Like Jerusalem and Constantinople, France Profound now fell victim to the prevailing spiritual corruption, as the brutality and moral poison that propelled the Crusades circulated back into the body politic that spawned them. In the summer heat of , the horde gathered for the kill.
Never did God make a scribe who, whatsoever his pains, could set them all down in writing. So twisty was the route that today it takes the French high-speed train some two hours to traverse the miles south from Lyons to the Mediterranean city of Montpellier. The TGV, which normally flies along at two hundred miles an hour, must cut its speed by more than half.
The pope had wanted the king of France to command his invasion. By refusing, Philippe-Auguste created a power vacuum. Who would fill it? Real-life events constantly take twists and turns no fiction writer would dare put in a novel. This was one such moment. Singlehandedly this erstwhile heretic would transform the papal crusade, launched to destroy him, into a secular war that served his own interests.
In the vast tapestry we are currently contemplating, some figures may seem more sympathetic than they deserve. Think of the peaceable Jews Philippe-Auguste victimized. Morally and ethically, Count Raymond VI of Toulouse is a special case, truly worthy of our respect and sympathy. Historians deride him because he strove to avoid bloodshed, and when he could not prevent bloodshed, he deflected it.
His motives, as conventionally portrayed, are made to seem mysterious as well as pusillanimous. Beyond avoiding the crushing blow this very force was sent to inflict on him, his great strategic objective was no more or less than survival. He aimed to save his own life, the lives of his heirs, and of as many of his subjects as he could.
