mond. The Dominicans took possession of Toulouse; whilst, to combat such dangerous enemies as the Waldenses and the Poor of Lyons,-who preached humility and poverty in contrast with the luxury and splendour of the Church of Rome,—the order of the Franciscans was founded, who were to practise for the rest of the Church the virtues of poverty, and who, by the performance of those acts of piety which attract the poor and humble, were to secure the attachment to Rome of that lower class which appeared ready to escape from it.

The decree of the Lateran Council went forth in 1215. Humbled as were the Languedocians, the population would not submit to the monks or to De Montfort. The son of Raymond raised, in 1216, the standard of war in Provence; the father appeared in the Toulousan country. De Montfort, in revenge for the citizens displaying their predilections for the ancient count, seized, pillaged, and destroyed the principal inhabitants, and then hastened to Paris to do homage to Philip Augustus, and no doubt besought of him those succours from the north, without which it was impossible for De Montfort to dominate the south. Philip gave but a hundred knights, who were to remain and to war for six months in Languedoc. This was insufficient; and, in 1217, Raymond of Toulouse once more took possession of his ancient capital. De Montfort, with his usual activity, hastened to expel him; but the country rose on all sides in execration of the oppressor, whose brother and nephew, in a precipitate attack on Toulouse, were both stricken down, and himself obliged to retreat. This compelled De Montfort to convert the siege into a blockade, which lasted all the winter; and it was not till spring that he could commence active operations. In the meanwhile, the citizens had gathered courage, gained military science, and made ample provision of food and of the engines of war.

V.

CHAP. They repelled the assault of De Montfort and the legate with an energy which, if exerted sooner, might have saved the south, its civilisation, and its creed. At length, on the fête of St. John, 24th of June, a stone from an engine struck Simon de Montfort on the breast, and delivered the south from its great oppressor.

The siege was immediately raised by Amaury de Montfort, son of Simon, who found it impossible to retrieve the fortunes of his house. A crusade directed against Egypt turned away that current of fanaticism and greed which had at first overwhelmed Languedoc. In 1219 Prince Louis, heir to the French throne, having taken La Rochelle from the English, finding himself with a victorious army in the neighbourhood of the disturbed south, marched, at the instigation of a papal legate, to lay siege to Toulouse. The town of Marmande lay in the way of their march, and the garrison capitulated. The bishops of the French army, however, declared that faith should not be preserved with heretics, and insisted on burning them all. The nobles opposed this infamy, and succeeded in saving the garrison; but the French soldiers, excited by the Bishop of Saintes, rushed in, and massacred the population, amounting to 5000 souls.

After this exploit, Louis marched to Toulouse, but, large as was his army, he could make no impression upon its walls. His troops were only bound to a term of feudal service, and he was thus soon obliged to decamp, after having burned his own engines. Shortly after, the old Count Raymond of Toulouse expired, and his son acquired fresh strength as well as rights. Amaury de Montfort could not hold his ground before him; he therefore, in 1222, made offer to Philip Augustus to cede to him all his rights in Languedoc. The French king, then weakened by age and illness, refused to undertake so weighty an enterprise; and thus the natural termination of the struggle between

V.

the Pope and the people of the south, by which the СНАР. crown of France alone profited, was not indeed prevented, but deferred for a few years and a new reign.

The early success of the crusade against the Albigenses seemed to place all the crowns of Europe at the disposal of the Pope. Innocent the Third was not a pontiff likely to allow such power to slumber in hist hands. He undertook to dethrone the Emperor Otho by raising up a rival; and John of England, in the midst of his other imprudences, having thought fit to brave the Pope's injunctions with respect to the nomination of an archbishop of Canterbury, Innocent forthwith excommunicated him, and made a present of England to Philip Augustus. This monarch was nothing loth to accept the present. John was not a very formidable enemy, as Philip had fully proved; and in the spring of 1213, the French king, in imitation of William the Conqueror, summoned his barons to Soissons, to decide upon and prepare for a descent upon England. The French barons were eager for the enterprise and the spoil. The only recalcitrant was Ferrand or Ferdinand, Count of Flanders, who complained that he had been unjustly despoiled of St. Omer and Aire, and demanded their restitution. Ferrand owed the county of Flanders to Philip Augustus, who had given him in marriage Jeanne, daughter of Baldwin, and heiress of the county. The French court certainly chose the moment of the marriage to seize St. Omer; but Philip Augustus had some claim to it by right of his first wife, daughter of the Count of Flanders.

A French fleet and army assembled at Rouen, whilst John mustered 60,000 English upon Barham Downs, who, "had they had one heart and one soul," says Matthew Paris, "there was no prince under heaven that England might not have defied." John, however, had no soul wherewith to inspire an English army. He mistrusted his nobles, and was terrified by a prophecy to the effect

CHAP.

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that he should soon cease to be king. Whilst under the influence of this terror, a papal legate landed on the coast of Kent, and John, to propitiate him and ward off French invasion, made over himself and his realm as liege to the Pope. It remained for the legate, fully satisfied by this submission, to pacify the King of France: the latter complained that he had spent 60,000 livres in preparing the expedition. And Matthew Paris says he would have paid little attention to the injunctions of the legate, had he not been enraged against the Count of Flanders, and resolved to punish him. He brought his army forthwith to Boulogne, and there embarked for Gravelines, from whence he ordered his fleet to Dam, and led his troops to the reduction of Bruges and Ghent. Whilst thus engaged, an English fleet, under the Count of Boulogne and the Earl of Salisbury, assailed the French fleet at Dam, and destroyed it, to the number of upwards of a thousand of different kinds of craft. This disheartened Philip. He contented himself with taking away hostages from the several towns, as a guarantee for the payment of a certain sum, and then withdrew, keeping garrisons merely in Douai, Cassel, and Lille. The two last were recaptured by the Count of Flanders.

The King of France had deferred, not abandoned, his project of landing in England. His invasion of Flanders had alarmed the nobles of that region, especially the Duke of Brabant, father-in-law of the Emperor Otho. All had recourse to the All had recourse to the emperor, who saw in Philip Augustus the most dangerous of his foes. The imperial crown of Germany was then disputed between Otho and young Frederic the Second, who had come from Sicily to claim the heritage of the Hohenstauffen, and one of whose first acts had been to apply for, and receive an assurance of, French aid. Frederic, at the close of 1211, had met Prince Louis, son of the French king, at Vaucouleurs, and had received from him

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20,000 marks to enable him to hold his ground in Ger- СНАР. many; Otho received a similar sum from King John; and thus was the quarrel of France and England mingled up with that of the competitors for the imperial dignity. The Emperor Otho, therefore, thought that, in striking a blow at Philip Augustus, he would not only save the Dukes of Brabant and Flanders, as well as his menaced relative of England, but would deprive Frederic of one of the allies he most depended

on.

The emperor, therefore, agreed to take the command of the army which the nobles of the Low Countries were to form, and lead it against France.

The French King on his side prepared to meet the storm. He despatched his son Louis with an ample force to oppose John, who had landed at La Rochelle, and advanced to Angers. The king himself mustered the forces of the communes or towns in the north of his dominions, and with these principally, prepared to resist the attack of the German Emperor. One is surprised to find in this war between feudal France and civic Flanders, the King of France at the head of an army principally composed of townsfolk, who distinguished themselves by valour in his behalf, whilst in the army which the German Emperor led for the defence of Flanders, the force seems to have been chiefly feudal, none but the citizens of Bruges being mentioned as present, and they being remarked solely for having been the first to retreat. Some of the magistrates of Ghent and Bruges even marched with the King of France, as did the militia of Amiens, who had once so strenuously opposed him. In fact Philip Augustus, as his reign advanced, had made himself the patron of municipal liberties and of the middle classes, and he was not zealously opposed by those even in Flanders, whose Count Fernando, a Portuguese, was probably ignorant or reckless of the means of propitiating them.

In the month of July, 1214, the Emperor Otho mus