We can readily conjecture the reasons which impelled its reinstatement. Doubtless the bishops were as negligent as of old, and looked after their temporalities to the exclusion of their duties in preserving the purity of the faith. Doubtless, too, the heretics, encouraged by virtual toleration, grew bolder, and cherished hopes of a return to the good old times, when, secure under their native princes, they could safely defy distant Paris and yet more distant Rome. The condition of the country was, in fact, by no means reassuring, especially in the regions which had become domains of the crown. The land was full of knights and barons who were more or less openly heretics, and who knew not when the blow might fall on them; of seigneurs who had been proscribed for heresy; of enforced converts who secretly longed to avow their hidden faith, and to regain their confiscated lands; of penitents burning to throw off the crosses imposed on them, and to avenge the humiliations which they had endured. Refugees, _faidits_, and heretic teachers were wandering through the mountains, dwelling in caverns and in the recesses of the forests. Scarce a family but had some kinsman to avenge, who had fallen in the field or had perished at the stake. The lack of prisons and the parsimony of the prelates had prevented a general resort to imprisonment, and the burnings had not been numerous enough to notably reduce the numbers of those who were of necessity bitterly opposed to the existing order. Suddenly, in 1240, an insurrection appeared, headed by Trencavel, son of that Viscount of Béziers whom we have seen entrapped by Simon de Montfort and dying opportunely in his hands, not without suspicion of poison. He brought with him from Catalonia troops of proscribed knights and gentlemen, and was greeted enthusiastically by the vassals and subjects of his house. Count Raymond, his cousin, held aloof; but his ambiguous conduct showed plainly that he was prepared to act on either side as success or defeat might render advisable. At first the rising seemed to prosper. Trencavel laid siege to his ancestral town of Carcassonne, and the spirit of his followers was shown when, on the surrender of the suburb, they slaughtered in cold blood thirty ecclesiastics who had received solemn assurance of free egress to Narbonne.[31]