![]() His Cathars were heroic, the forefathers of progress in the darkness of Catholic totalitarianism. ![]() Foremost was Napoléon Peyrat, an anticlerical bourgeois liberal and talented fabulist, who concocted in the 1870s an account of the Cathars, which, though largely made up, still passes as truth in esoteric circles. In the 19th century, the subject drew writers - many of them cranks - attracted to the story of the faith's demise. Although the faith survived fitfully for a few generations, Montségur marked the end of all hope for Catharism. On March 16, 1244, some 200 Cathars who had withstood a 10-month siege atop their summit hideout of Montségur were marched into a field and burned alive. As inquisitors fanned out over the countryside of Albi, Toulouse and Carcassonne, anyone resisting them was imprisoned, tortured or killed. The crusade was followed by the birth of the Inquisition, expressly formed to hunt down and burn the remaining Cathars. The greatest Cathar figures - Raymond Roger Trencavel of Carcassonne, Esclarmonde of Foix and Raymond VI of Toulouse - were either killed, or forced into hiding or surrender. ![]() ![]() The crusade began at Béziers in 1209, when 20,000 people were slaughtered ("Kill them all, God will know his own!" was the order) and lasted 20 bloody years. Only when a hated papal legate, Peter of Castelnau, was felled by assassins in the region did the most powerful of medieval popes, Innocent III, find a pretext to enrol northern Europe in a campaign of terror in Languedoc. ![]()
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