In
the popular imagination (and books about Rennes-le-Château)
Le Bézu in the Aude
département is an old Templar fortress, from
where the Templars treasure was rescued when they were persecuted
by the French King Philip le Bel. You will find it
marked on maps as "Les Templiers".
There is very little evidence that it was ever a Templar fortress, but plenty that it was a Cathar stronghold at the time of the war against the Cathars known as the Albigensian Crusade. Le Bézu is even mentioned in the The Song of the Crusade, though no one realised this until the twentieth century when a local historian traced back the unlikely mutation of the name from Le Bézu to Albedun.
The
seigneurs were a family called Sermon, a branch of the famous
Aniorts, Viscounts of the Plateau de Sault. It is known
that Cathar bishops took refuge here.
It appears that the château of Le Bézu was never besieged, but it surrendered without a fight after the demoralising fall of the château of Termes to Simon de Montfort in 1210.
Back to: Termes
