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