Innocent III. was now dead, and the papal throne was occupied by the third Honorius, who entered with great ardor into the cause of De Montfort, and was warmly supported by the kings of France. The prospect of peace to the poor Albigenses under the mild government of Raymond was intolerable to the new shepherd of Rome. To gratify the infuriated pope, and under the pretense of fulfilling his vow and ensuring his eternal welfare, Louis, son of Philip Augustus, conducted a crusade as early as the year 1219. All the atrocities of the former time were renewed and surpassed, if possible, under the direction of the clergy. But we spare the reader the description of the satanic mixture of deceit, hypocrisy, perfidy, baseness, and savage cruelty, displayed by the clergy under the sanction of the sovereign.
The elder Raymond died, leaving the defense of his states to his son, then in the vigor of his age and hopes. It is said by Milner, "that he died of sickness, in a state of peace and prosperity, after his victory over Simon—that no man was ever treated with more injustice by the popedom." Philip Augustus also died, leaving his crown to Louis. The younger De Montfort, in the year 1224, despairing of success, finally abandoned Languedoc, and Raymond VII. sat on the throne of his ancestors, with no enemy to dread, excepting the pope and his sovereign—his pastor and his liege lord. But Raymond had a beautiful portion in France, and Louis was impatient to unite it to his crown.
Jezebel again plots; she convenes a council at Bourges, in the year 1225, at which Louis is enjoined to purge the land of heretics, and raises money for that purpose. Louis accordingly takes the cross, and attended by his barons and their followers, to the number of two hundred thousand men, advances once again to devastate the budding fields of Languedoc, and to exterminate all heretics according to the decrees of Rome. Poor unhappy Languedoc! When will Rome, the dragon, the devourer of God's saints, be satiated with blood?—with the blood of infants, of little children, of mothers and maidens, of unarmed, unoffending young men and fathers! A name could be given to the beast that symbolizes the Chaldean, Persian, and Grecian empires, but the fourth beast which symbolizes the Roman, whether pagan or papal, must be left unnamed. "After this I saw in the night visions," says Daniel, "and, behold, a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it, and it had ten horns." (Dan. 7:77After this I saw in the night visions, and behold a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth: it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it: and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns. (Daniel 7:7).) As a matter of interpretation, Daniel's vision refers more directly to the civil power; but the ecclesiastical aspect of the beast as in Revelation is more blood-thirsty than the civil ever was.
This unnamed monster we have now before us in the king of France urged to extremities by the pope. At the approach of the two hundred thousand crusaders under the banner of their own sovereign, the hearts of the people sank within them. Town after town yielded, for all the defenders had died. "They had so repeatedly endured all the horrors of war in all their most frightful forms, that the barons, knights, and communes of Languedoc, with one accord, hastened to avert, by timely concessions, the continuance of these intolerable calamities." But just at this moment when all seemed lost, the hand of the Lord interposed. A pestilence broke out in the invading camp. Louis himself was carried off, and thirty thousand of his soldiers were swept away by the contagion. The impending ruin of the inhabitants, and of the house of Raymond, was postponed for a little.
At the death of Louis VIII. his son, who was but a child, succeeded to the throne of France, and the reins of government meanwhile fell into the hands of his mother, Blanche of Castile. By her orders the siege of Toulouse was renewed. The advantages of the war were all in favor of Raymond; but the glory of his victories, according to one chronicler, were sullied by the cruelty with which he treated the vanquished who fell into his hands. The siege of Toulouse was protracted and difficult; the crusaders were losing hope; in their perplexity, Fouquet, the evil genius and the lying spirit of Toulouse, suggested the only means of a successful attack. By his advice all the vines, the corn, and the fruit trees were destroyed; all the houses burned for miles round the city, till the country was converted into a desolate wilderness; and the city of Toulouse stood in the center of a desert. Of course no supplies of any kind could be procured. This was the work of the bishop of the place, this was his diocese, these were the people over whom he had been appointed as overseer! The reader must judge whether he partakes more of the spirit of Daniel's fourth beast, or of Him who says to every shepherd, "Feed my sheep... Feed My lambs." (John 21.)
When this new vial of papal wrath was poured out on their devoted land, and every green thing withered up, the inhabitants of the city were so discouraged, and the spirit of Raymond their leader so completely broken, that at the end of three months peace was obtained on the most humiliating terms. The treaty of Paris, which terminated the war for a time, was signed in the month of April, 1229. The terms were dictated by the papal legate, and approved by the king of France. Raymond VII. whose comely form and graceful manners, together with the sense of his wrongs, drew tears from Innocent in the great Lateran Council, now bows his neck to a foreign yoke, and bares his shoulders to a spiritual despotism. He was led by the legate to the church in Paris; and, like his father in St. Gilles, with naked shoulders and bare feet, he underwent the same public and ignominious flogging by priestly hands. On his knees, in the church of Noter Dame, he solemnly abdicated all his feudal sovereignty to the king of France, and submitted to the penance of the church. The reader may remember that the father in his penance renounced seven castles, now the son renounces seven provinces. Thus it was ordered by Him who rules over all, and ordered for the future humbling of Rome, that the peace of Languedoc turned out so much to the advantage of Rome, as of the rapidly increasing monarchy of France. Philip Augustus had wrested from the feeble hands of John the continental possessions of the English crown, and now the dominions of the Count of Toulouse, and of the king of Arragon, north of the Pyrenees, were added to the French crown. "The possession of Normandy," says James White, "had already made France a maritime power; and now, by the acquisition of the Narbonnais and Maguelonne from Raymond VII., she not only extended her limits to the Mediterranean; but, by the extinction of two such vassals as the Count of Toulouse and the Duke of Normandy, incalculably strengthened the royal crown."