Viollet-le-Duc--a very luminous description of the
fortifications, which you may buy from the accomplished custodian. The
writer makes a jump to the year 1209, when Carcassonne, then forming
part of the realm of the viscounts of Beziers and infected by the
Albigensian heresy, was besieged, in the name of the Pope, by the
terrible Simon de Montfort and his army of crusaders. Simon was
accustomed to success, and the town succumbed in the course of a
fortnight. Thirty-one years later, having passed into the hands of
the King of France, it was again besieged by the young Raymond de
Trincavel, the last of the viscounts of Beziers; and of this siege M.
Viollet-le-Duc gives a long and minute account, which the visitor who
has a head for such things may follow, with the brochure in hand, on
the fortifications themselves.
The young Raymond de Trineavel, baffled and repulsed, retired at the
end of twenty-four days. Saint Louis and Philip the Bold, in the
thirteenth century, multiplied the defenses of Carcassonne, which was
one of the bulwarks of their kingdom on the Spanish quarter; and from
this time forth, being regarded as impregnable, the place had nothing
to fear.
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