louse, certain sects had-arisen variously known as Believers, Perfects, and Yandois, but all rejecting some of the tenets of Pome, and from the city of Albi, designated by the general name Albigeois. In his misguided zeal, Innocent' III. despatched three legates to constrain these Albigeois to abjure their heresies and return to the bosom of the church. He empowered them to employ for this purpose, " the sword, water and fire, as these good monks should find it necessary to use one or the other, or all three to-gether for the greater glory of God." Though the Albi-genses, like other Christians, professed the doctrines of peace, they were somewhat infected with the warlike spirit of the age ; consequently becoming exasperated at the ex-ecutions deemed necessary to bring the lambs into the fold, they rose upon the missionaries, and stoned one of them to death. The pope retaliated by proclaiming the usual indulgence to those who should engage in the holy war, for exterminating the heretics. Count Raimond VI., the husband of Joanna, immediately took up arms in de-fence of his subjects, and against him Simon de Montfort headed the army of the church. "With him came a monk of great austerity, afterwards St. Dominic, the founder of the Dominican order of friars, who encouraged the soldiers in their work of blood. The city of Beziers long held out against them. It was finally taken, the inhabitants given up to slaughter, and when a difficulty arose about discrimi-nating between the heretics and the catholics, " Slay them all," said Dominic, "the Lord will know his own." It is estimated that the number that perished was sixty thou-sand. The war went on, characterized, as such wars always are, by the atrocity of private murder, and wholesale butchery, till de Moutfort led his army to the siege of Toulouse. Count Raimond, beset on every side by foes, ap-plied to his brother-in-law, the King of England, to the King of Arragon, whose sister he had married after the death of Joanna, and to Philip Augustus his liege lord. The first engaged in domestic broils, and the last involved in a contest with the pope, concerning the divorce of Inge- 292 HEROINES OF THE CRUSADES.