cities which had a high degree of local independence. Their
local governments, with their consuls at the head, show, at least
in name, the influence of Roman ideas. It is still an open
question how much of their autonomy had remained untouched
by the barbarian invasions from the Roman period. The citizens
of these free cities were in continual intercourse with Saracens
of Palestine and Moors of Spain; they had never entirely
abandoned pagan customs; their poetry—the poetry of the
troubadours—taught them the joys of life rather than the fear
of death, the licence of their chivalry with its courts of love
led to the other extreme of asceticism in such as were of religious
temperament; all things combined to make Languedoc the
proper soil for heresy. The Church never had the hold upon
the country that it had in the north, the people of the Midi were
always lukewarm in the faith; there was no noteworthy ecclesiastical
literature in Languedoc from the end of the Carolingian
period until after the Albigensian crusade, no theological centre
like Paris, Bec or Laon. Yet Languedoc furnished the most
heroic martyrs for the ascetic Manichaean creed. The era of
heresy began with the preaching of Peter de Brueys and his
follower, Henry of Lausanne, who emptied the churches and
taught contempt for the clergy. Saint Bernard himself was able
to make but temporary headway against this rebellion from
a sacramental and institutionalized Christianity. In the first
decade of the 13th century came the inevitable conflict. The
whole county of Toulouse, with its fiefs of Narbonne, Béziers,
Foix, Montpellier and Quercy, was in open and scornful secession
from the Catholic Church, and the suppression of this Manichaean
or Cathar religion was the end of the brilliant culture of
Languedoc. (See Albigenses, Cathars, Inquisition.) The
crusade against the Albigenses, as the Cathars were locally termed,
in 1209, resulted in the union to the crown of France in 1229
of all the country from Carcassonne to the Rhone, thus dividing
Languedoc into two. The western part left to Raymond VII.,
by the treaty of 1229, included the Agenais, Quercy, Rouergue,
the Toulousain and southern Albigeois. He had as well the
Venaissin across the Rhone. From 1229 to his death in 1249
Raymond VII. worked tirelessly to bring back prosperity to
his ruined country, encouraging the foundation of new cities,
and attempting to gain reconciliation with the Church. He
left only a daughter, Jeanne, who was married to Alphonse
of Poitiers. Alphonse, a sincere Catholic, upheld the Inquisition,
but, although ruling the country from Paris, maintained peace.
Jeanne died without heirs four days after her husband, upon
their return from the crusade in Africa, in 1271, and although
she attempted by will to prevent the reversion of her lands to
the crown, they were promptly seized by King Philip III., who
used the opposition of Roger Bernard, count of Foix, as an
excuse to appear with a formidable army, which had little to
do to secure entire submission. Thus the county of Toulouse
passed to the crown, though Philip III. turned over the Agenais
to Edward I. of England in 1279. In 1274 he ceded the county
of Venaissin to Pope Gregory X., the papacy having claimed
it, without legal grounds, since the Albigensian crusade (see
Avignon).
Such was the fate of the reduced county of Toulouse. At the division of Languedoc in 1229 Louis IX. was given all the country from Carcassonne to the Rhone. This royal Languedoc was at first subject to much trickery on the part of northern speculators and government officials. In 1248 Louis IX. sent royal enquêteurs, much like Charlemagne’s missi dominici, to correct all abuses, especially to inquire concerning peculation by royal agents. On the basis of their investigations the king issued royal edicts in 1254 and 1259 which organized the administration of the province. Two sénéchaussées were created—one at Nîmes, the other at Carcassonne—each with its lesser divisions of vigueries and bailliages. During the reign of Philip III. the enquêteurs were busily employed securing justice for the conquered, preventing the seizure of lands, and in 1279 a supreme court of justice was established at Toulouse. In 1302 Philip IV. convoked the estates of Languedoc, but in the century which followed they were less an instrument for self-government than one for securing money, thus aiding the enquêteurs, who during the Hundred Years’ War became mere revenue hunters for the king. In 1355 the Black Prince led a savage plundering raid across the country to Narbonne. After the battle of Poitiers, Languedoc supported the count of Armagnac, but there was no enthusiasm for a national cause. Under Charles V., Louis of Anjou, the king’s brother, was governor of Languedoc, and while an active opponent of the English, he drained the country of money. But his extortions were surpassed by those of another brother, the duc de Berry, after the death of Charles V. In 1382 and 1383 the infuriated peasantry, abetted by some nobles, rose in a rebellion—known as the Tuchins—which was put down with frightful butchery, while still greater sums were demanded from the impoverished country. In the anarchy which followed brigandage increased. Redress did not come until 1420, when the dauphin, afterwards Charles VII., came to Languedoc and reformed the administration. Then the country he saved furnished him with the means for driving out the English in the north. For the first time, in the climax of its miseries, Languedoc was genuinely united to France. But Charles VII. was not able to drive out the brigands, and it was not until after the English were expelled in 1453 that Languedoc had even comparative peace. Charles VII. united Comminges to the crown; Louis XI. Roussillon and Cerdagne, both of which were ceded to Aragon by Charles VIII. as the price of its neutrality during his expedition into Italy. From the reign of Louis XI. until 1523 the governorship of Languedoc was held by the house of Bourbon. After the treason of the constable Bourbon it was held by the Montmorency family with but slight interruption until 1632.
The Reformation found Languedoc orthodox. Persecution had succeeded. The Inquisition had had no victims since 1340, and the cities which had been centres of heresy were now strongly orthodox. Toulouse was one of the most fanatically orthodox cities in Europe, and remained so in Voltaire’s day. But Calvinism gained ground rapidly in the other parts of Languedoc, and by 1560 the majority of the population was Protestant. It was, however, partly a political protest against the misrule of the Guises. The open conflict came in 1561, and from that until the edict of Nantes (1598) there was intermittent civil war, accompanied with iconoclasm on the one hand, massacres on the other and ravages on both.
The main figure in this period is that of Henri de Montmorency, seigneur de Damville, later duc de Montmorency, governor of the province from 1563, who was, at first, hostile to the Protestants, then from 1574 to 1577, as leader of the “Politiques,” an advocate of compromise. But peace was hardly ever established, although there was a yearly truce for the ploughing. By the edict of Nantes, the Protestants were given ten places of safety in Languedoc; but civil strife did not come to an end, even under Henry IV. In 1620 the Protestants in Languedoc rose under Henri, duc de Rohan (1579–1638), who for two years defied the power of Louis XIII. When Louis took Montpellier in 1622, he attempted to reconcile the Calvinists by bribes of money and office, and left Montauban as a city of refuge. Richelieu’s extinction of Huguenotism is less the history of Languedoc than of the Huguenots (q.v.). By 1629 Protestantism was crushed in the Midi as a political force. Then followed the tragic episode of the rebellion of Henri II., duc de Montmorency, son of the old governor of Languedoc. As a result, Languedoc lost its old provincial privilege of self-assessment until 1649, and was placed under the governorship of Marshal Schomberg. During Louis XIV.’s reign Languedoc prospered until the revocation of the edict of Nantes. Industries and agriculture were encouraged, roads and bridges were built, and the great canal giving a water route from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean increased the trade of its cities. Colbert especially encouraged its manufactures. The religious persecutions which accompanied the revocation of the edict of Nantes bore hardest on Languedoc, and resulted in a guerilla warfare known as the rebellion of the Camisards (q.v.). On the eve of the Revolution some of the brightest scenes of contentment and prosperity which surprised
