The pope was in a difficulty; he yielded to a necessity. He alone had called forth the movement; but the power to control it had slipt from his hold; his agents were only carrying out his instructions; he had no right to complain. Making a virtue of necessity, he sharply rebuked the king of Arragon -the chief support of the Catholic cause in Spain—charged him with misrepresentation, threatened him with a crusade, and confirmed his sentence of excommunication against Raymond and his allies. De Montfort was proclaimed the active servant of Jesus Christ, and the invincible champion of the Catholic faith; he was also authorized to retain his conquests. The patience of the long-suffering king of Arragon was now exhausted, and, provoked by the insolence of the clergy, he flew to arms. At the head of a thousand knights and a large army, he crossed the Pyrenees, and encountered the crusaders at the little town of Muret, about nine miles from Toulouse. At the head of the warriors of the cross, attended by seven bishops, appeared Simon de Montfort in full military array. "His army," says Greenwood, "though fewer in numbers, consisted of the heavy-armed chivalry of France, eager, by victory over the heretical host, to earn immortal honor, or by martyrdom to be wafted into the presence of the saints in paradise." The battle which followed was fierce, short, and decisive. Don Pedro with many of his nobles was numbered with the slain. The remnant of his army, deprived of his command, broke and dispersed; and the whole of the raw and ill-armed militia of Raymond and his allies were either put to the sword, or drowned in the Garonne to the last man.
The cause of the Albigenses in consequence of the great victory of Muret had now become desperate, and the fate of the devoted land appeared to be decided forever. Raymond was stripped of his territories; De Montfort was acknowledged as prince of the fief and city of Toulouse, and of the other counties conquered by the crusaders under his command. Overwhelmed by his misfortunes, and by the censures of the church, Raymond offered no opposition. Fouquet, the pope's bishop, took possession of the palace of his ancestors, and, with a cruel impudence which no language can describe, ordered the noble count and his family to retire into obscurity. Such were and are the tender mercies of the Romish priesthood, even to their own flock if reckoned disobedient; for Raymond never was accused of heresy, only of sheltering heretics in his dominions—or, in other words, of refusing to massacre in cold blood his most dutiful and loyal subjects: this was his whole crime in the sight of Rome, as heaven will surely judge.