CLIFF CASTLES
dear to the princes precisely on account of their impiety, which rendered them insensible to ecclesiastical censures."[1]
From 1204 to 1222 was the period of the Crusade against the Albigenses. Pope Innocent III. poured over that beautiful land in the south of France—beautiful as the Garden of God—a horde of ruffians, made up of the riffraff of Europe, summoned to murder, pillage and outrage, with the promise of Heaven as their reward. After committing atrocities such as people Hell, these scoundrels, despising the religion they had been summoned to defend, with every spark of humanity extinguished in their breasts, looked about for fresh mischief, and found it, by enrolling themselves under the banner of England; their tiger cubs grew up with the lust of blood and rapine that had possessed their fathers. Generation after generation of these fiends in human form ranged over the soil of France committing intolerable havoc. A carpenter of Le Puy formed an association for the ex- termination of these bands. Philip Augustus encouraged him, furnished troops, and in one day slaughtered ten thousand of them. But so long as the English claim on so large a portion of the soil of France was maintained, the bands were incessantly recruited. The French King hired them as well as the King of England. So, later, did the Popes, when they quitted Avignon, and by their aid recovered the patrimony of S. Peter.
The barons and seigneurs in the South were no better than the routiers. They transferred their allegiance from the Leopards to the Lilies, or vice versâ, as suited their caprices. The Sieur de Pons went over to the side of France because he quarrelled with his wife, who was ardent on the English side. The local nobility helped the routiers, and the routiers assisted them in their private feuds.
- ↑ Histoire de France, ii. p. 362. The first to introduce them was Henry Courtmantel when he rebelled against his father. On his death in 1163 they disbanded, and then reunited under elected captains, and pillaged the country.
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