Crusade Against the Grail - Rennes-le-Chateau Research and ...

One day, an unhappy baron provoked him:
"You have sold your father's blood, my lord!"
PARSIFAL 29
These words pierced his heart. One night, while Beziers slept peacefully,
Aragonese troops acting on the young Trencavel's orders took over the city and
stabbed all the gentile males of the town. Only the women and Jews were spared.
The following morning, the viscount and his bishop, named Bernard, forced
all the daughters and widows of the murdered burghers to marry their Aragonese
killers, and demanded an annual tribute of three pounds of pepper from them as
well.
Without wishing to attenuate young Trencavel's responsibility in these
events—he governed from then on in an indulgent, tolerant, and chivalrous way—
we have to say that those really responsible for the bloodbath were Bishop Bernard
and the King of Aragon. The nobles fired the flames of bloody vengeance in the
Viscount's son only for their personal gain. The bishop did not know how to
control the impetuous young man, and Alfonso II wanted to assure himself of a
base of support between his County of Rousillon and his possessions in Provence
without losing sight of the fact that Beziers represented an advance post facing
Toulouse and Carcassonne.
Soon Roger Taillefer understood. To disarm the danger that he himself had
provoked, he established an alliance with the Count of Toulouse and asked for the
hand of the count's daughter Adelaide.
The court of Carcassonne was the focus of poetry and chivalrous courtesy,
and in the words of Arnaut de Mareulh, "the most chaste court, full of grace,
because the scepter was in Adelaide's hands."
The troubadours gave Raimon Roger, the crown prince of Foix and cousin of
Roger Taillefer of Carcassonne, the sobriquet "Raimon Drut," which means
"Roger the beloved."
The castle of the count of Foix was situated in the savage valley of the river
Ariege, which descends from the snow-covered mountains of Andorra bordering
the important mountain chain of Montcalm and Saint Bartholomew's Peak, and
flows toward the Garonne.
According to legend, a sanctuary dedicated to Abellio, the sun god of the
Iberians, was situated on the rock where the Castle of Foix is built. 27
According to another tradition, Foix was a Basque colony of Phocea,