and discreet at the same time that he was indifferent as to the
employment of means.  He had fine sport with Richard.  We have already
had the story of the relations between them, and their rupture during
their joint crusade in the East.  On returning to the West, Philip did
not wrest from King Richard those great and definitive conquests which
were to restore to France the greater part of the marriage-portion that
went with Eleanor of Aquitaine; but he paved the way for them by petty
victories and petty acquisitions, and by making more and more certain his
superiority over his rival.  When, after Richard's death, he had to do
with John Lackland, cowardly and insolent, knavish and addle-pated,
choleric, debauched, and indolent, an intriguing subordinate on the
throne on which he made pretence to be the most despotic of kings, Philip
had over him, even more than over his brother Richard, immense
advantages.  He made such use of them that after six years' struggling,
from 1199 to 1205, he deprived John of the greater part of his French
possessions, Anjou, Normandy, Touraine, Maine, and Poitou.  Philip would
have been quite willing to dispense with any legal procedure by way of
sanction to his conquests, but John furnished him with an excellent
pretext; for on the 3d of April, 1203, he assassinated with his own hand,
in the tower of Rouen, his young nephew Arthur, Duke of Brittany, and in
that capacity vassal of Philip Augustus, to whom he was coming to do
homage.  Philip had John, also his vassal, cited before the court of the
barons of France, his peers, to plead his defence of this odious act.
"King John," says the contemporary English historian Matthew Paris, "sent
Eustace, Bishop of Ely, to tell King Philip that he would willingly go to
his court to answer before his judges, and to show entire obedience in
the matter, but that he must have a safe-conduct.  King Philip replied,
but with neither heart nor visage unmoved, 'Willingly; let him come in
peace and safety.'  'And return so too, my lord?' said the bishop.
'Yes,' rejoined the king, 'if the decision of his peers allow him.'
And when the envoys from England entreated him to grant to the King of
England to go and return in safety, the King of France was wroth, and
answered with his usual oath, 'No, by all the saints of France, unless
the decision tally therewith.'  'My lord king,' rejoined the bishop, 'the
Duke of Normandy cannot come unless there come also the King of England,
since the duke and the king are one and the same person.  The baronage of
England would never allow it in any way, and if the king were willing,
he would run, as you know, risk of imprisonment or death.'  King Philip
answered him, 'How now, my lord bishop?  It is well known that my
liegeman, the Duke of Normandy, by violence got possession of England.
And so, prithee, if a vassal increase in honor and power, shall his lord
suzerain lose his rights?  Never!'

"King John was not willing to trust to chance and the decision of the
French, who liked him not; and he feared above everything to be
reproached with the shameful murder of Arthur.  The grandees of France,
nevertheless, proceeded to a decision, which they could not do lawfully,
since he whom they had to try was absent, and would have gone had he been
able."

The condemnation, not a whit the less, took full effect; and Philip
Augustus thus recovered possession of nearly all the territories which
his father, Louis VII., had kept but for a moment.  He added, in
succession, other provinces to his dominions; in such wise that the
kingdom of France, which was limited, as we have seen, under Louis the
Fat, to the Ile-de-France and certain portions of Picardy and Orleanness,
comprised besides, at the end of the reign of Philip Augustus,
Vermandois, Artois, the two Vexins, French and Norman, Berri, Normandy,
Maine, Anjou, Poitou, Touraine, and Auvergne.

In 1206 the territorial work of Philip Augustus was well nigh completed;
but his wars were not over.  John Lackland, when worsted, kicked against
the pricks, and was incessantly hankering, in his antagonism to the King
of France, after hostile alliances and local conspiracies easy to hatch
amongst certain feudal lords discontented with their suzerain.  John was
on intimate terms with his nephew, Otho IV., Emperor of Germany and the
foe of Philip Augustus, who had supported against him Frederick II., his
rival for the empire.  They prepared in concert for a grand attack upon
the King of France, and they had won over to their coalition some of his
most important vassals, amongst others, Renaud de Dampierre, Count of
Boulogne.  Philip determined to divert their attack, whilst anticipating
it, by an unexpected enterprise--the invasion of England itself.
Circumstances seemed favorable.  King John, by his oppression and his
perfidy, had drawn upon him the hatred and contempt of his people; and
the barons of England, supported and guided by the Archbishop of
Canterbury, Stephen Langton, had commenced against him the struggle which
was to be ended some years afterwards by the forced concession of Magna
Charta, that foundation-stone of English liberties.  John, having been
embroiled for five years past with the court of Rome, affected to defy
the excommunication which the pope had hurled at him, and of which the
King of France had been asked by several prelates of the English Church
to insure the efficient working.  On the 8th of April, 1213, Philip
convoked, at Soissons, his principal vassals or allies, explained to them
the grounds of his design against the King of England, and, by a sort of
special confederation, they bound themselves, all of them, to support
him.  One of the most considerable vassals, however, the sometime regent
of France during the minority of Philip, Ferrand, Count of Flanders, did
not attend the meeting to which he had been summoned, and declared his
intention of taking no part in the war against England.  "By all the
saints of France," cried Philip, "either France shall become Flanders, or
Flanders France!"  And, all the while pressing forward the equipment of a
large fleet collected at Calais for the invasion of England, he entered
Flanders, besieged and took several of the richest cities in the country,
Cassel, Ypres, Bruges, and Courtrai, and pitched his camp before the
walls of Ghent, "to lower," as he said, "the pride of the men of Ghent
and make them bend their necks beneath the yoke of kings."  But he heard
that John Lackland, after making his peace with the court of Rome through
acceptance of all the conditions and all the humiliations it had thought
proper to impose upon him, had just landed at Rochelle, and was exciting
a serious insurrection amongst the lords of Saintonge and Poitou.  At the
same time Philip's fleet, having been attacked in Calais roads by that of
John, had been half destroyed or captured; and the other half had been
forced to take shelter in the harbor of Damme, where it was strictly
blockaded.  Philip, forthwith adopting a twofold and energetic
resolution, ordered his son Philip to go and put down the insurrection of
the Poitevines on the banks of the Loire, and himself took in hand the
war in Flanders, which was of the most consequence, considering the
quality of the foe and the designs they proclaimed.  They had at their
head the Emperor Otho IV., who had already won the reputation of a brave
and able soldier; and they numbered in their ranks several of the
greatest lords, German, Flemish, and Dutch, and Hugh de Boves, the most
dreaded of those adventurers in the pay of wealthy princes who were known
at that time by the name of roadsters (routiers, mercenaries).  They
proposed, it was said, to dismember France; and a promise to that effect
had been made by the Emperor Otho to his principal chieftains assembled
in secret conference.  "It is against Philip himself, and him alone," he
had said to them, "that we must direct all our efforts; it is he who must
be slain first of all, for it is he alone who opposes us and makes
himself our foe in everything.  When he is dead, you will be able to
subdue and divide the kingdom according to our pleasure; as for thee,
Renaud, thou shalt take Peronne and all Vermandois; Hugh shall be master
of Beauvais, Salisbury of Dreux, Conrad of Mantes, together with Vexin,
and as for thee, Ferranti, thou shalt have Paris."

The two armies marched over the Low Countries and Flanders, seeking out
both of them the most favorable position for commencing the attack.  On
Sunday, the 27th of August, 1214, Philip had halted near the bridge of
Bouvines, not far from Lille, and was resting under an ash beside a small
chapel dedicated to St. Peter.  There came running to him a messenger,
sent by Guerin, Bishop of Senlis, his confidant in war as well as
government, and brought him word that his rear-guard, attacked by the
Emperor Otho, was not sufficient to resist him.  Philip went into the
chapel, said a short prayer, and cried as he came out, "Haste we forward
to the rescue of our comrades!"  Then he put on his armor, mounted his
horse, and made swiftly for the point of attack, amidst the shouts of all
those who were about him, "To arms! to arms!"

[Illustration: BATTLE OF BOUVINES----81]

Both armies numbered in their ranks not only all the feudal chivalry on
the two sides, but burgher-forces, those from the majority of the great
cities of Flanders being for Otho, and those from sixteen towns or
communes of France for Philip Augustus.  It was not, as we have seen, the
first time that the forces from the French rural districts had taken part
in the king's wars; Louis the Fat had often received their aid against
the tyrannical and turbulent lords of his small kingdom; but since the
reign of Louis the Fat the organization and importance of the communes
had made great progress in France; and it was not only rural communes,
but considerable cities, such as Amiens, Arras, Beauvais, Compiegne, and
Soissons, which sent to the army of Philip Augustus bodies of men in
large numbers and ready trained to arms.  Contemporary historians put the
army of Otho at one hundred thousand, and that of Philip Augustus at from
fifty to sixty thousand men; but amongst modern historians one of the
most eminent, M. Sismondi, reduces them both to some fifteen or twenty
thousand.  One would say that the reduction is as excessive as the
original estimate.  However that may be, the communal forces evidently
filled an important place in the king's army at Bouvines, and maintained
it brilliantly.  So soon as Philip had placed himself at the head of the
first line of his troops, "the men of Soissons," says William the Breton,
who was present at the battle, "being impatient and inflamed by the words
of Bishop Guerin, let out their horses at the full speed of their legs,
and attacked the enemy.  But the Flemish knights prick not forward to the
encounter, indignant that the first charge against them was not made by
knights, as would have been seemly, and remain motionless at their post.
The men of Soissons, meanwhile, see no need of dealing softly with them
and humoring them, so thrust them roughly, upset them from their horses,
slay a many of them, and force them to leave their place or defend
themselves, willy nilly.  At last, the Chevalier Eustace, scorning the
burghers and proud of his illustrious ancestors, moves out into the
middle of the plain, and with haughty voice, roars, "Death to the
French!"  The battle soon became general and obstinate; it was a
multitude of hand-to-hand fights in the midst of a confused melley.
In this melley, the knights of the Emperor Otho did not forget the
instructions he had given them before the engagement: they sought out the
King of France himself, to aim their blows at him; and ere long they knew
him by the presence of the royal standard, and made their way almost up
to him.  The communes, and chiefly those of Corbeil, Amiens, Beauvais,
Compiegne, and Arras, thereupon pierced through the battalions of the
knights and placed themselves in front of the king, when some German
infantry crept up round Philip, and with hooks and light lances threw him
down from his horse; but a small body of knights who had remained by him
overthrew, dispersed, and slew these infantry, and the king, recovering
himself more quickly than had been expected, leaped upon another horse,
and dashed again into the melley.  Then danger threatened the Emperor
Otho in his turn.  The French drove back those about him, and came right
up to him; a sword thrust, delivered with vigor, entered the brain of
Otho's horse; the horse, mortally wounded, reared up and turned his head
in the direction whence he had come; and the emperor, thus carried away,
showed his back to the French, and was off in full flight.  "Ye will see
his face no more to-day," said Philip to his followers: and he said
truly.  In vain did William des Barres, the first knight of his day in
strength, and valor, and renown, dash off in pursuit of the emperor;
twice he was on the point of seizing him, but Otho escaped, thanks to the
swiftness of his horse and the great number of his German knights, who,
whilst their emperor was flying, were fighting to a miracle.  But their
bravery saved only their master; the battle of Bouvines was lost for the
Anglo-Germano-Flemish coalition.  It was still prolonged for several
hours; but in the evening it was over, and the prisoners of note were
conducted to Philip Augustus.  There were five counts, Ferrand of
Flanders, Renaud of Boulogne, William of Salisbury, a natural brother of
King John, Otho of Tecklemburg, and Conrad of Dartmund; and twenty-five
barons "bearing their own standard to battle."  Philip Augustus spared
all their lives; sent away the Earl of Salisbury to his brother, confined
the Count of Boulogne at Peronne, where he was subjected "to very
rigorous imprisonment, with chains so short that he could scarce move one
step," and as for the Count of Flanders, his sometime regent, Philip
dragged him in chains in his train,

[Illustration: The Battle of Bouvines----81]

It is difficult to determine, from the evidence of contemporaries, which
was the more rejoiced at and proud of this victory, king or people.  "The
same day, when evening approached," says William the Breton, "the army
returned laden with spoils to the camp; and the king, with a heart full
of joy and gratitude, offered a thousand thanksgivings to the Supreme
King, who had vouchsaved to him a triumph over so many enemies.  And in
order that posterity might preserve forever a memorial of so great a
success, the Bishop of Senlis founded, outside the walls of that town, a
chapel, which he named Victory, and which, endowed with great possessions
and having a government according to canonical rule, enjoyed the honor of
possessing an abbot and a holy convent.  .  .  .  Who can recount,
imagine, or set down with a pen, on parchment or tablets, the cheers of
joy, the hymns of triumph, and the numberless dances of the people; the
sweet chants of the clergy; the harmonious sounds of warlike instruments;
the solemn decorations of the churches, inside and out; the streets, the
houses, the roads of all the castles and towns, hung with curtains and
tapestry of silk and covered with flowers, shrubs and green branches; all
the inhabitants of every sort, sex, and age running from every quarter to
see so grand a triumph; peasants and harvesters breaking off their work,
hanging round their necks their sickles and hoes (for it was the season
of harvest), and throwing themselves in a throng upon the roads to see in
irons that Count of Flanders, that Fernand whose arms they had formerly
dreaded!"

It was no groundless joy on the part of the people, and a spontaneous
instinct gave them a forecast of the importance of that triumph which
elicited their cheers.  The battle of Bouvines was not the victory of
Philip Augustus, alone, over a coalition of foreign princes; the victory
was the work of king and people, barons, knights, burghers, and peasants
of Ile-de-France, of Orleanness, of Picardy, of Normandy, of Champagne,
and of Burgundy.  And this union of different classes and different
populations in a sentiment, a contest, and a triumph shared in common was
a decisive step in the organization and unity of France.  The victory of
Bouvines marked the commencement of the time at which men might speak,
and indeed did speak, by one single name, of the French.  The nation in
France and the kingship in France on that day rose out of and above the
feudal system.

Philip Augustus was about the same time apprised of his son Louis's
success on the banks of the Loire.  The incapacity and swaggering
insolence of King John had made all his Poitevine allies disgusted with
him; he had been obliged to abandon his attack upon the King of France in
the provinces, and the insurrection, growing daily more serious, of the
English barons and clergy for the purpose of obtaining Magna Charta was
preparing for him other reverses.  He had ceased to be a dangerous rival
to Philip.

No period has had better reason than our own to know how successes and
conquests can intoxicate warlike kings; but Philip, whose valor, on
occasion, was second to none, had no actual inclination towards war or
towards conquest for the sole pleasure of extending his dominion.
"Liking better, according to his custom," says William the Breton, "to
conquer by peace than by war," he hasted to put an end by treaties,
truces, or contracts to his quarrels with King John, the Count of
Flanders, and the principal lords made prisoners at Bouvines; discretion,
in his case, was proof against the temptations of circumstances, or the
promptings of passion, and he took care not to overtly compromise his
power, his responsibility, and the honor of his name by enterprises which
did not naturally come in his way, or which he considered without chances
of success.  Whilst still a youth, he had given, in 1191, a sure proof of
that self-command which is so rare amongst ambitious princes by
withdrawing from the crusade in which he had been engaged with Richard
Coeur de Lion; and it was still more apparent in two great events at the
latter end of his reign--the crusade against the Albigensians and his son
Louis's expedition in England, the crown of which had, in 1215, been
offered to him by the barons at war with King John in defence of Magna
Charta.

The organization of the kingdom, the nation, and the kingship in France
was not the only great event and the only great achievement of that
epoch.  At the same time that this political movement was going on in the
State, a religious and intellectual ferment was making head in the Church
and in men's minds.  After the conquest of the Gauls by the Franks, the
Christian clergy, sole depositaries of all lights to lighten their age,
and sole possessors of any idea of opposing the conquerors with arguments
other than those of brute force, or of employing towards the vanquished
any instrument of subjection other than violence, became the connecting
link between the nation of the conquerors and the nation of the
conquered, and, in the name of one and the same divine law, enjoined
obedience on the subjects, and, in the case of the masters, moderated the
transports of power.  But in the course of this active and salutary
participation in the affairs of the world, the Christian clergy lost
somewhat of their primitive and proper character; religion in their hands
was a means of power as well as of civilization; and its principal
members became rich, and frequently substituted material weapons for the
spiritual authority which had originally been their only reliance.  When
they were in a condition to hold their own against powerful laymen, they
frequently adopted the powerful laymen's morals and shared their
ignorance; and in the seventh and eighth centuries the barbarism which
held the world in its clutches had made inroads upon the Church.
Charlemagne essayed to resuscitate dying civilization, and sought amongst
the clergy his chief means of success; he founded schools, filled them
with students to whom promises of ecclesiastical preferments were held
out as rewards of their merit, and, in fine, exerted himself with all his
might to restore to the Christian Church her dignity and her influence.
When Charlemagne was dead, nearly all his great achievements disappeared
in the chaos which came after him; his schools alone survived and
preserved certain centres of intellectual activity.  When the feudal
system had become established, and had introduced some rule into social
relations, when the fate of mankind appeared no longer entirely left to
the risks of force, intellect once more found some sort of employment,
and once more assumed some sort of sway.  Active and educated minds once
more began to watch with some sort of independence the social facts
before their eyes, to stigmatize vices and to seek for remedies.  The
spectacle afforded by their age could not fail to strike them.  Society,
after having made some few strides away from physical chaos, seemed in
danger of falling into moral chaos; morals had sunk far below the laws,
and religion was in deplorable contrast to morals.  It was not laymen
only who abandoned themselves with impunity to every excess of violence
and licentiousness; scandals were frequent amongst the clergy themselves;
bishoprics and other ecclesiastical benefices, publicly sold or left by
will, passed down through families from father to son, and from husband
to wife, and the possessions of the Church served for dowry to the
daughters of bishops.  Absolution was at a low quotation in the market,
and redemption for sins of the greatest enormity cost scarcely the price
of founding a church or a monastery.  Horror-stricken at the sight of
such corruption in the only things they at that time recognized as holy,
men no longer knew where to find the rule of life or the safeguard of
conscience.  But it is the peculiar and glorious characteristic of
Christianity that it is unable to bear for long, without making an effort
to check them, the vices it has been unable to prevent, and that it
always carries in its womb the vigorous germ of human regeneration.  In
the midst of their irregularities, the eleventh and twelfth centuries saw
the outbreak of a grand religious, moral, and intellectual fermentation,
and it was the Church herself that had the honor and the power of taking
the initiative in the reformation.  Under the influence of Gregory VII.
the rigor of the popes began to declare itself against the scandals of
the episcopate, the traffic in ecclesiastical benefices, and the bad
morals of the secular clergy.  At the same time, austere men exerted
themselves to rekindle the fervor of monastic life, re-established rigid
rules in the cloister, and refilled the monasteries by their preaching
and example.  St. Robert of Moleme founded the order of Citeaux; St.
Norbert that of Premontre; St. Bernard detached Clairvaux from Meaux,
which he considered too worldly; St. Bruno built Chartreuse; St. Hugo,
St. Gerard, and others besides gave the Abbey of Cluni its renown; and
ecclesiastical reform extended everywhere.  Hereupon rich and powerful
laymen, filled with ardor for their faith or fear for their eternal
welfare, went seeking after solitude, and devoted themselves to prayer in
the monasteries they had founded or enriched with their wealth; whole
families were dispersed amongst various religious houses; and all the
severities of penance hardly sufficed to quiet imaginations scared at the
perils of living in the world or at the vices of their age.  And, at the
same time, in addition to this outburst of piety, ignorance was decried
and stigmatized as the source of the prevailing evils; the function of
teaching was included amongst the duties of the religious estate; and
every newly-founded or reformed monastery became a school in which pupils
of all conditions were gratuitously instructed in the sciences known by
the name of liberal arts.  Bold spirits began to use the rights of
individual thought in opposition to the authority of established
doctrines; and others, without dreaming of opposing, strove at any rate
to understand, which is the way to produce discussion.  Activity and
freedom of thought were receiving development at the same time that
fervent faith and fervent piety were.

This great moral movement of humanity in the eleventh and twelfth
centuries arose from events very different in different parts of the
beautiful country which was not yet, but was from that time forward
tending to become, France.  Amongst these events, which cannot be here
recounted in detail, we will fix upon two, which were the most striking,
and the most productive of important consequences in the whole history of
the epoch, the quarrel of Abelard with St. Bernard and the crusade
against the Albigensians.  We shall there see how Northern France and
Southern France differed one from the other before the bloody crisis
which was to unite them in one single name and one common destiny.

In France properly so called at that time, north of the Rhone and the
Loire, the church had herself accomplished the chief part of the reforms
which had become necessary.  It was there that the most active and most
eloquent of the reforming monks had appeared, had preached, and had
founded or regenerated a great number of monasteries.  It was there that,
at first amongst the clergy, and then, through their example, amongst the
laity, Christian discipline and morals had resumed some sway.  There,
too, the Christian faith and church were, amongst the mass of the
population, but little or not at all assailed; heretics, when any
appeared, obtained support neither from princes nor people; they were
proceeded against, condemned, and burned, without their exciting public
sympathy by their presence, or public commiseration by their punishment.
It was in the very midst of the clergy themselves, amongst literates and
teachers, that, in Northern France, the intellectual and innovating
movement of the period was manifested and concentrated.  The movement was
vigorous and earnest, and it was a really studious host which thronged to
the lessons of Abelard at Paris, on Mount St. Genevieve, at Melun, at
Corbeil, and at the Paraclete; but this host contained but few of the
people; the greater part of those who formed it were either already in
the church, or soon, in various capacities, about to be.  And the
discussions raised at the meetings corresponded with the persons
attending them; there was the disputation of the schools; there was no
founding of sects; the lessons of Abelard and the questions he handled
were scientifico-religious; it was to expound and propagate what they
regarded as the philosophy of Christianity, that masters and pupils made
bold use of the freedom of thought; they made but slight war upon the
existing practical abuses of the church; they differed from her in the
interpretation and comments contained in some of her dogmas; and they
considered themselves in a position to explain and confirm faith by
reason.  The chiefs of the church, with St. Bernard at their head, were
not slow to descry, in these interpretations and comments based upon
science, danger to the simple and pure faith of the Christian; they saw
the apparition of dawning rationalism confronting orthodoxy.  They were,
as all their contemporaries were, wholly strangers to the bare notion of
freedom of thought and conscience, and they began a zealous struggle
against the new teachers; but they did not push it to the last cruel
extremities.  They had many a handle against Abelard: his private life,
the scandal of his connection with Heloise, the restless and haughty
fickleness of his character, laid him open to severe strictures; but his
stern adversaries did not take so much advantage of them as they might
have taken.  They had his doctrines condemned at the councils of Soissons
and Sens; they prohibited him from public lecturing; and they imposed
upon him the seclusion of the cloister; but they did not even harbor the
notion of having him burned as a heretic, and science and glory were
respected in his person, even when his ideas were proscribed.  Peter the
Venerable, Abbot of Cluni, one of the most highly considered and honored
prelates of the church, received him amongst his own monks, and treated
him with paternal kindness, taking care of his health, as well as of his
eternal welfare; and he who was the adversary of St. Bernard and the
teacher condemned by the councils of Soissons and Sens, died peacefully,
on the 21st of April, 1142, in the abbey of St. Marcellus, near
Chalon-sur-Saone, after having received the sacraments with much piety,
and in presence of all the brethren of the monastery.  "Thus," wrote
Peter the Venerable to Heloise, abbess for eleven years past of the
Paraclete, "the man who, by his singular authority in science, was known
to nearly all the world, and was illustrious wherever he was known,
learned, in the school of Him who said, 'Know that I am meek and lowly of
heart,' to remain meek and lowly; and, as it is but right to believe, he
has thus returned to Him."

The struggle of Abelard with the Church of Northern France and the
crusade against the Albigensians in Southern France are divided by much
more than diversity and contrast; there is an abyss between them.  In
their religious condition, and in the nature as well as degree of their
civilization, the populations of the two regions were radically
different.  In the north-east, between the Rhine, the Scheldt, and the
Loire, Christianity had been obliged to deal with little more than the
barbarism and ignorance of the German conquerors.  In the south, on the
two banks of the Rhone and the Garonne, along the Mediterranean, and by
the Pyrenees, it had encountered all manner of institutions, traditions,
religions, and disbeliefs, Greek, Roman, African, Oriental, Pagan, and
Mussulman; the frequent invasions and long stay of the Saracens in those
countries had mingled Arab blood with the Gallic, Roman, Asiatic, and
Visigothic, and this mixture of so many different races, tongues, creeds,
and ideas had resulted in a civilization more developed, more elegant,
more humane, and more liberal, but far less coherent, simple, and strong,
morally as well as politically, than the warlike, feudal civilization of
Germanic France.  In the religious order especially, the dissimilarity
was profound.  In Northern France, in spite of internal disorder, and
through the influence of its bishops, missionaries, and monastic
reformers, the orthodox Church had obtained a decided superiority and
full dominion; but in Southern France, on the contrary, all the
controversies, all the sects, and all the mystical or philosophical
heresies which had disturbed Christendom from the second century to the
ninth, had crept in and spread abroad.  In it there were Arians,
Manicheans, Gnostics, Paulicians, Cathars (the pure), and other sects of
more local or more recent origin and name, Albigensians, Vaudians, Good
People and Poor of Lyons, some piously possessed with the desire of
returning to the pure faith and fraternal organization of the primitive
evangelical Church, others given over to the extravagances of imagination
or asceticism.  The princes and the great laic lords of the country, the
Counts of Toulouse, Foix, and Comminges, the Viscount of Beziers, and
many others had not remained unaffected by this condition of the people:
the majority were accused of tolerating and even protecting the heretics;
and some were suspected of allowing their ideas to penetrate within their
own households.  The bold sallies of the critical and jeering spirit, and
the abandonment of established creeds and discipline, bring about, before
long, a relaxation of morals; and liberty requires long time and many
trials before it learns to disavow and rise superior to license.  In many
of the feudal courts and castles of Languedoc, Provence, and Aquitaine,
imaginations, words, and lives were licentious; and the charming poetry
of the troubadours and the gallant adventures of knights caused it to be
too easily forgotten that morality was but little more regarded than the
faith.  Dating from the latter half of the eleventh century, not only the
popes, but the whole orthodox Church of France and its spiritual heads,
were seriously disquieted at the state of mind of Southern France, and
the dangers it threatened to the whole of Christendom.  In 1145
St. Bernard, in all the lustre of his name and influence, undertook, in
concert with Cardinal Alberic, legate of the Pope Eugenius III., to go
and preach against the heretics in the countship of Toulouse.  "We see
here," he wrote to Alphonse Jourdain, Count of Toulouse, "churches
without flocks, flocks without priests, priests without the respect which
is their due, and Christians without Christ; men die in their sins
without being reconciled by penance or admitted to the holy communion;
souls are sent pell-mell before the awful tribunal of God; the grace of
baptism is refused to little children; those to whom the Lord said,
'Suffer little children to come unto Me,' do not obtain the means of
coming to salvation.  Is it because of a belief that these little
children have no need of the Saviour, inasmuch as they are little?  Is it
then for nought that our Lord from being great became little?  What say
I?  Is it then for nought that He was scourged and spat upon, crucified
and dead?"  St. Bernard preached with great success in Toulouse itself,
but he was not satisfied with easy successes.  He had come to fight the
heretics; and he went to look for them where he was told he would find
them numerous and powerful.  "He repaired," says a contemporary
chronicler, "to the castle of Vertfeuil (or Verfeil, in the district of
Toulouse), where flourished at that time the scions of a numerous
nobility and of a multitude of people, thinking that, if he could
extinguish heretical perversity in this place where it was so very much
spread, it would be easy for him to make head against it elsewhere.  When
he had begun preaching, in the church, against those who were of most
consideration in the place, they went out, and the people followed them;
but the holy man, going out after them, gave utterance to the word of God
in the public streets.  The nobles then hid themselves on all sides in
their houses; and as for him, he continued to preach to the common people
who came about him.  Whereupon, the others making uproar and knocking
upon the doors, so that the crowd could not hear his voice, he then,
having shaken off the dust from his feet as a testimony against them,
departed from their midst, and, looking on the town, cursed it, saying,
'Vertfeuil, God wither thee!'  Now there were, at that time, in the
castle, a hundred knights abiding, having arms, banners, and horses, and
keeping themselves at their own expense, not at the expense of other."

After the not very effectual mission of St. Bernard, who died in 1153,
and for half a century, the orthodox Church was several times occupied
with the heretics of Southern France, who were before long called
Albigensians, either because they were numerous in the diocese of Albi,
or because the council of Lombers, one of the first at which their
condemnation was expressly pronounced (in 1165), was held in that
diocese.  But the measures adopted at that time against them were at
first feebly executed, and had but little effect.  The new ideas spread
more and more; and in 1167 the innovators themselves held, at
St. Felix-de-Caraman, a petty council, at which they appointed bishops
for districts where they had numerous partisans.  Raymond VI., who, in
1195, succeeded his father, Raymond V., as Count of Toulouse, was
supposed to be favorably disposed towards them; he admitted them to
intimacy with him, and, it was said, allowed himself, in respect of the
orthodox Church, great liberty of thought and speech.  Meanwhile the
great days and the chief actors in the struggle commenced by St. Bernard
were approaching.  In 1198, Lothaire Conti, a pupil of the University of
Paris, was elected pope, with the title of Innocent III.; and, four or
five years later, Simon, Count of Montfort l'Amaury, came back from the
fifth crusade in the East, with a celebrity already established by his
valor and his zeal against the infidels.  Innocent III., no unworthy
rival of Gregory VII., his late predecessor in the Holy See, had the same
grandeur of ideas and the same fixity of purpose, with less headiness in
his character, and more knowledge of the world, and more of the spirit of
policy.  He looked upon the whole of Christendom as his kingdom, and upon
himself as the king whose business it was to make prevalent everywhere
the law of God.  Simon, as Count of Montfort l'Amaury, was not a powerful
lord; but he was descended, it was said, from a natural son of King
Robert his mother, who was English, had left him heir to the earldom of
Leicester, and he had for his wife Alice de Montmorency.  His social
status and his personal renown, superior as they were to his worldly
fortunes, authorized in his case any flight of ambition; and in the East
he had learned to believe that anything was allowed to him in the service
of the Christian faith.  Innocent III., on receiving the tiara, set to
work at once upon the government of Christendom.  Simon de Montfort, on
returning from Palestine, did not dream of the new crusade to which he
was soon to be summoned, and for which he was so well prepared.

Innocent III. at first employed against the heretics of Southern France
only spiritual and legitimate weapons.  Before proscribing, he tried to
convert them; he sent to them a great number of missionaries, nearly all
taken from the order of Citeaux, and of proved zeal already; many amongst
them had successively the title and power of legates; and they went
preaching throughout the whole country, communicating with the princes
and laic lords, whom they requested to drive away the heretics from their
domains, and holding with the heretics themselves conferences which
frequently drew a numerous attendance.  A knight "full of sagacity,"
according to a contemporary chronicler, "Pons d'Adhemar, of Rodelle, said
one day to Foulques, Bishop of Toulouse, one of the most zealous of the
pope's delegates, 'We could not have believed that Rome had so many
powerful arguments against these folk here.'  'See you not,' said the
bishop, 'how little force there is in their objections?'  'Certainly,'
answered the knight.  'Why, then, do you not expel them from your lands?'
'We cannot,' answered Pons; 'we have been brought up with them; we have
amongst them folk near and dear to us, and we see them living honestly.'"
Some of the legates, wearied at the little effect of their preaching,
showed an inclination to give up their mission.  Peter de Castelnau
himself, the most zealous of all, and destined before long to pay for his
zeal with his life, wrote to the pope to beg for permission to return to
his monastery.  Two Spanish priests, Diego Azebes, Bishop of Osma, and
his sub-prior Dominic, falling in with the Roman legates at Montpellier,
heard them express their disgust.  "Give up," said they to the legates,
"your retinue, your horses, and your goings in state; proceed in all
humility, afoot and barefoot, without gold or silver, living and teaching
after the example of the Divine Master."  "We dare not take on ourselves
such things," answered the pope's agents; "they would seem sort of
innovation; but if some person of sufficient authority consent to precede
us in such guise, we would follow him readily."  The Bishop of Osma sent
away his retinue to Spain, and kept with him only his companion Dominic;
and they, taking with them two of the monks of Citeaux, Peter de
Castelnau and Raoul,--the most fervent of the delegates from Rome,--began
that course of austerity and of preaching amongst the people which was
ultimately to make of the sub-prior Dominic a saint and the founder of a
great religious order, to which has often, but wrongly, been attributed
the origin, though it certainly became the principal agent, of the
Inquisition.  Whilst joining in humble and pious energy with the two
Spanish priests, the two monks of Citeaux, and Peter de Castelnau
especially, did not cease to urge amongst the laic princes the
extirpation of the heretics.  In 1205 they repaired to Toulouse to demand
of Raymond VI. a formal promise, which indeed they obtained; but Raymond
was one of those undecided and feeble characters who dare not refuse to
promise what they dare not attempt to do.  He wished to live in peace
with the orthodox Church without behaving cruelly to a large number of
his subjects.  The fanatical legate, Peter de Castelnau, enraged at his
tergiversation, instantly excommunicated him; and the pope sent the count
a threatening letter, giving him therein to understand that in case of
need stronger measures would be adopted against him.  Raymond,
affrighted, prevailed on the two legates to repair to St. Gilles, and he
there renewed his promises to them; but he always sought for and found on
the morrow some excuse for retarding the execution of them.  The legates,
after having reproached him vehemently, determined to leave St. Gilles
without further delay, and the day after their departure (January 15th,
1208), as they were getting ready to cross the Rhone, two strangers, who
had lodged the night before in the same hostelry with them, drew near,
and one of the two gave Peter de Castelnau a lance-thrust with such
force, that the legate, after exclaiming, "God forgive thee, as I do!"
had only time to give his comrade his last instructions, and then
expired.

Great was the emotion in France and at Rome.  It was barely thirty years
since in England, after an outburst of passion on the part of King Henry
II., four knights of his court had murdered the Archbishop Thomas-a-
Becket in Canterbury Cathedral.  Was the Count of Toulouse, too, guilty
of having instigated the shedding of blood and the murder of a prelate?
Such was, in the thirteenth century, the general cry throughout the
Catholic Church and the signal for war against Raymond VI.; a war
undertaken on the plea of a personal crime, but in reality for the
extirpation of heresy in Southern France, and for the dispossession of
the native princes, who would not fully obey the decrees of the papacy,
in favor of foreign conquerors who would put them into execution.  The
crusade against the Albigensians was the most striking application of two
principles equally false and fatal, which did more than as much evil to
the Catholics as to the heretics, and to the papacy as to freedom; and
they are, the right of the spiritual power to claim for the coercion of
souls the material force of the temporal powers, and its right to strip
temporal sovereigns, in case they set at nought its injunctions, of their
title to the obedience of their people; in other words, denial of
religious liberty to conscience and of political independence to states.
It was by virtue of these two principles, at that time dominant, but not
without some opposition, in Christendom, that Innocent III., in 1208,
summoned the King of France, the great lords and the knights, and the
clergy, secular and regular, of the kingdom to assume the cross and go
forth to extirpate from Southern France the Albigensians, "worse than the
Saracens;" and that he promised to the chiefs of the crusaders the
sovereignty of such domains as they should win by conquest from the
princes who were heretics or protectors of heretics.

Throughout all France, and even outside of France, the passions of
religion and ambition were aroused at this summons.

Twelve abbots and twenty monks of Citeaux dispersed themselves in all
directions preaching the crusade; and lords and knights, burghers and
peasants, laymen and clergy, hastened to respond.  "From near and far
they came," says the contemporary poet-chronicler, William of Tudela;
"there be men from Auvergne and Burgundy, France and Limousin; there be
men from all the world; there be Germans, Poitevines, Gascons, Rouergats,
and Saintongese.  Never did God make scribe who, whatsoever his pains,
could set them all down in writing, in two months or in three."  The poet
reckons "twenty thousand horsemen armed at all points, and more than two
hundred thousand villeins and peasants, not to speak of burghers and
clergy."  A less exaggerative though more fanatical writer, Peter of
Vaulx-Cernay, the chief contemporary chronicler of this crusade, contents
himself with saying that, at the siege of Carcassonne, one of the first
operations of the crusaders, "it was said that their army numbered fifty
thousand men."  Whatever may be the truth about the numbers, the
crusaders were passionately ardent and persevering: the war against the
Albigensians 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 these fifteen
years, in the region situated between the Rhone, the Pyrenees, the
Garonne, and even the Dordogne, nearly all the towns and strong castles,
Beziers, Carcassonne, Castelnaudary, Lavaur, Gaillac, Moissae, Minerve,
Termes, Toulouse, &c., 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.  We do not care to dwell here
in detail upon this tragical and monotonous history; we will simply
recall some few of its characteristics.  Doubt has been thrown upon the
answer attributed to Arnauld-Amaury, Abbot of Citeaux, when he was asked,
in 1209, by the conquerors of Beziers, how, at the assault of the city,
they should distinguish the heretics from the faithful: "Slay them all;
God will be sure to know His own."  The doubt is more charitable than
reasonable; for it is a contemporary, himself a monk of Citeaux, who
reports, without any comment, this hateful speech.  Simon de Montfort,
the hero of the crusade, employed similar language.  One day two
heretics, taken at Castres, were brought before him; one of them was
unshakable in his belief, the other expressed a readiness to turn
convert: "Burn them both," said the count; "if this fellow mean what he
says, the fire will serve for expiation of his sins, and, if he lie, he
will suffer the penalty for his imposture."  At the siege of the castle
of Lavaur, in 1211, Amaury, Lord of Montr6al, and eighty knights, had
been made prisoners: and "the noble Count Simon," says Peter of Vaulx-
Cernay, decided to hang them all on one gibbet; but when Amaury, the most
distinguished amongst them, had been hanged, the gallows-poles, which,
from too great haste, had not been firmly fixed in the ground, having
come down, the count, perceiving how great was the delay, ordered the
rest to be slain.  The pilgrims therefore fell upon them right eagerly
and slew them on the spot.  Further, the count caused stones to be heaped
upon the lady of the castle, Amaury's sister, a very wicked heretic, who
had been cast into a well.  Finally our crusaders, with extreme alacrity,
burned heretics without number."

In the midst of these atrocious unbridlements of passions supposed to be
religious, other passions were not slow to make their appearance.
Innocent III.  had promised the crusaders the sovereignty of the domains
they might win by conquest from princes who were heretics or protectors
of heretics.  After the capture, in 1209, of Beziers and Carcassonne,
possessions of Raymond Roger, Viscount of Albi, and nephew of the Count
of Toulouse, the Abbot of Citeaux, a legate of the pope, assembled the
principal chiefs of the crusaders that they might choose one amongst them
as lord and governor of their conquests.  The offer was made,
successively, to Eudes, Duke of Burgundy, to Peter de Courtenay, Count of
Nevers, and to Walter de Chatilion, Count of St. Paul; but they all three
declined, saying that they had sufficient domains of their own without
usurping those of the Viscount of Beziers, to whom, in their opinion,
they had already caused enough loss.  The legate, somewhat embarrassed,
it is said, proposed to appoint two bishops and four knights, who, in
concert with him, should choose a new master for the conquered
territories.  The proposal was agreed to, and, after some moments of
hesitation, Simon de Montfort, being elected by this committee, accepted
the proffered domains, and took imdiate possession of them on publication
of a charter conceived as follows: "Simon, Lord of Montfort, Earl of
Leicester, Viscount of Beziers and Carcassonne.  The Lord having
delivered into my hands the lands of the heretics, an unbelieving people,
that is to say, whatsoever He hath thought fit to take from them by the
hand of the crusaders, His servants, I have accepted humbly and devoutly
this charge and administration, with confidence in His aid."  The pope
wrote to him forthwith to confirm him in hereditary possession of his new
dominions, at the same time expressing to him a hope that, in concert
with the legates, he would continue to carry out the extirpation of the
heretics.  The dispossessed Viscount, Raymond Roger, having been put in
prison by his conqueror in a tower of Carcassonne itself, died there at
the end of three months, of disease according to some, and a violent
death according to others; but the latter appears to be a groundless
suspicion, for it was not to cowardly and secret crimes that Simon de
Montfort was inclined.

From this time forth the war in Southern France changed character, or,
rather, it assumed a double character; with the war of religion was
openly joined a war of conquest; it was no longer merely against the
Albigensians and their heresies, it was against the native princes of
Southern France and their domains that the crusade was prosecuted.  Simon
de Montfort was eminently qualified to direct and accomplish this twofold
design: sincerely fanatical and passionately ambitious; of a valor that
knew no fatigue; handsome and strong; combining tact with authority;
pitiless towards his enemies as became his mission of doing justice in
the name of the faith and the Church; a leader faithful to his friends
and devoted to their common cause whilst reckoning upon them for his own
private purposes, he possessed those natural qualities which confer
spontaneous empire over men and those abilities which lure them on by
opening a way for the fulfilment of their interested hopes.  And as for
himself, by the stealthy growth of selfishness, which is so prone to
become developed when circumstances are tempting, he every day made his
personal fortunes of greater and greater account in his views and his
conduct.  His ambitious appetite grew by the very difficulties it
encountered as well as by the successes it fed upon.  The Count of
Toulouse, persecuted and despoiled, complained loudly in the ears of the
pope; protested against the charge of favoring the heretics; offered and
actually made the concessions demanded by Rome; and, as security, gave up
seven of his principal strongholds.  But, being ever too irresolute and
too weak to keep his engagements to his subjects' detriment no less than
to stand out against his adversaries' requirements, he was continually
falling back into the same condition, and keeping off attacks which were
more and more urgent by promises which always remained without effect.
After having sent to Rome embassy upon embassy with explanations and
excuses, he twice went thither himself, in 1210 and in 1215; the first
time alone, the second with his young son, who was then thirteen, and who
was at a later period Raymond VII.  He appealed to the pope's sense of
justice; he repudiated the stories and depicted the violence of his
enemies; and finally pleaded the rights of his son, innocent of all that
was imputed to himself, and yet similarly attacked and despoiled.
Innocent III. had neither a narrow mind nor an unfeeling heart; he
listened to the father's pleading, took an interest in the youth, and
wrote, in April, 1212, and January, 1213, to his legates in Languedoc and
to Simon de Montfort, "After having led the army of the crusaders into
the domains of the Count of Toulouse, ye have not been content with
invading all the places wherein there were heretics, but ye have further
gotten possession of those where-in there was no suspicion of heresy.
.  .  .  The same ambassadors have objected to us that ye have usurped
what was another's with so much greed and so little consideration that of
all the domains of the Count of Toulouse there remains to him barely the