Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/59

 FALL OF MONTSjEGUR. 43 on condition that the lives of the rest should be spared. Although a few were let down from the walls with ropes and thus escaped, the capitulation was carried out, and the archbishop's shrift was short. At the foot of the mountain-peak an enclosure of stakes was formed, piled high with wood, and set on fire. The Perfect were asked to renounce their faith, and on their refusal were cast into the flames. Thus perished two hundred and five men and women. The conquerors might well write exultingly to the pope, '' We have crushed the head of the dragon !" * Although the fives of the rest of the captives were guaranteed, they were utilized to the utmost. For months the inquisitors Fer- rer and P. Durant devoted themselves to the examinations to se- cure evidence against heretics far and near, dead and afive. From the aged Kaymond de Pereille to a chfid ten years of age, they were forced, under repeated interrogatories, to recaU every case of adoration and heretication that they could remember, and page after page was covered with interminable lists of names of those present at sermons and consolamenta through a period extending back to thirty or forty years before, and embracing the whole land as far as Catalonia. Even those who had brought victual to Montsegur and sold it were carefully looked after and set down. It can readily be conceived what an accession was made to the terrible records of the Inquisition, and how valuable was the in- sight obtained into the ramifications of heresy throughout the land during more than a generation— what digging up of bones would foUow with confiscation of estates, and with what unerring cer- tainty the inquisitors would be able to seize their victims and con- found their denials. We can only guess at the means by which this information was extracted from the prisoners. Torture had not yet been introduced; fife had been promised, and perpetual imprisonment was inevitable for such pronounced heretics ; and when we see Eaymond de PereiUe himself, who had endured un- flmchmgly the vicissitudes of the crusades, and had bravely held out to the last, ransacking his memory to betray all whom he had ever seen adore a minister, we can imagine the horrors of the two I81.-Schmidt, Cathares, L 325.-Peyrat, Les Albigeois et I'Inquisition, H. 363
 * Guill. Pod. Laur. c. 46— Coll. Doat, XXIL 204, 210; XXIV. 76 80 168-72