The Albigensian crusade (1209-29) by the Catholic Church against the Cathar heretics of southern France is commonly ascribed to religious fanaticism. This book is the first to offer a dedicated military history of the whole Crusade. By telling the story of the Crusade through its dramatic sieges, battles and campaigns and offering expert analysis of the warfare involved, the author reveals the Crusade as a bloody conquest in which acts of terror were perpetrated to secure military rather than religious aims. The result in this much extended edition is a book that tells the dramatic military events of the Crusade and its leading characters--Simon de Montfort, Louis the Lion, Innocent III, Peter of Aragon, and Count Raymond of Toulouse--through the voices of those writers who fought it and experienced it.