by Eugène Sue
The Archbishop of Sens, and he of Rheims,
The Bishop of Cahors, and he of Limoges;
The Bishop of Nevers, and he of Clermont;
The Bishop of Agde, and he of Autun.
What wrong have we done to these priests?
Oh, what wrong have we done unto them!
The Knighthood is numerous also:
Simon, bloodthirsty Count of Montfort, their commander.
Him follow the Count of Narbonne and the Count of St. Paul,
The Viscount of Turenne and Adhemar of Poitiers,
Bertrand of Cardaillac and Bertrand of Gordon,
The Count of Le Forez and he of Auxerre,
Peter of Courtenay and Foulques of Bercy,
Hugues of Lascy and Lambert of Limoux,
Neroweg of the Templars’ Order,
Also knight Gerard of Lancon,
And many more! So many more!
What an army! What an army!
Twenty-thousand knights, all cased in iron.
Two hundred thousand footmen, strollers, serfs and vagabonds.
From near and far, all, to the call of the priests,
They have come to deluge in blood our Languedoc.
They have come from Auvergne and from Burgundy,
From Rouergue and from Poitou,
From Normandy and from Saintogne,
From Lorraine and from Brittany.
Over hills and over valleys, by the land and by the water
They have come, and still they come.
They all approach with the cry:
“To the heretics, death!”
Behold them, the priests at their head,
Behold them, the Cath’lic Crusaders!
The red cross on their breasts,
The Christ on their lips,
The fagot in one hand,
The sword in the other!
Behold them in our dear land of Languedoc!
Behold them, the Cath’lic Crusaders,
Behold them, the priests at their head!
What wrong have we done to these priests?
Oh, what wrong have we done unto them!
CHAPTER VI.
SONG ON THE BUTCHERY OF CHASSENEUIL.
Here they are, before Chasseneuil, the Catholic Crusaders,
Before Chasseneuil, the fortified town!
Behind their high walls’ shelter, men, women and children
Have sought refuge from burgs and from hamlets.
The men in arms are on the ramparts;
Women and children weep in the houses.
The women and children weep in the houses,
The Crusaders have sighted the town.
Behold Abbot Reynier of Citeaux.
He steps forth; he speaks. He says:
“Heretics of Chasseneuil, choose —
The Catholic faith or death!”
The answer comes:
“Monk, be gone!
Romanist, avaunt!
We prefer death to the Church of Rome!
The devil take the Pope!
Monk be gone!
We prefer death to the Church of Rome!”
Abbot Reynier, in a passion,
Back to the Crusaders he rides, and he cries:
“Kill, burn, pillage, ravage!
That not one of the Chasseneuil heretics
Escape the sword or the flames!
Their goods now belong to the Catholics!
Kill, burn, pillage, ravage!”
The assailants are wild, no less so th’ assailed.
How the blood flows! Oh! How it flows!
The besiegers are in numbers, uncountable:
The besieged are but few.
Woe to the vanquished!
The ramparts being scaled
The priests pour in, cross in hand:
“Kill — kill the Chasseneuil heretics!
Kill — kill the Chasseneuil heretics!”
The Crusaders have massacred, slaughtered and killed
Old men and young,
Aged grand-mothers, youthful grand-daughters,
Virgins and infants!
The blood runs in streams through the streets of Chasseneuil!
The blood runs red and steaming,
As waves in the butcher’s place of slaughter!
They have massacred at Chasseneuil
Full seven thousand of our people,
The Catholic Crusaders!
They have slaughtered seven thousand at Chasseneuil!
At last, tired of carnage and outraging women,
They pillage and pillage again!
In pillaging houses they meet women and old men,
Children and many of the wounded,
Who sought refuge in places concealed.
The gibbets are raised!
The pyres are lighted!
The rope and the flames end the work
Which the sword set on foot.
Torture and slaughter!
The rope and the flames end the work
Which the sword set on foot!
Ravaged from one end to the other,
The city contains but corpses in heaps!
“To Beziers!”
Now cries the papal legate.
“Fall to, Montfort, up and to work!
His Holiness has issued the order!
Kill, pillage, burn all heretics,
As was done at Chasseneuil!”
“To Beziers!” echoes back the Count of Montfort.
And, behold, they march to Beziers,
The Catholic Crusaders,
The red cross on their breasts,
The name of Jesus on their lips,
The sword in one hand,
The fagot in the other,
To torture and to slaughter!
What wrong have we done to these priests?
What wrong have we done unto them!
CHAPTER VII.
SONG ON THE BUTCHERY OF BEZIERS.
Behold, them, the Cath’lic Crusaders,
Arrived before fortified Beziers!
They are gorged with pillage and blood,
The priests ever leading the way!
At the side of Montfort are the Archbishops of Sens and Bordeaux,
The Bishops of Puy, Autun, Limoges, Bazas and Agde,
Besides from Clermont, Cahors and Nevers.
The Army of the Faith encircles the town.
Reginald of Montpayroux, the Bishop of Beziers,
Whom, together with all of his priests, the people
Had left unincommoded in his episcopal palace,
Reginald of Montpayroux, then addresses the town:
“Renounce your heresy,
Submit to the Catholic Church;
If not, by the Catholic Church I swear to you,
Not one house I’ll leave standing in your town of Beziers!
Not one living being shall be left with his life!”
“Be gone, bishop!” he’s answered aloud,
“Be gone, Romanist! Sooner we’ll kill ourselves,
Ourselves, our wives and our children than submit to your Church!”
“Be gone, bishop! Sooner we’ll kill ourselves,
Ourselves, our wives and our children than submit to your Church!”
Thus did the people make answer. To Montfort
The bishop reports, and he adds: “Fall to, Montfort!
His Holiness has issued the order
To arms!
Kill, burn, pillage and ravage!
Let not a single heretic escape death!
Their goods are now ours!”
“Yes!” cries the Abbot of Citeaux. “Not even if
Twenty thousand, a hundred thousand they be,
Not one of them, no, not a single one shall escape
The rope, or the sword, or the flames!
Torture and slaughter!”
No! Not a single creature escapes
The rope, or the sword, or the flames!
“But,�
� answers Montfort,
“There are Catholics at Beziers;
How are we, in the midst of the carnage
To distinguish the faithful?”
The papal legate cries in answer:
“Kill away!
Kill them all!
The Lord will distinguish His own!”
“Kill them all!” cries the papal legate,
“The Lord will distinguish His own!”
Beziers is taken by assault;
They kill all the living, as they did at Chasseneuil,
The Cath’lic Crusaders!
First, seven thousand children, sheltered in St. Madeleine’s Church,
Are put to the sword
And the carnage continues two consecutive days.
Aye, two consecutive days, from sun-rise to sun-rise.
And the time is all needed, those two days and nights,
To slaughter sixty-three thousand creatures of God;
Aye, sixty-three thousand,
Catholics and heretics killed at Beziers!
Sixty-three thousand.
That is the number of Beziers’ victims.
After the raping of women and slaughter, the pillage;
After the pillage, the torch of th’ incendiary.
The booty is placed upon wagons outside the town
And then— “Burn up Beziers! Burn up the heretic hot-bed!”
And all is burned down — all —
Artisans’ houses and houses of bourgeois;
The communal City Hall, and the viscount’s palace;
The hospital of the poor, and the great cathedral built by Gervais.
Everything burned, aye everything.
And when all is burnt down, and the wagons of booty heaped high,
And the vine-stocks pulled up by the roots,
And the olive trees cut down in the orchard,
And the crops consumed by the flames in the garrets,
“To Carcassonne!”
Cries the papal legate.
“Fall to, Montfort! On the march!
His Holiness has issued the order.
To Carcassonne!
Kill, pillage, burn the heretics, as we have done
At Chasseneuil and Beziers!
To Carcassonne!”
“On to Carcassonne!
Kill, pillage, burn the heretics as we have done
At Chasseneuil and Beziers!
On to Carcassonne,” echoes Montfort.
And behold them, they march on Carcassonne,
The Cath’lic Crusaders, the priests in the lead!
The red cross on their breasts,
The name of Jesus on their lips,
The sword in one hand,
The fagot in the other!
To the rape, to tortures and slaughter!
What wrong have we done to these priests?
Oh, what wrong have we done unto them!
CHAPTER VIII.
SONG ON THE BURNING OF CARCASSONNE.
They march upon Carcassonne,
The Cath’lic Crusaders! Ill fortified is the town,
Into the town, Roger, the young Viscount of Beziers,
Too late back from Aragon to defend the capital of his domain,
Has thrown himself.
The young man is bold and generous, beloved by all.
A heretic, like most the seigneurs of Languedoc,
This land of freedom.
The young viscount bows before the popular magistrates,
And to the city’s franchise.
The viscount and councilmen re-kindle the town’s folks’ enthusiasm,
Chilled for a moment by the massacres of Chasseneuil and Beziers.
Deep ditches are dug, high palisades raised
To strengthen the ramparts of Carcassonne.
The old and the young, the rich and the poor, men, women and children —
All labor with zeal for the defense of the city, and they say:
“No! We shall not let ourselves be slaughtered as
The people of Chasseneuil and Beziers —
No!”
“No! We shall not let ourselves be slaughtered as
The people of Chasseneuil and Beziers — No!”
But the line of the horizon is soon darkened by dust,
From afar the earth trembles
Under the tread of steeds caparisoned in iron,
And mounted by warriors cased in iron themselves.
The iron points of a forest of lances glisten,
They glisten like the armors
In the rays of the rising sun.
The hill, the valley and the plain
Soon are covered with cohorts innumerable.
The multitude in arms has steadily, steadily swollen.
It reaches from East to West, it overlaps the horizon.
It approaches from the North and the South,
And Carcassonne is from all sides surrounded.
The wagons and baggage follow the trains,
And behind them larger and still larger crowds.
Early in the morning th’ invader descends the distant hills.
The Cath’lic Crusaders encamp towards evening.
Early in the morning th’ invader descends the distant hills.
The Cath’lic Crusaders arrive and encamp towards evening.
Montfort, the prelates and knights raise their tents;
The multitude sleeps on the ground under the vault of the heavens.
They are so delightful; oh! so delightful, the nights of Languedoc!
Other Crusaders invade and they pillage the suburbs,
Whose inhabitants fled within Carcassonne.
At dawn the next morning, the trumpets sound in the Crusaders’ camp;
“To the assault! Death to the heretics of Carcassonne!
Kill — kill as you did at Chasseneuil and Beziers!
To the assault!”
The men of Carcassonne are on the ramparts.
The struggle begins; it is bloody, it is furious.
The young viscount and consuls by example and courage redouble
The strength of the besieged.
Women and children fetch stones for the engines of war;
The ditches are heaped full with corpses.
“Victory for the heretics! This time they triumph!”
The assailants are all driven back.
But dearly they paid for this vict’ry, the heretics!
Helas! They paid for it dearly,
The heretics of Carcassonne.
Of their men there are killed, or are wounded