a few days, and with sighs and tears departed from Carcassone.

The weak and the strong, parents and children, young and aged, altogether departed, and the silence of the deserted city at the next break of day, made their cruel enemies think the Albigenses were learning the arts of treachery from them, and only wished to draw them within the city by an appearance of tranquillity; but when they ascended the walls, they saw clearly it was a deserted city, and the cry ran along them, 'the Albigenses are fled.' The plunder was divided among the army of pilgrims, and, I suppose, the betrayer of the poor Earl of Beziers had a double portion.

After the taking of Carcassone, the famous persecutor of the Waldensian or Albigensic church, Simon Earl of Montfort, was appointed general of the Crusading army, and governor of the entire country. His government and his generalship are at once expressed in the words of Jones: 'He plundered, assassinated, and committed to the flames, the poor Albigenses, without regard to character, sex, or age.'

The castle of Minerba, on the confines of Spain, particularly excited his indignation; it was of all others the most execrable place, he said, for mass had not been sung in it for thirty years. The Earl who defended it, was obliged to surrender through a want of water, but he would not turn Catholic; so these warriors of the holy see shut

him up in a close prison, where he died, and threw his wife, sister, and daughter, into one large fire, where their ashes were speedily mingled.

A sermon was preached to the inhabitants of the castle, exhorting them to submit to the Pope, and acknowledge the doctrines of the Romish church; but the cry that ascended, 'No, we will not renounce our religion for life or death,' caused the fires to be quickly kindled, and a hundred and eighty men and women were at once comImitted to them. La Vaur was afterwards taken: the noble Lord Almeric was, with eighty others, hanged on lofty gibbets, and his sister, the Lady of La Vaur, thrown into a pit and stoned to death.

Raymond, Count of Toulouse, rose in arms to oppose Montfort, and aided by the Count De Foix, and other Barons, nearly stripped him of his conquests; but in the valley of Jheniere the persecutors were again victorious, and conditions were haughtily proposed to Count Raymond, which were enough to rouse a tamer spirit. By a decree of the council of Lateran, his possessions were given away to Montfort, and he banished from his dominions. Raymond could not submit to such injustice, but again collecting an army in Spain, while his son aided him in Provence, he soon recovered a part of his dominions, and his capital, Toulouse, from Montfort; this loss was not suffered quietly, but while Montfort was

again besieging it, he was killed by a stone, and the city delivered, A. D. 1218.

Soon after Raymond died, and his son yet more actively contended against the papal authority; about the same time Innocent died also, and was succeeded by Honorius, who trod in his steps in rooting out all heretics as he styled those who opposed him. He wrote to Louis, King of France, inviting him to take up arms against the Albigenses; Louis obeyed, and collecting an army, besieged Avignon, which was gallantly defended by the young Earl Raymond.

Disease in the French army assisted him, and cut off numbers daily; among these, the king himself was carried off, and as his death might have caused the army to abandon the troublesome siege, the Pope's legate concealed it: and finding arms ineffectual, he had, as usual, recourse to arts. He begged to be admitted into the city, saying he wished to examine whether their infidelity were really so great as the Pope had heard, and declaring that he would delay the siege of Avignon, only for the good of its inhabitants' souls. Having sworn to the sincerity of his intentions in asking admission into the city; the citizens, detesting fraud themselves, were ready to believe it was equally foreign to the mind of the Pope's legate, and opened their gates to receive him to a conference. But it was a bloody conference he planned! The French soldiers were ready at the instant the gates of Avignon were opened,

to rush into the city to murder, plunder, and take captive, the credulous and deceived inhabitants!

Toulouse was again besieged, and taken; and young Earl Raymond, no longer able to make head against the oppressors of his father and himself, and the persecutors of the Albigenses, was obliged to submit to the rigorous and disgraceful conditions which the Pope thought fit to impose. This occurred A. D. 1221, and from that time the destruction of the Albigenses in France may be dated: for, no longer able to find a prince willing and powerful enough to protect them, the remnant that escaped the sword of persecution, fled to their brethren in the vallies of Piedmont, or chose out some distant and lonely place of refuge, where in quietness they might serve their God, and live and act in conformity with his holy word.

In my next story I hope to continue the history of this Christian church, which now appeared in the dark ages of Christianity, exhibiting the revival of Gospel purity and Scripture truth. But I shall end this with the suppression of a part of that church in France, in the persons of the Albigenses. For more than twenty years of the thirteenth century these people were as sheep appointed to the slaughter,' they were hated for the sake of Jesus, but the word of God spread, and though it is computed that a million of Albigenses were put to death in France, yet many remained, who, crossing the Pyrennees, or retiring to the Alps, bore with them the good seed of the kingdom.

6

CENTURY XIII-XV.

HISTORY OF THE WALDENSES FROM THE THIRTEENTH TO THE CLOSE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

WHILE the attention of the pope and his ministers was directed to the Albigenses, or Waldenses of the south of France, their brethren in other parts had greater rest, particularly in the vallies of Piedmont; where seated as in a secure and peaceful nest, the church of Christ, amid those scenes of beauty, enjoyed his blessings, both as the God of nature and the God of grace.

The poor Albigenses who crossed the Pyrennees into the Spanish provinces of Arragon and Catalonia were not equally happy. Pope Gregory IX. established the Inquisition against heretics there also; and they were proceeded against with the usual rigour.

The vigilance and attention of this pope were in some degree drawn from the persecution of the Waldenses, especially in Germany, by his contest with one of a very different character. This was Frederic II. Emperor of Germany, who having