Fracturing a Regional Community, Part 2: Peter II and the Conflicts of the Albigensian Crusade

Abstract

In the spring of 1210, Simon de Montfort began to reverse his earlier setbacks. During the early days of Lent, which in 1210 began on March 2, his wife Alice arrived from northern France accompanied by many knights.¹ According to William of Tudela, Simon sent for Alice while he was in the Carcassès, shortly after taking Minerve.² Simon traveled to the castrum of Pézenas in Agde territory to meet her, and they then returned to Carcassonne. When Simon received reports of another possible defection among his supporters, he set out, presumably with some of the new forces that Alice had brought with her. They suppressed this rebellion, pursuing its participants, hanging some of them, and setting others to flight in the face of their advances. Simon and his companions then returned to Carcassonne.³ Alice brought reinforcements from the north to assist Simon, but William of Tudela noted that at the siege of Minerve, Simon’s forces had come from such territories as Champagne, Maine, Anjou, and Brittany.⁴ This concentration of forces from the north along with their use of northern customary law would have serious consequences at the creation of the Statutes of Pamiers in December 1212.