Carcassonne, Viscount Raymond Roger Trencavel / Arnaud Amaury's Trickery - The Cathar Crusades and Languedoc

Carcassonne (pic: http://www.francemonthly.com/n/0401/images/carcassonne.jpg) was one of the largest and most prosperous cities in Languedoc. Many Cathars were living there. They enjoyed freedom of religion thanks to the Viscount Raymond Roger Trencavel. In August of 1209, the crusader army under Simon de Montfort and Arnaud Amaury laid siege to Carcassonne (Occitanie: Carcassonne , In Francia, http://www.infrancia.org/occitania/occitanie/carcassonne.html)

They had plundered already, burned already, but the slaughter and plunder were never enough. Is this Shechem revisited?

The crusaders arrived outside Carcassonne on August 1. Pedro II of Aragon came and tried to broker a peace deal, but Arnaud Amaury showed no flexibility.

One of the first moves of the Jewish commander Amaury was to cut the city off from water. The lack of water made conditions inside the city unbearable, so a truce was agreed, and the Viscount came outside the walls for negotiations. Upon arriving at the meeting, he was seized and then made a prisoner in his own prison in Carcassonne. While the Jews broke the truce, and captured the Viscount by deception, they were unusually generous with the inhabitants. They were allowed to leave the city alive (but naturally naked, (pic: http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/e/e4/Cathars_expelled.JPG) and taking nothing at all with them but their lives). ( Société de l'Oriflamme, Catharism, The Albigensian Crusades (1209 - 1255), http://xenophongroup.com/montjoie/albigens.htm); see also (Provence Beyond, Carcassonne, http://www.beyond.fr/villages/carcassonne.html)

One can read so much about generous Jewish philanthropists in the press. How generous was the Jewish Brother Arnold when he came to Carcassonne?

He broke the truce, the Viscount was captured by dishonest methods, and he took all the wealth of the city.

The Viscount had let the Jews run his government. He was "friends" with them.

How good a friendship was this?

"Raymond-Roger accepted a safe-conduct to negotiate terms of surrender in the Crusader camp. At the conclusion of these negotiations he was taken prisoner while still under safe conduct, and imprisoned in his own dungeon, where he died, possibly of dysentery, though there were suspicions of poisoning." (Raymond Roger Trencavel, Wikipedia) (emphasis added) Speaking of Amaury: "He was also responsible for the siege of Carcassonne, and for the seizure of Raymond-Roger Trencavel, Viscount of Carcassonne, Béziers, Albi and the Razès during a truce - leading to the fall of Carcassonne. He arrived at Minerve just in time to engineer the deaths of 140 people whose lives would otherwise have been spared." (Who's Who In The Cathar War: Arnaud Amaury, http://www.languedoc-france.info/120502_arnaud.htm)(emphasis added)

Jewish tactics in warfare, whether at Shechem or Carcassonne? "the ferocity was exemplary". (Jonathan Riley-Smith, The Crusades - A Short History, Athlone, 1987, p. 137)

Maybe there is a lesson here for all (especially politicians), about being "friends" with Jews.

Sen. Joseph McCarthy was brought down by his "friend" Roy Cohn. (Scott Speidel, How the Jewish Marxists in America Destroyed Joe McCarthy, http://www.jewwatch.com/jew-communists-joe-mccarthy-and-the-jews.html)

And the list goes on and on.

What the Jews did in Languedoc in 1209 caused a lot of anti-Semitism. But it didn't end there. In 1321, there was a wave of well poisonings. Since the lepers had been doing it, they were all burnt. And who put them up to it? They "had been bribed to do so by the Jews". (Philip Ziegler, The Black Death, Penguin, 1969, p. 99)