CARCASSONNE.
Siege of Carcassonne by the Crusaders--Capture--Perfidy of legate--Death
of the Viscount--Continuation of the war--Churches of New Carcassonne--_La
Cité_--A perfect Mediæval fortified town--Disappointing--Visigoth
fortifications--Later additions--The Cathedral--Tomb of Simon de Montfort.
The Viscount of Béziers was not in the city from which he took his title
when it fell. He had hurried on to Carcassonne to prepare that for defence.
There he exerted himself with the utmost energy, with rage and despair, to
be ready against the bloodthirsty, and yet blood-drunken ruffians who were
pouring along the road from smoking Béziers, to do to Carcassonne as they
had done there. Pedro, king of Aragon, interfered; he appeared as mediator
in the camp of the Crusaders. Carcassonne was held as a fief under him as
lord paramount. He pleaded the youth of the viscount, asserted his fidelity
to the Church, his abhorrence of the Albigensian heresy; it was no fault of
his, he argued, that his subjects had lapsed into error, and he declared
that the Viscount had authorised him to place his submission in the hands
of the legate of Pope Innocent. But the Crusaders were snorting for plunder
and murder. The only terms they would admit were that the young viscount
might retire with twelve knights; the city must surrender at discretion.
The proud and gallant youth declared that he had rather be flayed alive
than desert the least of his subjects. The first assaults, though on one
occasion led by the prelates chanting the 'Veni Creator' ended in failure.
[Illustration: Towers on the wall, Carcassonne.]
Carcassonne might have resisted successfully had it been properly
provisioned, or had the viscount limited the number admitted within its
walls. But multitudes of refugees had come there from all the country
round. The wells failed. Disease broke out. The viscount was obliged to
come to terms, to accept a free conduct from the officer of the legate, and
he endeavoured to make terms for his subjects.
Most of the troops made their escape by subterranean passages, and the
defenceless city came into the power of the Crusaders. The citizens were
stripped almost naked, and their houses given up to pillage, but their
lives were spared, with the exception of some fifty who were hanged and
four hundred who were burned alive. The viscount had given himself up on
promise of safe conduct; but no promises, no oaths were held sacred in
these wars of religion, and the perfidious legate seized him, cast him into
a dungeon, and there he died a few months later of a broken spirit and the
pestilential prison air.
The law of conquest was now to be put in force. The lands of the heretic
the Pope was ready to bestow on such as had dutifully done his behest. The
legate assembled the principal crusading nobles, that they might choose
among them one to act as lord over their conquests. The offer was made,
successively, to the Duke of Burgundy, the Count of Nevers, and the Count
of S. Pol; but they all three declined, saying scornfully that they had
lands enough of their own without taking those of another. They were,
perhaps, fearful of the perilous example of setting up the fiefs of France
to the hazard of the sword. Simon de Montfort was less scrupulous, or
more ambitious, and he took immediate possession of the lands that had
been acquired. The Pope wrote to him and confirmed him in the hereditary
possession of his new dominions, at the same time expressing to him a hope
that, in concert with the legates, he would continue very zealous in the
extirpation of the heretics.
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 Albigenses
and their heresies, it was against the native princes of the south of
France, for the sake of their dominions, that the crusade was prosecuted.
If it came within my scope to speak about Toulouse, I should be constrained
to tell more of this sanguinary story. I am thankful that I need not
prosecute the hateful tale; but so much it was not possible for me to
withhold from the reader, as it is with these memories that Carcassonne and
Beziers must be visited and looked at.
Carcassonne is a double city, a city on a hill and another on the plain,
each ancient, but that below with the modern element leavening it, that
above wholly steeped in mediævalism.
[Illustration: An entrance to Carcassonne.]
In the lower town are two fine churches, very peculiar in design, forming
vast halls without pillars, and with small chancels and apses. There can be
no question that they look uncomfortable without pillars, that the choir
does not grow out of the church naturally, and is devoid of dignity. These
two churches are S. Vincent and S. Michael. The latter is of the thirteenth
century, and seems to have formed the pattern upon which the other was
built in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries. There is no west portal,
but it has a fine rose window. The church is entered by a small door on
the north. The other and later church, S. Vincent, has a very fine tower,
which has, unfortunately, not been completed. It also has no west door,
and is entered by a small portal at the side. These churches have their
lateral chapels arranged like those in the cathedral at Munich between
the buttresses, and the church is lighted by windows above them. Such
buildings make admirable preaching-halls, but as churches are not pleasing
internally.
To the east of New Carcassonne flows the river Aude crossed by a bridge,
with a quaint little chapel recently restored beside it. From this bridge a
view of Old Carcassonne, _La Cité_, as it is called, bursts on the sight.
It stands on a height about 125 ft. above the river, and this height has
two peaks, one is occupied by the citadel, the other by the old cathedral
of S. Nazaire.
The whole of this _Cité_ is surrounded by its walls and towers, quite
as perfect as when originally built, for they have been very carefully
restored by M. Viollet-le-Duc. Consequently we have before us a French
fortified town of the Middle Ages come down to us unaltered. That it is
picturesque is unquestionable, that it is _eminently_ picturesque cannot be
allowed. The builders had no concern for making a beautiful picture, they
thought only of making an impregnable place. It is precisely this that
differentiates it from a score of German fortified towns. The burghers of
these latter were resolved to make their towns miracles of beauty as well
as strong places. Consequently they varied the shapes of their towers, they
capped them quaintly, hardly making two alike. Here, at Carcassonne, every
tower, or nearly every tower, resembles its fellow, and all have sugar-loaf
caps that irritate the eye with iteration of the same form. The citadel
has no character of massiveness, no grand donjon to distinguish it from
the rest of the fortifications, and the cathedral has only two mean little
donkey's ears of towers that are most ineffective, peeping over the walls
of the south-western angle of the town. In looking out for a study for a
picture one has to get where some of the sugar-loaf towers are eclipsed,
and there is only one point in the whole circumference where a really
satisfactory grouping is obtainable, and that is at the angle outside
immediately below the cathedral platform to the west, where the one
respectable turret of the castle stands up boldly from the rock, and the
flanking turrets overlap and hide each other.
[Illustration: A bit of Carcassonne.]
Interesting, most interesting is Old Carcassonne, and picturesque in its
fashion; the regret one feels is that, with its opportunities, it is not
more so. I do not think that M. Viollet-le-Duc's restoration is in fault,
but that the original architects had no idea of anything better, were men
of mediocre abilities, or cared only to make the defences strong at all
costs, and to sacrifice everything else to this one consideration.
But the same fault is inherent in all French castle-building and
city-fortification of the Middle Ages. It is picturesque when in ruins. On
the other hand, the German castles and fortified towns look their very best
when in perfect repair. Let the reader take up Albert Dürer's delightful
little engraving of the Hermit, and compare the background of a German
walled town and castle on a height with _La Cité_, Carcassonne, and he will
see how vast is the difference in quality of picturesqueness between the
two.
The _Cité_ is actually enclosed within double ramparts, and a portion of
these dates from the time of the Visigoths. Their walls were composed of
cubic blocks of stone, with alternate layers of brick, were double-faced,
and filled in with rubble bedded in lime, forming a sort of concrete
core. The towers were round outside with flat face to the town, and large
round-headed windows which were closed with boards. These in later times
were built up. The interior walls and towers are the earliest, and were
those besieged by the Crusaders. It was in one of the towers of the castle
that the unhappy young viscount died. The outer fortifications were erected
by Louis IX. and his son, Philip the Bold. The Visigoth walls were defended
by thirty-two towers, of which only one was square. Louis IX. constructed a
great barbican below the castle, commanding the bridge over the Aude, but
that was destroyed some years ago.
[Illustration: Inside the wall, Carcassonne.]
The _Cité_ underwent a second siege in 1240, whilst Louis IX. was on his
crusade, and Queen Blanche was regent. Very curious letters exist from
Guillaume des Ormes, the seneschal to the regent, describing the siege
of Carcassonne by the troops of the viscount; but for these, and for a
detailed account of the fortifications, I must refer the reader to M.
Viollet-le-Duc's account, in his treatise on the Military Architecture of
the Middle Ages.
[Illustration: Entrance to the Castle, Carcassonne.]
The old town of Carcassonne, crowded within the walls, has very narrow
streets and tiny squares; the only open space being before the citadel and
the cathedral. This latter has a fine Romanesque nave that was consecrated
by Pope Urban II. in 1096, with its west end designed for defence, after
the customary manner in the south. It is supported by massive piers,
alternately round and square. To this plain nave is added a light
and lovely choir with transepts, of the beginning of the fourteenth
century. Here the glorious windows are filled with rich old stained
glass--barbarously restored. And here, on one side of the high altar may
be seen a slab of red marble--rightly blood-red--marking the tomb of the
infamous Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, the cruel and remorseless
right hand of the Pope, with which this fair region was deluged with blood.
He was killed on June 20th, 1218, by a stone flung from the walls of
Toulouse, which he had been unsuccessfully besieging for nine months. From
the south side of the old _Cité_ a delightful view is obtained of the
Pyrenees, snow-clad when I was there in April; but the mountain forms
of the chain as it approaches the Mediterranean lose boldness and
picturesqueness of outline, as they also dwindle in altitude.