Wars and invasion forces must have specific targets -- they must march on particular locations and engage with particular forces deemed to be enemies. The selection of those targets during the Albigensian crusade was problematic for the Catholic Church and continues to cause disagreement among modern historians. There were certainly differences between the targets described in the initial preaching of the crusade, the targets which the crusade first attacked, and the targets on which it eventually turned. The question of how these targets were chosen and how those choices came to change is one that continues to cause difficulty to this day and is the subject of this post.
THE INITIALLY INTENDED TARGET OF THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE
It is clear from the very earliest contemporary sources that great ambiguity existed about the actual targets of the crusade. In the letter of Innocent III calling for this crusade, the pope repeatedly emphasized that this holy war would be an act of vengeance for the murder of Peter of Castelnau. Although he clearly blamed Count Raymond of Toulouse for the murder and levied many legal and religious punishments against him, the pope separated these sanctions, which were to be enacted by his bishops and legates, from the actions to be performed by the lay crusaders.
"Let us turn now," he wrote "to those who, fired with zeal for the true faith, are ready to gird themselves to avenge this righteous blood ... and to resist those villains who are attacking peace and truth." Who "those villains" were, however, was left unstated. Innocent continued to characterize the targets of his crusade without naming them: "Let us emphasise that those villains are striving not merely to snatch our possessions but to take our lives; they are not merely sharpening their tongues to attack our souls, they are raising their hands to attack our bodies; they have become corrupters of souls and despoilers of lives." The only life taken at this time seems to have been that of Peter of Castelnau, but Innocent's rhetoric here broadened the scope of the war to include those who might later be found "raising their hands to attack our bodies." In other words, the targets of the crusade were already being identified as those who would come to resist it.
This broadening of scope was reinforced immediately afterward when Innocent discussed the desirable possibility that Count Raymond would submit and be reconciled with the Church. After this, he again hinted only vaguely about those who might be targeted by the crusade after such a reconciliation. He left that decision to his legates. "Accordingly we enjoin and instruct the archbishops and bishops (reinforcing our prayers with commands and our commands with prayers) to give most careful heed to the advice and directions of the legates and help them like true comrades in arms to carry out whatever instructions they issue for the success of our enterprise. Let them understand that we have laid it down that any sentence pronounced by the legates against those who stand against us or those who stand idly by are to be held valid and strictly observed." In lieu of Count Raymond himself, anyone the legates chose who opposed the crusade or even attempted neutrality were decreed as valid targets. "Work to root out perfidious heresy in whatever way God reveals to you," he enjoined in his conclusion.
It seems strange to begin a war, especially a crusade which called on lords and fighting men throughout Christendom, without a clear target. Count Raymond had, of course, been clearly identified and targeted but his submission and reconciliation were almost expected and indeed occurred well before the war began. Since this reconciliation had been anticipated, and since it required the agreement of the pope and his legates to occur, they must have planned for a crusade which executed its vengeance upon some other target.
THE FOURTH CRUSADE AS AN EXAMPLE OF MISDIRECTION
Could tens of thousands of holy warriors have embarked on crusade without any real idea of whom they might be fighting? It seems absurd, but that claim is frequently made about Innocent's launch of the Fourth Crusade, just a few years earlier. The preaching of that crusade and the papal propaganda produced for it all exclusively cited Jerusalem as the destination of the crusaders. The crusading kingdoms of the Holy Land, however, had achieved a truce with the Saracens which seemed to preclude a Christian attack on Jerusalem. As Christopher Tyerman put it in "God's War" (p. 509): "Given the Palestine truce of 1198, an expeditionary force to the Holy Land would not have been welcome. This seemed to be of some importance to the crusade high command. In their 1201 treaty with the Venetians to mount an attack on Egypt, they explicitly agreed the fleet would sail direct to Egypt, implying an avoidance of a landfall in mainland Outremer, which would compromise King Aimery's diplomacy. This insistence on deferring to the 1198 truce may partly explain the leadership's consistent and strident hostility to any who wished to leave the army to sail straight to Palestine."
This divergence between the Church's publicly stated goals and its actual intent was dramatically demonstrated in the creation of the treaty with Venice to transport and support the crusade. As Tyerman relates (God's War, pp. 512-3): "A secret understanding that the destination of the armada would be Egypt, specifically Cairo, 'because from there the Turks could be more easily crushed than from any other part of their territory', was omitted from the text of the treaty for public relations reasons. However, the nature of the fleet, including the specialist uissier landing craft and the large squadron of Venetian galleys, clearly indicated an attack on hostile beaches and fighting at sea or in rivers, the Nile Delta, not the friendly port of Acre or the hills of Judea."
Infamously, the Fourth Crusade sailed for neither Jerusalem nor Cairo, instead sacking first Zara and then Constantinople, before annexing most of the Byzantine Empire and extending the Catholic Church's rule over what had previously been the Eastern Orthodox Church. Innocent's role in the final outcome remains disputed and his actions at the time were contradictory. He initially forbade any attack on Christians but qualified that by adding "unless necessary". He excommunicated the crusaders after the fall of Constantinople, but accepted his tribute of booty from the despoiled city and reconciled the crusaders afterwards. He claimed to be appalled by the forcible conversion of the East to Catholicism, but gladly accepted his increased dominion. The details of the decision-making are obscured by stories of undelivered messages, disobedient legates and divided councils. Although most historians, including Tyerman, agree that the results of the Fourth Crusade were not intended by the Pope, his legates, or the crusade's commanders, it does seem clear that a massive crusading undertaking could be launched without clear agreement on its target and, in fact, with considerable duplicity about it.
THE PRIMARY SOURCES ON THE TARGET OF THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE
After the reconciliation of Count Raymond of Toulouse, the Albigensian crusade marched first on Beziers and then on Carcassonne, the principal holdings of the young Viscount Raymond-Roger Trencavel. Historians do not agree on how or why this occurred. As always, we should begin our examination with the statements of the contemporary primary sources.
In the Historia Albigensis, Peter des Vaux-de-Cernay was curiously tight-lipped about the decision. He devotes the end of section IV of the Historia to describing the reconciliation of Count Raymond. In V, §§ 82-3, pp. 48-9 he described Count Raymond joining the crusade and renewing his pledges almost as if it were a last-minute surprise, but glossed over the decision to change the target of the crusade, if indeed such a decision occurred:
"In the year 1209 ... all the crusaders who had been making their way from various parts of France converged on Lyon, the ancient capital city of Gaul, in accordance with a common prearranged plan.
...
When Raymond, Count of Toulouse, heard of the arrival of the host of crusaders he became afraid that they would invade his territory, since his conscience was troubled by the recollection of the villainies he had perpetrated. He therefore went out to meet them, almost as far as the city of Valence, but they had gone out with a high hand. Accordingly, he joined them near the city, pretended that he wanted peace and gave a false pledge of compliance and a firm promise to subject himself to the orders of the Holy Roman Church and even to the will of the crusaders. As his security for keeping to these undertakings he handed over certain fortresses to the barons and even indicated his willingness to offer his son or himself as hostage. What more? The enemy of Christ allied himself to the soldiers of Christ; they joined together and proceeded directly to Beziers."
Both Peter des Vaux-de-Cernay and William of Tudela depicted Raymond's prior reconciliation in similar terms. Raymond had first approached a clerical meeting at Aubenas where he attempted to submit to Arnau-Amalric, the head of the Cistercian order. Arnau-Amalric, however, stated that he could not accept such a decision himself, and instructed Raymond to make his appeal directly to Rome. Raymond then sent envoys to Rome, including the archbishop of Auch, the abbot of Condom, the former bishop of Toulouse, and the prior of the Hospitallers at Toulouse. As a result, a papal legate named Milo was sent to reconcile the Count and did so after ritually humiliating Raymond at a ceremony in St Gilles.
William of Tudela's account of these diplomatic efforts is mixed in with Count Raymond's efforts to reach some agreement with his nephew, the young Viscount Trencavel in Laisses 9, 10 and 11 of the Canso. The editing of the Canso at this point is very uncertain. The end of Laisse 8 has the crusading army already gathered "on the plains outside Beziers." The two narratives of Count Raymond`s negotiations -- with Rome and with his nephew -- are then awkwardly entwined in the next three Laisses, but are abruptly interrupted (in the second half of Laisse 9) by a second prologue in which William reintroduces himself and his commencement of the song in the summer of 1210.
This confusion of editing makes the chronology of events rather unclear. It is certain that the crusaders were not camped just outside of Beziers prior to any of Count Raymond`s negotiations, although this is how it appears in the assembled text. A certain sense of the order of events can be found in William`s description of the actions and apprehensions of the young Raymond-Roger Trencavel, however. Raymond-Roger is first mentioned in the Canso in Laisse 9 (p. 15):
"I do not suppose the count of Toulouse, the other barons and the viscount of Beziers were pleased when they heard that the French were taking the cross; indeed as the song says, they were very concerned.
... the count rode fast to his nephew the viscount and begged him not to attack him; let them stand together in defence and avert their own and their country`s destruction. But instead of Yes the viscount answered No. They parted on bad terms..."
In Laisse 11 (p. 16):
"When the viscount of Beziers heard that Count Raymond had indeed made his peace, he bitterly repented and would have been glad to make terms too if he could. But Milo [the papal legate] despised him and refused his request. So the viscount summoned his forces from his whole fief, horse and foot, every able-bodied man, and waited inside Carcassonne for the crusading forces to arrive. How wretched were those who had stayed at Beziers! I doubt if as many as fifty or a hundred of them escaped death."
As William presented it, then, the attacks on the young Viscount's territory seemed a foregone conclusion once Raymond had reconciled, as if the Trencavel lands had always been a secondary target of the crusade. William of Tudela mentions Count Raymond's assistance to, and support of, the crusaders here, but only in the context of fulfilling his recently-made promises. In Laisse 13 (p. 17):
"They [the crusaders] rode in close array with banners raised, not expecting to meet any opposition in the whole Carcasses, and intending to take Toulouse (but it had made its peace) and Carcassonne, they said, and the Albigeois. ... Count Raymond hurried out to meet them, for he had promised faithfully to ride with them."
Similarly, in Laisse 14, (p. 18):
"Count Raymond is guiding them [the crusaders] and indeed they need his help. Each day he rides ahead and shows them where they can camp in the lands belonging to Raymond Roger his nephew, his sister's son, who is making constant war on him."
William of Tudela, despite being a supporter of the crusade, goes on to explain in some detail that the Viscount was in all ways a good Catholic, generous, courteous, and well-bred, but due to his youth perhaps too lenient and familiar with his knights and subordinate lords, who harbored heretics in the lands they held from him.
Beyond that, neither source gives any indication of who made the decision for the attack on the Trencavel lands, or why they did so. The next post will examine the differing opinions of subsequent historians on this first crucial decision.
