It required but a small force of royal troops under Jean de Beaumont to crush the insurrection as quickly as it had arisen, and to inflict a vengeance which virtually annihilated the _petite noblesse_ of the region; but, nevertheless, the lesson which it taught was not to be neglected. The civil order, as now established in the south of France, evidently rested in the religious order, and the maintenance of this required hands more vigorous and watchful than those of the self-seeking prelates. A great assembly of the Cathari held in 1241, on the bank of the Larneta, under the presidency of Aymeri de Collet, heretic Bishop of Albi, showed how bold they had become, and how confidently they looked to the future. Church and State both could see now, if not before, that the Inquisition was a necessary factor in securing to both the advantages gained in the crusades.[32] Gregory IX., the founder of the Inquisition, died August 22, 1241. It is probable that, before his death, he had put an end to the suspension of the Inquisition and slipped the hounds from the leash, for his immediate successor, Celestin IV., enjoyed a pontificate of but nineteen days--from September 20 to October 8--and then followed an interregnum until the election of Innocent IV., June 28, 1243, so that for nearly two years the papal throne was practically vacant. Raymond’s policy, for the moment, had leaned towards gratifying the papacy, for he desired from Gregory not only the removal of his four excommunications and forbearance in the matter of the crusade, but also a dispensation to enable him to carry out a contract of marriage into which he entered with Sanche, daughter and heiress of the Count of Provence, not foreseeing that Queen Blanche would juggle him in this, and, by securing the brilliant match for her son Charles, found the House of Anjou-Provence, and win for the royal family another large portion of the South. Full of these projects, which promised so well for the rehabilitation of his power, he signed, April 18, 1241, with Jayme I. of Aragon, a treaty of alliance for the defence of the Holy See and the Catholic faith, and against the heretics. Under such influences he was not likely to oppose the renewal of active persecution. Besides, he had been compromised in Trencavel’s insurrection; he had been summoned to answer for his conduct before King Louis, when, on March 14, he had been forced to take an oath to banish from his lands the _faidits_ and enemies of the king, and to capture without delay the castle of Montségur, the last refuge of heresy.[33]