However, these and many other triumphs notwithstanding, Innocent’s dream of world-wide dominion could not be fully realised while such a thing as individual conscience remained in the world, and individual conscience could not be abolished without persecution. Innocent was too great a despot to shrink from the difficulties of the work; too sincere a Catholic to show any pity to unbelief. The thirteenth century opened under evil omens for dissenters. Immediately on his accession Innocent had demanded the suppression of the Albigenses of Southern France, those unfortunate forerunners of the Reformation, because they, choosing to follow the dictates of their own conscience, refused to conform to the practices of the Church and to comply with the commands of her clergy. ♦1207♦ Raymund VI., Count of Toulouse, however, declined to consider the massacre of his subjects one of his duties as a sovereign, and was excommunicated. In the following year the Pope, seizing the pretext offered by the murder of his legate, proclaimed an unholy war against the heretics. And so great was the Pope’s power over the superstitious and unscrupulous world of mediaeval Europe, that thousands volunteered to carry out the Pontiff’s atrocious orders. Raymund, who alone among the Christian princes had ventured to raise his voice in defence of the persecuted, had meanwhile been stripped of his dominions, dragged naked into the Church, scourged by the Pope’s legate, and was now forced to lead the crusade against his own people. The harmless population was almost exterminated by the most barbarous means, their heresy was all but quenched in blood; and one of the most prosperous and civilised provinces of Europe was laid waste. The ferocity of the soldiers was eclipsed by that of the monks and priests, great numbers of whom swelled the ranks of the butchers. On the 22nd of July, 1209, the city of Beziers was taken by storm. The Abbot Arnold, being asked how the heretics were to be distinguished from true believers, replied, “Slay all; God will know his own.” “We spared,” said the same monk in his report to the Pope, “no dignity, no sex, no age; nearly twenty thousand human beings have perished by the sword. After that great massacre the town was plundered and burnt, and the revenge of God seemed to rage upon it in a wonderful manner.”