however, the persistence of Catharism led Languedoc into a new phase of its history and
to unification with the crown of France.
The political history of Languedoc in the century and a half preceding the Albigensian
Crusade is dominated by the revival of the house of Toulouse, whose territories from the
Quercy to the Rhône were once again united by Raymond IV in 1093, and its struggles
against the ambitions of the dukes of Aquitaine to the north and the counts of Barcelona
to the south. It is possible, as the Catalan historian Ramon d’Abadal y Vinyals has
contended, that the counts of Barcelona entertained no grand design of creating a trans-
Pyrénéan principality. Their advance, however, especially after their acquisition of the
counties of Provence, Millau, and the Gévaudan in 1112, convulsed the politics of
Languedoc. It enabled the lords of lower Languedoc, particularly the Trencavels,
viscounts of Albi, Carcassonne, Béziers, and Nîmes, to maintain practical independence
of Toulouse. It required the continuous efforts of the able counts of Toulouse Alphonse-
Jourdain and Raymond V to withstand the pressure from Catalonia and Aquitaine until
the peace of 1190. In 1209, the Albigensian Crusade descended upon Languedoc.
The murder of a papal legate and the inability of the established institutions to deal
with Catharism precipitated the initial crusade; the disunity of the great families of
Languedoc permitted its success. While Raymond VI of Toulouse stood aside, his
sometime vassal Raymond-Roger Trencavel was swept away and his counties occupied
by the crusaders. It is not just, however, to ascribe the later triumphs of the northerners
under Simon de Montfort to their opponents’ ineptitude or the inefficiency of southern
feudalism. The military structures of Languedoc consistently placed superior armies in
the field, and these armies operated as was expected of medieval hosts. The martial
genius of Simon de Montfort and his unorthodox and aggressive tactics at Castelnaudary
(1211) and Muret (1213) allowed him briefly to triumph. Ultimately, though the
domination of the Montforts was defeated, it prepared the way for the advance of the
monarchy under Louis VIII, to whom Amaury de Montfort ceded his rights in 1224.
The final phase of the history of medieval Languedoc begins with the military
promenade of Louis VIII in 1226. The Trencavel domains were absorbed and henceforth
administered by royal seneschals at Carcassonne and Beaucaire. Rebellions in 1240 and
1242 failed to shake the royal au-thority, and when Raymond VII of Toulouse died in
1249 he was succeeded by his daughter, Jeanne, and son-in-law, Alphonse of Poitiers,
brother of Louis IX of France.
Despite occasional unrest caused by the work of the ecclesiastical Inquisition,
Languedoc experienced an era of growth and prosperity under royal rule in the 13th
century. The careful policy of Louis IX and Alphonse of Poitiers, respecting local custom
and promoting the establishment of droit écrit, facilitated the integration of the region
into the domains of France. Toulouse, Narbonne, Béziers, Cahors, and other cities
enjoyed economic prosperity. The consular regimes, although their independence might
be circumscribed, as at Toulouse and Nîmes, were respected, as royal policy encouraged
control of the cities by the merchant classes. Agitation by the artisans and trades,
nevertheless, increased during the century. Violent upheavals, as at Cahors in 1268–70,
were restrained for a time by the establishment of the system of échelles, which grouped
the artisanal classes into several ranks or grades and accorded to each a position within
the consulate. Notwithstanding these concessions, tensions increased into the 14th
century; even a small town like Roujan could report in 1320 that the consuls had
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