Carcassonne dates from the Roman occupation of Gaul.The place commanded one of the great roads into Spain,and in the fourth century Romans and Franks ousted each other from such a point of vantage.
In the year 436,Theodoric,King of the Visigoths,superseded both these parties;and it is during his occupation that the inner enceinte was raised upon the ruins of the Roman fortifications.Most of the Visigoth towers that are still erect are seated upon Roman substructions which appear to have been formed hastily,probably at the moment of the Frankish invasion.
The authors of these solid defences,though occasionally disturbed,held Carcassonne and the neighboring country,in which they had established their kingdom of Septimania,till the year 713,when they were expelled by the Moors of Spain,who ushered in an unillumined period of four centuries,of which no traces remain.
These facts I derived from a source no more recondite than a pamphlet by M.ViolletleDuc,a very luminous deion of the fortifications,which you may buy from the accomplished custodian.The writer makes a jump to the year 1209,when Carcassonne,then forming part of the realm of the viscounts of Beziers and infected by the Albigensian heresy,was besieged,in the name of the Pope,by the terrible Simon de Montfort and his army of crusaders.Simon was accustomed to success,and the town succumbed in the course of a fortnight.Thirtyone years later,having passed into the hands of the King of France,it was again besieged by the young Raymond de Trincavel,the last of the viscounts of Beziers;and of this siege M.ViolletleDuc gives a long and minute account,which the visitor who has a head for such things may follow,with the brochure in hand,on the fortifications themselves.The young Raymond de Trincavel,baffled and repulsed,retired at the end of twentyfour days.
Saint Louis and Philip the Bold,in the thirteenth century,multiplied the defences of Carcassonne,which was one of the bulwarks of their kingdom on the Spanish quarter;and from this time forth,being regarded as impregnable,the place had nothing to fear.
It was not even attacked;and when,in 1355,Edward the Black Prince marched into it,the inhabitants had opened the gates to the conqueror before whom all Languedoc was prostrate.I am not one of those who,as I said just now,have a head for such things,and having extracted these few facts had made all the use of M.ViolletleDuc's,pamphlet of which I was capable.