prisoners:  and “the noble Count Simon,” says Peter of Vaulx-Cernay, decided to hang them all on one gibbet; but when Amaury, the most distinguished amongst them, had been hanged, the gallows-poles, which, from too great haste, had not been firmly fixed in the ground, having come down, the count, perceiving how great was the delay, ordered the rest to be slain.  The pilgrims therefore fell upon them right eagerly and slew them on the spot.  Further, the count caused stones to be heaped upon the lady of the castle, Amaury’s sister, a very wicked heretic, who had been cast into a well.  Finally our crusaders, with extreme alacrity, burned heretics without number.”

In the midst of these atrocious unbridlements of passions supposed to be religious, other passions were not slow to make their appearance.  Innocent iii. had promised the crusaders the sovereignty of the domains they might win by conquest from princes who were heretics or protectors of heretics.  After the capture, in 1209, of Beziers and Carcassonne, possessions of Raymond Roger, Viscount of Albi, and nephew of the Count of Toulouse, the Abbot of Citeaux, a legate of the pope, assembled the principal chiefs of the crusaders that they might choose one amongst them as lord and governor of their conquests.  The offer was made, successively, to Eudes, Duke of Burgundy, to Peter de Courtenay, Count of Nevers, and to Walter de Chatilion, Count of St. Paul; but they all three declined, saying that they had sufficient domains of their own without usurping those of the Viscount of Beziers, to whom, in their opinion, they had already caused enough loss.  The legate, somewhat embarrassed, it is said, proposed to appoint two bishops and four knights, who, in concert with him, should choose a new master for the conquered territories.  The proposal was agreed to, and, after some moments of hesitation, Simon de Montfort, being elected by this committee, accepted the proffered domains, and took imdiate possession of them on publication of a charter conceived as follows:  “Simon, Lord of Montfort, Earl of Leicester, Viscount of Beziers and Carcassonne.  The Lord having delivered into my hands the lands of the heretics, an unbelieving people, that is to say, whatsoever He hath thought fit to take from them by the hand of the crusaders, His servants, I have accepted humbly and devoutly this charge and administration, with confidence in His aid.”  The pope wrote to him forthwith to confirm him in hereditary possession of his new dominions, at the same time expressing to him a hope that, in concert with the legates, he would continue to carry out the extirpation of the heretics.  The dispossessed Viscount, Raymond Roger, having been put in prison by his conqueror in a tower of Carcassonne itself, died there at the end of three months, of disease according to some, and a violent death according to others; but the latter appears to be a groundless suspicion, for it was not to cowardly and secret crimes that Simon de Montfort was inclined.