De Montfort was not the man to admit himself beaten. He determined on a decisive assault by means of a large “cat,” a movable wooden gallery with a steep roof covered with raw hides to prevent fire. Under such cover the defences might be approached and sapped. At the first attempt the “cat” was injured by stones from catapults. Strengthened, it was moved forward a second time, “moving with jerky little steps,” as an eye witness reports. Without waiting for it to reach their lines, the besieged began a general sortie. De Montfort himself was at mass when this news was brought to him. “I will not go,” he said, “until I have seen my Saviour.” Not until after the elevation of the Host did he take command. Then he concentrated his men and had driven the Toulousains back to their walls, when a stone from a catapult worked by women struck him on the head. He fell and died in a few minutes, his face all bloody and black where the helm had been driven in upon it. A few days after a final attack was made and repulsed, upon which the siege was raised. Despite de Montfort’s apparent failure his work was decisive. The eight years during which he had maintained himself in Languedoc had not only seen many “Frenchmen” assigned to lands there, they had also seen the moral and political prestige of the southern nobles damaged beyond repair. Toulouse had definitely lost any chance she may have had of rallying the south about her to make head against Paris. Languedoc with her wealth, her culture, and her indifference to the moral unity of Europe, was destined to go under. The great tolerant southern houses were to be swallowed up by the “most Christian” kings of France, who represented the new, vague, but enormous idea of the nation. De Montfort, dead and apparently beaten, had changed the course of history. The next six years of the Crusade (1218-1224) saw only small wars. They are marked by a single brief and inconclusive campaign, commanded by Louis of France.