Shortly after the young Raymond’s departure from Rome, the two Raymonds reappeared in the unconquered part of their diminished holdings. There they found the people, especially the townsmen, so hot against the “French” that it seemed possible to continue the struggle. Beaucaire, Avignon, Tarascon, declared for their former lords, and Marseilles showed sympathy with his cause. The elder Raymond went off to Spain in the hope of recruiting reinforcements there. In Beaucaire the castle was held by a garrison of de Montfort’s, put there no doubt during his operation east of the Rhône after Muret. The citizens now rose and besieged this garrison, and de Montfort accordingly moved to relieve it. On the way to Beaucaire, Count Simon appeared before Narbonne, and there the quarrel between him and his old ally Arnaut Amalric came to a head. The walls ordered to be destroyed the previous year must have been patched up after a fashion, for Arnaut ordered the gates shut against de Montfort. The time, I repeat, controlled no agents of demolition except fire and human muscle. Still, the new defences were weak, for the Crusaders promptly broke in and, having entered, threatened Arnaut Amalric himself with violence for opposing them. The redoubtable old man excommunicated de Montfort, publishing the sentence twice over, and interdicted all the churches of the city as long as the excommunicated leader of the Crusade should remain in the place. Whereupon the Christian warriors stoned the archbishop’s palace and the champion of Catholicism joked about the anathema laid upon him, and even showed himself at mass as usual! After this exchange of compliments at Narbonne, de Montfort moved on Beaucaire, where the inhabitants had declared for Raymond, and besieged the place. The situation was complicated, as the citizens were at the same time besieging the garrison of “Crusaders” in the castle on its bluff over the Rhône. Repeated assaults by de Montfort failed for want of a sufficient number of catapults and other siege machinery. Meanwhile, in the castle, the woodwork of the roofs and hoardings (i.e., wooden galleries projecting outward from the tops of walls and towers so as to command their base) was badly damaged by the catapults of the men of Beaucaire. Nevertheless, the castle garrison held out stoutly, catching the battering ram with a noose of rope which prevented the heavy ram from being drawn back to gain momentum for its blow and keeping the sappers from the base of the walls by lowering burning bundles of tow and sulphur by means of chains from the battlements. Presently word came that Toulouse was about to declare for Raymond. Whereat de Montfort, in a fury, raised the siege of Beaucaire, abandoning his siege machinery and much of his equipment in his haste to meet the new danger.