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But before starting, and so as to give you strength, you shall presently drink to the victor with good wine of Gaul," and turning to his son: "Guilhern, fetch in the little keg of white wine from Beziers that your brother Albinik brought us on his last trip; fill up the cup in honor of the traveler." When that was done, Joel said to Julyan and Armel: "Now, boys, fall to with your sabres!"
In the account of the war by a Provencal poet, we are told that God never made the clerk who could have written the muster-roll of the crusading army in two or even three months. One of the first victims was the young and gallant Viscount of Beziers, who, the same author assures us, was a good Catholic, but whose lands and towns the rapacious horde lusted to acquire.
Although Montauban was founded on the site of a Roman station, the Mons Albanus, it is really a city of the late Middle Ages, re-created, as it were, by Alphonse I., Count of Toulouse in 1144. And it was even a greater hot-bed of heretics than Béziers.
The writer makes a jump to the year 1209, when Carcassonne, then forming part of the realm of the viscounts of Beziers and infected by the Albigensian heresy, was besieged, in the name of the Pope, by the terrible Simon de Montfort and his army of crusaders. Simon was ac- customed to success, and the town succumbed in the course of a fortnight.
Nimes, Agde, Beziers, Carcassonne opened their gates, but Narbonne resisted for seven years. When it surrendered in 759, the Empire of the Franks for the first time touched the Eastern Pyrenees. Pepin now picked a quarrel with Waifre, Duke of Aquitaine, and crossing the Loire made of the unhappy country a hunting-ground for the Franks. He delivered the land over to a systematic devastation.
Siege of Carcassonne by the Crusaders Capture Perfidy of legate Death of the Viscount Continuation of the war Churches of New Carcassonne La Cite A perfect Mediaeval fortified town Disappointing Visigoth fortifications Later additions The Cathedral Tomb of Simon de Montfort. The Viscount of Beziers was not in the city from which he took his title when it fell.
I wrote to my brother at Paris, telling him I had had a fortunate escape from the dagger of the assassin. I begged him to direct his answer to Aix, where I intended to spend a fortnight, in the hope of seeing the Marquis d'Argens. I left Perpignan the day after my arrival, and slept at Narbonne, and the day after at Beziers.
To the onlookers, at any rate to one of them, it seemed that this could never be, and that she knew very well that the hours of this sharp, sweet, piercing intercourse were numbered. How could it last? How could she find either reason or courage to hope it? It seemed to Béziers, on the watch, that she was awaiting the end already. One is fretted to a rag by waiting.
And, indeed, the Princess desired to make a stay more or less long in every town en route. If she saw some castle or other, she inquired the name of its owner, and, though she hardly knew the inmates, was wont to invite herself to dinner and supper. The Bishop of Beziers grew disconsolate.
The ploughs in this part of the country are more antiquated than any I have seen. The ploughing is very shallow; but nature does all in France. Distance about 34 miles. Wednesday, 22d. Left Pezenas at half past five, and arrived to breakfast at half past nine at Beziers. We went to see the coches d'eau, described as superbes and magnifiques by our French friends. Their ideas differ from ours.
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