The month of August was now well along. Having accomplished the prescribed forty days and won the crusading indulgences, the great body of the army were preparing to return home gorged with spiritual graces and not altogether lacking in temporal booty. The great force was about to melt away (as Washington’s militia so often melted away). But before the crusaders could return to their homes, they had first to provide for the continuance of the campaign against heresy. Someone must be set up in the viscounty of Beziers and Carcassonne, left vacant by the death of Trencavel. Furthermore, several other towns, including Albi and Pamiers, together with a number of castles, had surrendered without fighting. These places had been garrisoned, and the garrisons needed a central command. The Duke of Burgundy, the Counts of Nevers, and of St. Pol, to whom in turn the fief was offered, refused on the pretext that they had lands enough already; but really, says the “Chanson de la Croisade,” because they felt that they would dishonour themselves should they accept the spoils of such a conquest. Perhaps the corpses of Beziers were already beginning to stink in their nostrils, as they have stunk in the nostrils of so many historians to this day. Furthermore, dishonoured or not, the new viscount would be in an exposed position, alone—a northerner, confronted by Raymond of Toulouse and Peter of Aragon, with only the Church to back him. The Church had the feeble Christians of Palestine to support; it had taken five years to launch the Albigensian Crusade, and might take as long to organize another. Altogether, there is nothing improbable in the story that only after considerable pressure from the legates and much prayer on his own part did de Montfort, the fourth candidate, finally accept the office. With the acceptance by de Montfort of the viscounty of Beziers and Carcassonne, and with the prompt disbandment of the original crusading army, the first period of the Crusade comes to an end. It had lasted little over the forty days required to win the indulgences, and had been marked by the overwhelming superiority in numbers of the crusading forces in the field. Throughout the second period this superiority no longer exists, and for nine years the military strength of the Crusade is found principally in the qualities of its leader.