The Château Narbonnais of Toulouse during the Siege of 1218

In 1217 the count of Toulouse Raymond VI slipped back into the town of Toulouse following a brief exile in the kingdom of Aragon. The count and his son, Raymond VII had sought restitution of their lands at the Lateran Council in 1216 where Pope Innocent had ruled against Raymond VI due to his record as a harbourer of heretics. The pope however had refused to prosecute the young count, Raymond VII with the same interdiction. News of the pope’s attitude spread throughout the south of France resulting in a huge upswell of optimism for a people suffering under the harsh yoke of Simon IV de Montfort and his implanted lords who were ruling Occitania in accordance with Simon’s Statute of Pamiers, promoting the culture of Francia at the expense of the Occitan culture. The rapturous reception of Raymond VI by the Toulousains, who had been forced to submit to de Montfort in 1213, resulted in the town declaring for the count, and in the flight of the crusader garrison leaving Simon de Montfort’s family (including his wife and ten-year old son, Simon V) sealed up inside of the seat of comital power, the Château Narbonnais on the southern fringe of the town’s defences. De Montfort lost no time in gathering his forces, marching on Toulouse with murderous intent in the company of his knights, engineers, foot soldiers and local sympathisers. Among the lieutenants of this council of war we find Hugh II de Lacy, exiled earl of Ulster and lord of Castelnaudary and Laurac. The lynchpin to the town’s defences was the Château Narbonnais, residence of the counts of Toulouse, symbol of the count’s power and the heraldic symbol of the town of Toulouse itself. This impregnable fortress had been commandeered by Simon de Montfort in 1213 following his usurpation of the title of Count of Toulouse and served as one of the bases of operations of the crusading forces during the protracted siege that was to unfold over the summer and winter of 1217-18. The nature, form and location of the Château Narbonnais has long been discussed, disputed and argued over in the literature. The apparent abundant descriptions of the castle gleaned from the richly described Canso seemed to confict with a later account dating to the sixteenth century which describes the destruction of the Château Narbonnais, and much ink has been spilled in efforts to reconcile the two descriptions. The principal variance between the two sources relates to the fact that the Château Narbonnais seems to be described in the Canso as a freestanding castle, distinct from the town walls while the later description of its destruction describes it unequivocally as an intramural structure. The following article discusses this critical defensive element, its evolution from Roman gatehouse to comital castle to Royal Palace in light of extensive archaeological works

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