THE TREASON OF CARCASSONNE. 89 It had old claims to much of the land, and its rule might well be hailed by the people as much more welcome than the foreign domination to which they had been unwilhngly subjected. Had the whole region agreed to transfer its allegiance, its reduction might have cost Phihppe a doubtful struggle, embarrassed as he was with the chronic disaffection of the Flemings. When, how- ever, the project was broached to the men of Albi, they refused peremptorily to embark in it, and there can be no stronger proof of the desperation of the Carcassais than their resolution to per- sist in it single-handed. Ferrand and his father were at Mont- pelher entertaining the French court, which they accompanied to Mmes. He eagerly hstened to the overtures, and asked Frere Bernard to come to him at Perpignan. Bernard went thither with a letter of credence from the consuls, which he prudently destroyed on the road. The King of Majorca, when he heard of the offer, chastened his son's ambition by boxing his ears and pull- ing him around by the hair, and he ingratiated himself with his- powerful neighbor by communicating the plot to Philippe.* Although there could have been no real danger from so crazy a project, the relation of the southern provinces to the crown were too strained for the king not to exact a vengeance which should prove a warning. A court was assembled at Carcassonne which sat through the summer of 1305 and made free use of torture in its investigations. Albi, which had taken no part in the plot, escaped an investigation by a bribe of one thousand livres to the seneschal, Jean d'Alnet, but the damage inflicted on the Francis- can convent shows that the Dominicans were keen to make re- prisals for what they had suffered. The town of Limoux had been concerned in the affair ; it was fined and disfranchised, and
- MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, 4270, fol. 26, 74-8, 88-9, 98, 103-8, 198, 200-3,
226, 233, 265, 279.— Mascaro, Memorias de Bezes, ann. 1336, 1389. For the tenure of Montpellier by the Kings of Majorca, see Vaissette, IV. 38, 42, 77-8, 151, 235-6. It was not until 1349 that Philippe de Valois boujrht out the rights of Jayme II., and in 1352 his son Jean was obliged to extinguish the claims still asserted by Pedro IV. of Aragon (lb. 247, 268, Pr. 219). Bernard's attention was probably drawn to the House of Majorca by its strong adhesion to the Franciscan Order. Ferrand's older brother died in 1304, in the Franciscan habit, under the name of Fray Jayme. Another brother, Felipe, be- came a " Spiritual Franciscan," as we shall see hereafter.
