Fought on Sunday 27 July 1214, the battle of Bouvines has attracted a great deal of attention from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century. The battle's 800th anniversary less than a decade ago drew renewed scrutiny to it as a historical and military event. The purpose of this article is not to rehash the background, circumstances, the numbers of men engaged, the outcome or impact of the battle but rather to draw attention to a still understudied aspect of war in the High Middle Ages: how an individual commander actually func-tioned strategically, operationally, and tactically. While we cannot know what Philip was actually thinking, it is possible to see how he arrived at his decision to offer battle on a Sunday more than eight hundred years ago. This article seeks to understand how Philip II, who is not typically regarded by modern historians as a great battlefield general, presided over a great tactical victory with strategic implications at Bouvines, while arguing against the stereotype that the combat followed some sort of formalized rules or was merely a large-scale duel between armored mounted men.

Philip II's Grand Strategy

In his early military career up through the Third Crusade and beyond, Philip often appeared outgeneraled by his Angevin contemporaries and primary opponents King Henry II and his son Richard I of England. While John Hosler has successfully defended Philip's performance on the Third Crusade, back in France Philip never had much luck against Richard. After Richard's death in 1199 Philip experienced far more success against Richard's brother John, who was not the talented military commander Richard was.

In 1209, in what is now southern France, a war over heresy began. This war quickly mutated into a struggle over political control of the region, something its originator, Pope Innocent III, never intended. At the time the war began, this region was neither culturally nor linguistically French. Long after 1218 the region became known as “Languedoc,” for its people said “oc” to answer in the affirmative as opposed to those of the north who spoke Languedoϊl, oϊl being the Old French “oui.” In recent years historians, literature specialists, social scientists, and indeed people of the region itself have begun to refer to this territory as Occitania, another made-up name but one that is easy on the English tongue.

The heresy, whose adherents were called “Cathars” or “Albigensians” by their detractors, had co-existed alongside orthodox Christianity for over half a century in Occitania. Although the exact nature and origins of Catharism continue to be debated, the Cathars postulated a dual godhead, one of light and one of darkness. Heaven, the spiritual realm, and the human soul belonged to the god of light, while everything physical, including the bodies in which souls were trapped, belonged to the god of darkness. Cathars believed that by undergoing a rigorous purification ceremony known as the consolamentum, after death their souls escaped the physical world to reunite with God.

Virtually all works on the Albigensian Crusade spend an inordinate amount of time on the first year of the war. This is largely due to the storming of Béziers, which is often viewed as establishing a pattern of unforgiving and brutal warfare in the south. For all the ink spilled on it scholars have not studied the campaign year of 1209 with the thoroughness and lack of partisanship it deserves. Much of what has been written about the crusade since the nineteenth century has tended to be anti-church or pro-Occitan, and the events of the year 1209 provide easy fodder for these agendas. The legate Arnaud-Amaury's apocryphal remarks, supposedly made at the height of the sack of Béziers, will never go away, and they have to be dealt with in any discussion of what happened there. No matter who gets the blame, undoubtedly 1209 ushered in a time of troubles for the people of the south.

By 1 March 1209 Innocent's hopes of military intervention in Occitania had come closer to reality when real preparations for a crusade against the lands of the Count of Toulouse began. On that date Innocent appointed a Master Milo legatus a latere for the coming crusade, where he would join Arnaud-Amaury, the Abbot of Cîteaux, who had been a legatus a latere since 1204. Master Milo was reputed to be the pope's personal priest and confessor, a man renowned for his verbal acuity.

EVENTS AFTER THE SECOND SIEGE OF TOULOUSE AND PRINCE LOUIS'S SECOND SOJOURN IN THE SOUTH

The cardinal-legate and Amaury of Montfort sent earnest entreaties to Pope Honorius and Philip Augustus via the bishops of Toulouse, Tarbes, and Comminges, and to Amaury's mother Alice. The pope did his best to help in spite of the fact that the military phase of the Fifth Crusade was well underway. Burdened as he was with this large undertaking to Outremer, Pope Honorius showed a generosity and sympathy to the Albigensian Crusade lacking in his predecessor. Upon hearing of Simon of Montfort's death Honorius issued a series of letters concerning events in Occitania. On 30 July he issued a bull granting a full indulgence for all those who crusaded in the south just like the crusaders received for their efforts before Damietta. As usual there were no specific requirements for earning this indulgence, so it appears that it was granted by the same specifications as for earlier recruiting calls, the forty-day period. A few weeks later on 12 August the pope wrote a letter to Philip Augustus, mentioning the indulgence again and urging the king to send Prince Louis south to aid Amaury of Montfort. The pope followed this up by sending a letter on 13 August to Louis himself asking the same thing. Amaury of Montfort was confirmed in his properties and titles in another letter on 17 August.

The year 1215 was to be the least militarily active period between 1209 and 1218 as the people of Occitania waited to see if and how their world would change. From a political standpoint several important things happened during the year. Simon of Montfort spent most of it within a hair's breadth of gaining the church's sanction for his conquests. Though not quite as definitive as Montfort and many southern prelates hoped, the January 1215 Council of Montpellier made him the heir apparent to the Count of Toulouse's lands in the south. Final disposal of the lands, however, depended on the pope, who called what is widely regarded as one of the most important councils of the entire Middle Ages, commonly referred to as Fourth Lateran. Because a sizeable chunk of the council concerned events in Occitania, the main narrative sources of the crusade cover some aspects of the council in fair detail. The events of the Fourth Lateran Council brought out the quills of the Anonymous and William of Puylaurens, neither of whom left an account of what happened in 1214. Finally, during 1215 the chief crusader had to sit by as Prince Louis redeemed his vow and paraded in the south on his own crusade.

THE COUNCIL OF MONTPELLIER, JANUARY 1215

On 7 December 1214 one of the papal legates sent out letters announcing a council to be held at Montpellier, beginning on 8 January 1215.

In the wake of the Aragonese-Occitan defeat at Muret, one might have expected the chief crusader to take the offensive and attack Toulouse directly before the end of the year. On the contrary, in 1213 Montfort made no moves against the city. Even though militarily Toulouse had suffered a grievous blow by losing so many of its able-bodied militiamen at Muret, the city possessed strong walls and its inhabitants still harbored an intense hatred for Simon of Montfort. Taking the city would not have been easy, as events in the summer of 1211 had shown. Just as importantly, Muret had occurred late in the campaign season. Montfort's army was too small for the size and complexity a siege of Toulouse would entail, and he could not count on many reinforcements until the following spring. Even a summer campaign for 1214 was in doubt, since there was no indulgence for outsiders as per Innocent's letter of the preceding spring. In spite of his triumph at Muret, then, to attack Toulouse would be folly, so Montfort did not try it.

Instead, the seven bishops and three abbots with the army at Muret believed that the citizens of Toulouse would now be more amenable to reconciliation after such an obvious sign of God's disfavor towards them. The prelates determined to reconcile the Toulousans to the church, probably based on instructions sent to the late Pere II and Folquet of Marseille on 21 May 1213.

It becomes increasingly obvious by this stage of the war that rooting out Catharism was secondary to taking territory and eradicating those who defied the chief crusader. The coming year enhanced Simon of Montfort's reputation as a clever soldier but not as a Christian prince. Militarily, not only did Montfort regain territory the crusade had lost the previous fall and winter, but he also went on the offensive in two areas that had never been part of the original mandate for the destruction of heresy: the Agenais and Gascony. To get there, however, he had to strengthen his position in the viscounty of Albi.

Continuing the campaign of 1211 into January 1212, the truncated winter army rode north to attack the small village of Touelles in the Albi region, partly because it belonged to the traitor Giraud of Pépieux's father. Montfort seized the town quickly and executed many of its defenders but took Giraud's father prisoner, exchanging him for Dreux of Compans, a crusader noble captured not long before in a supply train ambush. After this the army besieged Cahuzac, also in the Albi region. Montfort intended to isolate the larger castrum of Gaillac, some of whose citizens had participated in the assassination of Pons of Beaumont, the garrison commander at Lagrave, the previous fall. Because of the severe weather, after a short blockade of two days Montfort had his men assault Cahuzac rather than continue to besiege it.

The year 1216 marked a distinct turning point in the fortunes of Simon of Montfort, the Occitan War, and the people of the south. The change need not defy explanation, although both the Anonymous and William of Puylaurens believed that God had either turned his favor away from the chief crusader or was testing him. That the young count's uprising occurred on the eastern edges of Montfort's territories where there had been little combat is not surprising. The chief crusader's control in areas east of Béziers was weak in practice and tenuous in legality. The church's disposal of Raimon VI's lands was most ambiguous in the eastern portions, where the retention of the marquisate of Provence for the young Raimon gave him a toehold for mounting a rebellion. The towns and cities of the Provençal region and along the Rhône had never been centers of heretical activity and remained within the graces of the church. The culture they shared with their western neighbors made them hostile to the Albigensian Crusade. In particular the people of the heavily populated and prosperous areas of the Rhône valley had long resented their lands being the highway for the subjugation of the south. In harnessing this underlying hostility to the crusade, Raimon VII was about to show that even as a young, inexperienced leader – a teenager still – he could wage war more successfully than his father.

The year 1211 was perhaps the most militarily active of the Occitan War. Though Simon of Montfort suffered a minor setback at the first siege of Toulouse, in 1211 he not only conducted some sieges on the scale of Minerve and Termes but also defended himself successfully when besieged at Castelnaudary. Two of the four field battles fought in the Occitan War occurred in 1211. The battle or ambush of Montgey was a lopsided southern victory, but Montfort was not present and thus his reputation did not suffer. Saint-Martin-la-Lande proved that even outnumbered the crusaders could win the supreme test of a medieval army, the pitched battle. The sum total of tactical victories against superior odds in 1211 showed Montfort to be a far more capable general than any of his southern contemporaries, though he made one strategic mistake that year which dogged him to the end of his life. That grave error was turning the people of Toulouse from reluctant allies into implacable enemies.

At the beginning of the year various parties tried to work out a modus vivendi between southern interests and those of the crusade. Especially concerned in this was the Count of Toulouse, whose authority had been shattered east of Lavaur and whose own brother would soon prove disloyal. In late January 1211 Pere II, Simon of Montfort, Raimon of Toulouse, and Raimon-Roger of Foix, as well as several church prelates including Arnaud-Amaury and Master Theodisius, met at Narbonne.

The year 1210 began in uncertainty, but conditions for the crusade would rapidly improve when the weather warmed and reinforcements arrived. It was in this year that one of the most important and infamous aspects of the Albigensian Crusade became institutionalized by the papal legates: the forty-day service (quarantine) required to win the indulgence. Montfort's ability to fight in geographically hostile country amidst his enemies was tested by this requirement. Besides undergoing repeated military and logistical tribulations, he had to worry about diplomatic efforts by the Count of Toulouse, the people of Toulouse, and the King of Aragon possibly undercutting his position.

Though Raimon VI had taken the cross and served with the crusade through the capitulation of Carcassonne, as mentioned previously he intended to seek out support and protection from the crusade by going directly to the sources of power, in this case his primary feudal overlord, Philip Augustus, and his spiritual overlord, Pope Innocent. When Montfort's military fortunes began to sour during the autumn of 1209 the Count of Toulouse traveled north to visit the King of France. While Philip treated him graciously, he refused to assist him in his attempt to reinstate tolls he had previously imposed in his territories. Next the count traveled to Rome via parts of eastern France. On his journey to the pope Raimon VI visited two of the most prominent crusaders from the previous campaign season, Odo, Duke of Burgundy, and Hervé, Count of Nevers.

The year 1213 provided surprises, triumphs, and setbacks for all sides. December 1212 saw the promulgation of the Statutes of Pamiers, a set of rules by which Simon of Montfort intended to govern his territories. On the one hand, the fact that the chief crusader was able to implement these indicates he obviously felt strong enough to move beyond the conquest stage to that of governance and consolidation. On the other hand, the Council of Lavaur and the stripping of the papal indulgence placed great impediments on his ability to complete the conquest of the Count of Toulouse's territories or even hold on to what he had already acquired. Finally, the early autumn brought Simon of Montfort the greatest triumph a soldier could win in the Middle Ages: a decisive tactical victory in pitched battle over southern and Aragonese forces led by the King of Aragon.

There was one other change for the Occitan War, a historiographical one. From 1209 through 1212 William of Tudela's account is one of the two most important sources for the Occitan War, even if he wrote it in rhyme. His history begins to peter out at the end of 1212. He tangentially mentions the Statutes of Pamiers, Pere II of Aragon's military preparations to assist the Count of Toulouse, and ends with a prognosis of the fighting yet to come. The anonymous continuator carries on William's rhyme, his eye for description and detail, but falls short in objectivity.