medieval history of a crusade against a Christian enemy – for the Cathars were not the military enemy, this status falling to the Catholic counts of Toulouse and Trencavel. Thus the savagery for which the crusade is famous should not be seen in purely religious terms, as ultimately this was a war between the north and south, the former looking for territorial gains (underlined by grants of enemy lands to the crusaders, fuelling their self-interest), the latter defending their different laws, customs, language and independence. It is considered, probably correctly, that the southern lands needed to be transferred to rulers who were unreservedly orthodox in their Catholic beliefs so...