The Blood of Toulouse by Maurice Magre

Author:Maurice Magre [Magre, Maurice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Coat Press
Published: 2018-08-25T00:00:00+00:00

IX

If one could collect in the same receptacle all the blood that has flowed from my wounds in the course of my life, it would fill a vat large enough to contain the wine of a season, between Toulouse and Muret. Now my body is covered with scars, like those great resinous pines on the slopes of the Pyrenees that have been slashed in order to make the resin flow out. I have shed my blood on the ramparts of all the besieged cites, in all the fields where the southerners fought for the independence of their land.

It has flowed uselessly, since my land has been vanquished, since Toulouse is submissive to a Seneschal of the King of France and the Pope’s inquisitors, but I have no regrets. There is a hidden virtue in futile courage that is not wasted. The suffering of the oppressed falls into a spiritual balance in which the cry of a little child weighs more than an army on the march, and sooner or later, an invisible hand reestablishes the equilibrium of justice.

I participated in the defense of the Château de Montréal and I was, I believe, the only man who was able to escape therefrom, for Simon de Montfort had the soldiers and inhabitants massacred to the last man. It was me who, disguised as a peasant, aided by a few good companions, came by night to set fire to the crusaders’ war machines and tents under the ramparts of Carcassonne. At the right hand of Gérard de Pépieux, I defended Puyserguier and I mounted with him the assault on Montlaur.

Disguised as a monk after the capture of Bram, I saw the eyes of those who had fought put out and their noses cut off on Simon de Montfort’s orders, as well as those of the people who had remained quietly in their houses. I mingled with other monks in order to save my life. They were covering the screams of the tortured by singing canticles. Fortunately, I remembered those canticles, which I had once learned in the Abbey of Mercus. When it was the turn of a young woman whose eyes resembled Esclarmonde’s it seemed to me that as she struggled she held out her arms to me. My song became a frightful scream, and all the monks inclined their heads in my direction.

A single man of Bram was protected by some lucky star. Only one of his eyes was put out, in order that, with the half-light of the other, he could lead the troop of the blind to Cabaret’s fortress and show its defenders that there was only darkness for those who resisted de Montfort.

In Minerve, when the place was taken by assault, I was one of the twenty-four combatants, almost all nobles and knights, whom Simon de Montfort ordered to be hanged in order that they might suffer in death an ultimate humiliation. I stood among the brave men of Minerve, hands bound, before twenty-four hastily-erected scaffolds. Those to my

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