large force, leaving the rear echelon to follow as fast as it could and proclaiming that he was acting under orders from the Pope in taking up arms against the Crusade. Pedro’s intervention promised to be decisive. For four years, in the face of heavy odds, Count Simon had snatched success out of the jaws of hostile circumstance. But now the odds were so overwhelming that only one result seemed possible. In the summer of 1213 any man (no matter what he desired in the matter) estimating the chances of the future would have told you that de Montfort and his little band of Crusaders would be wiped out. CHAPTER V. THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE. MURET AND ITS SEQUEL. We have seen that everyone, except perhaps de Montfort himself, expected to see the Crusade annihilated. The event proved them wrong. It is fair, therefore, to speak of the rest of the war and the final surrender of the house of Toulouse as the sequel to the amazing action of Muret. For although that final surrender was postponed sixteen years, without Muret there would have been no surrender at all. Besides its immense result, the campaign of 1213 culminating in the battle of Muret, is interesting as one of the very few conflicts between men of European stock in which a small force has broken and destroyed a force many times larger than itself. That the men of the time realized both the importance and the extraordinary nature of the action is proved by the abundance of record concerning it. Despite this fact, no student of mediæval war will be surprised to learn that the reconstruction of the battle itself remains difficult. It is strange, however, that the evidence as to Pedro’s line of march is almost altogether lacking.