The Southern French Nobility and the Albigensian Crusade

Highlighting the Trencavels' weak position, she demonstrates how, unlike other southern noble families such as the counts of Toulouse, they lacked the cordial relations with the Cistercians which could have afforded them some protection (they backed the 'wrong side' in patronizing local bishops), and how their relative insecurity within their own lands and among their neighbours undermined the possibility of mounting any effective resistance. Ecclesiastical policy determined upon their wholesale removal as a feasible method of minimizing antagonism from the higher nobility as a whole, while providing the crusaders with the base they required.