The province of Toulouse, nominally subject to France, was actually ruled by Raymond VI., “by grace of God” Count of Toulouse.  Perhaps if this province had not possessed and controlled several ports on the Mediterranean, while France had none at all, it might not have been discovered that this home of the “gay science,” and of minstrelsy, and of all that was gentle and refining, was in fact the nursery of a dangerous heresy, and that the poetic, music-loving children of Provence reviled the cross and worshipped the devil!

We can easily imagine that in this highly developed community there had arisen a spirit of inquiry into prevailing conditions and beliefs in the Church.  And we can also imagine that a crafty sovereign saw in this an opportunity to serve his own ends.  And so, Pope Innocent III. ordered a Crusade, and John de Montfort not only opened up the Mediterranean ports for Philip, but brought Toulouse, the greatest of the remaining feudal states, into subjection to the King of France; at the same time forever silencing the voice of the heretic, of the minstrel, and of the harp; even the speech, with its delicate inflections and musical intonations, disappeared, to be heard nevermore.  Such, in brief, is the story of the “Albigensian War,” so called on account of the heresy having been brought into Provence by the Albigenses from Switzerland.

After a century and a half Normandy was restored.  Its reabsorption into France marked the parting of the ways in two kingdoms. Kingship was reinforced in one, and citizenship developed in the other.  In England the nobles and the people drew closer together, resolved to defend themselves from a vicious king, and this determined effort to curtail the royal prerogative produced the Magna Charta, which forever secured the liberties of Englishmen (1215).  In France, on the contrary, the power was moved in one volume toward the king and despotism.  Both nations were in the hands of fate—­a fate, too, which was using unscrupulous men to accomplish its great purposes for each.

But however we may disparage Philip’s heart and aims, no one can deny the breadth and superiority of his mind and his statesmanship.  He was a Charlemagne made on a smaller scale, and without a conscience.  Not one of the successors of Clovis or of Pepin had so intelligently grasped the sources of permanent growth in a nation.  He may have been false of tongue and unprincipled in deed, but he took the free cities under his personal protection, opened up trade with foreign lands, beautified Paris and France.  He may, under the cloak of religion, have permitted unjustifiable cruelties against the most innocent, the most gifted province in Europe, in order to secure access to the sea for France.  But he left the communes richer and happier, his kingdom freer from local tyrannies, transformed from a pandemonium of struggling knights and barons into the nearest approach yet realized to a modern state.