Kill Them All (Cathars and Carnage in the Albigensian Crusade) - 9780750984317

Marked by massacres and acts of appalling cruelty, the Albigensian Crusade of 1209–29 is infamous for its brutality. Instigated by the Catholic Church against the Cathar heretics of southern France, these deeds are commonly ascribed to the role of religious fanaticism. Led by Simon de Montfort until he was killed in action at the siege of Toulouse, the ritual burnings and death toll of over 200,000 meant that the Albigensian Crusade was one of the inspirations for the term ‘genocide’.Kill Them All is the first account to offer a dedicated military history of the whole crusade, and in so doing it refutes this old view. By telling the story of the crusade through its dramatic sieges, battles and campaigns, and offering expert analysis of the warfare involved, the author reveals the crusade in a new light – as a bloody territorial conquest in which acts of terror were perpetrated to secure military aims rather than religious ones. The result – this extended second edition – is an exciting and at times disturbing book that tells the dramatic military events of the crusade and its leading characters – Simon de Montfort, Louis the Lion, Innocent III, Peter of Aragon, Count Raymond of Toulouse – through the voices of those contemporary writers who experienced it.