The wars were wars of the north against the south, of one civilization against another. The astute and calculating Philip Augustus seized with avidity the opportunity of bringing under his direct control a province of France, which had been practically an independent kingdom; and the crusade is, therefore, of first-rate importance as a big contribution to the unification of the French kingdom. If to many who took part in them the original purpose of these religious wars was altogether subsidiary, that purpose was none the less most horribly accomplished. The peculiar civilization of Languedoc was blotted out, its beauty and fragrance being utterly extinguished by the onslaught of the crusaders. With the civilization went the heresy that it had harboured. Catharism indeed continued to exist in the devastated region, but all its vital power of expansion had been destroyed when the conditions that fostered it vanished. The Albigensian wars were the most successful attempt to extirpate heresy known in history. They were successful because they were utterly ruthless and included wholesale massacres. When the town of Béziers fell, it is said that twenty thousand of its inhabitants were slaughtered. There were good Catholics as well as Cathari among the populace of the place; but the story goes that when Arnaud of Citeaux was asked whether the Catholics were to be spared, in his anxiety lest a single heretic should escape by pretending orthodoxy, he replied, ‘Kill them all, for God knows His own.’[282] When the crusaders appeared in Languedoc, toleration vanished out of western Christendom. There was no asylum left where the heretic could feel assured of safety from the persecutor. The power of the Church against the disobedient had been mightily asserted. The ruler who had dared to disregard her order to purify his land of its contaminators had been brought low. From every country the papacy had been able to bring together doughty warriors to uphold the unity of the faith by spilling the blood of the perverse wanderers from the fold. The policy of force had been triumphantly vindicated by the amplitude of its success. CHAPTER II THE BEGINNINGS OF THE INQUISITION Originally jurisdiction over heresy belonged to the ordinary ecclesiastical courts, heresy being classed with such other offences as adultery and breach of contract, which came under ecclesiastical purview.[283] The special tribunal of the Inquisition came into being because these courts proved defective for the trial of heresy. In the first place, the new offence became so frequent that the ordinary courts were unable to support the large additional burden without impairing their efficiency in the performance of their original duties.