spread the belief. Truces between Amauri and Raymond were therefore made and conferences held, and finally the legate called a council to assemble at Sens, July 6, 1223, where a final pacification was expected. It was transferred to Paris, because Philip Augustus desired to be present, and its importance in his eyes must have been great, since he set out on his journey thither in spite of a raging fever, to which he succumbed on the road, at Meudon, July 14. Raymond's well-grounded hopes were shattered on the eve of reahzation, for Philip's death rendered the council useless and changed in a moment the whole face of affairs.[1]
Though Philip showed his practical sympathy with de Montfort by leaving him a legacy of thirty thousand livres to assist him in his Albigensian troubles, his prudence had avoided all entanglements, and he had steadily rejected the proffer of the de Montfort claims. Yet his sagacity led him to prophesy truly that after his death the clergy would use every effort to involve Louis, whose feeble health would prove unequal to the strain, and the kingdom would be left in the hands of a woman and a child. It was probably the desire to avert this by a settlement which led him to make the fatal effort to attend the council, and his prediction did not long await its fulfilment. Louis, on the very day of his coronation, promised the legate that he would undertake the matter; Honorius urged it with vehemence, and in February, 1224, Louis accepted a conditional cession from Amauri of all his rights over Languedoc. Raymond thus found himself confronted by the King of France as his adversary.[2]
The situation was full of new and unexpected peril. But a month before, Amauri, in utter penury, had been obliged to surrender what few strongholds he yet retained, and had quitted forever the land which he and his father had cursed, a portion of Philip's legacy being used to extricate his garrisons. The triumph, so long hoped for and won by so many years of persistent struggle, was a Dead-Sea apple, full of ashes and bitterness. The discomfited adversary was now replaced by one who was rash and enter-
- ↑ Vaissette, III. Pr. 276, 282.— Teulet, Layettes, I. 561, No. 1577.— Raynald. Annal. ann. 1222, No. 48.— Matt. Paris ann. 1223, p. 219.
- ↑ Alberici Trium Font. Chron. ann. 1223. — Guill. de Pod. Laurent, c. 34. — Vaissette, III. Pr. 290.— Raynald. Annal. ann. 1223, No. 41-45.— Teulet, Layettes, XL 24, No. 1631.
