![\"Albigensian_Crusade_01\"](\"https:\/\/hcsblogdotorg.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/01\/albigensian_crusade_01.jpg?w=620\")
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For many, Provence immediately conjures up images of crisp blue skies, gently swaying lavender fields, and picturesque village markets. Immortalized by figures such as Marcel Pagnol<\/a>, Jean Giono<\/a>, and Lawrence Durrell<\/a> \u2014 and more recently by the writings of Peter Mayle<\/a> and Julia Child<\/a> \u2014 southern France continues to be viewed as something of a post-modern Arcadia<\/a> by the hordes of sunburnt tourists that descend every summer upon its beaches, olive groves, and mountains. Having had the good fortune to grow up in that part of the world, I am not one to disagree.<\/p>\n Yet the paradise that is southern France today belies the extreme brutality of its past. For three and a half decades in the early 13th century, the sun-kissed landscapes of Cezanne<\/a> were set aflame by one of the bloodiest religious wars of the Medieval Era: the Cathar or Albigensian Crusade. The conflict spanned two generations of combatants and resulted in what some<\/a> have estimated to be tens of thousands of deaths, shocking even contemporary observers by its sheer brutality. It was fought in a land then known as Occitania,<\/a> a vast swathe of territory which spreads from the borders of today\u2019s Aquitaine to the Pyrenees and the southern Rhone Valley. By its end, the kingdom of France had more than tripled its territory and an ancient religion had been extinguished. The Cathar Crusades also led to the emergence of the Catholic Inquisition as a force to be reckoned with and to important military innovations, such as the invention of the precision stone trebuchet<\/a>.<\/p>\n The history of this war is filled with larger-than-life characters, such as the colorful<\/a> Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, Occitania\u2019s most powerful lord. This wily leader and consummate politician had five wives, a string of mistresses, and a natural talent for deceit and dissimulation. Forced to change sides multiple times in the course of the long war, he always kept the interests of the Occitanians in mind. As such, he remained universally loved by his subjects despite his eventual defeat. On the side of the northern crusaders, protagonists such as Simon de Montfort<\/a> have inspired almost equal measures of admiration and loathing. Combining the zeal of the crusader with the tactical efficiency ofRommel<\/a> and the brutality of Rachid Dostum<\/a>, de Montfort was perhaps one of the most effective \u2014 and reviled \u2014 military commanders of his time.<\/p>\n The Cathar Crusade was not only one of the most consequential wars in the history of Europe, but also one of the most vigorously debated<\/a> by its contemporaries. Yet despite all of this, it has largely been forgotten. In many ways, the Cathar Crusade has become to the Middle Ages what the Korean War<\/a> is to the modern era: a massively important conflict that has been surprisingly underexplored.<\/p>\n I hope to help correct this state of affairs by pointing to the lessons that can be drawn from a conflict that in many ways is less esoteric and more relevant in this new era of religious extremism<\/a> than many may believe.<\/p>\n Conflicts Are Rarely the Result of Only One Factor<\/strong><\/p>\n In March 1208, Pope Innocent III<\/a> called for a Crusade against another Christian country, the lands held by Raymond VI. The Vatican argued that the crusade was amply justified: France\u2019s southern territories allegedly crawled with Cathars and other heretics \u201cworse even than the Saracens\u201d <\/em>that European knights had already been fighting for over a century in the Holy Land. Furthermore, only two months prior, a papal delegate and Cistercian monk, Peter of Castelnau, had been murdered<\/a> by one of Raymond\u2019s retainers. This act of violence, much like the assassination<\/a> of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo centuries later, would provide the catalyst and justification for one of the largest military enterprises of the Middle Ages and a grinding war of attrition that led to a disproportionate number of civilian casualties.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n