A visit to the Castrum de Roquefort – home of heretics, hideout of bandits

This morning I visited the historic site of Roquefort (no connection with the cheese!) while on a run with my wife in our local mountains. The earliest written reference to this fortified village dates from 1035, and for the next couple of centuries it was the home of the Roquefort family.

The Roqueforts were heavily implicated in the Cathar heresy which took root in this part of France in the late twelfth century, and family members took part in many of the main military actions of the Albigensian Crusade.In 1209, Guillaume de Roquefort III was accused of murdering an abbot and a monk near Carcassonne, and the following year he fought against the crusaders at the siege of the Château de Termes. He escaped on that occasion, but was killed in 1211 while defending the city of Toulouse. A couple of months before Guillaume’s death, his son, Jourdain de Roquefort IV, was behind the ambush and massacre of 6,000 crusader-pilgrims down on the plain below the family home. Guillaume’s wife was a member of the Cathar clergy, and her brother was the Cathar bishop of Carcassonne until he was burned at the stake in 1226.

Walking through the only gate to this well-protected community is an eerie experience. Roquefort has been abandoned and barely touched for 600 years, making it one of the least-investigated Cathar castles. Although I can see it from my bedroom window (with powerful binoculars), few people are aware of its existence. In times gone by, it was a perfect place to hide. In 1209, after the massacre at Béziers and the fall of Carcassonne, 300 Cathar faithful took refuge here on what must have been a very crowded hilltop. After that, fleeing heretics regularly found temporary shelter at Roquefort during the era of the Albigensian Crusade and the Inquisition.

Starting in the 1370s, Roquefort played a darker role. For over forty years it was the hideout of one of les Grandes Compagnies, or the Free Companies, which plagued France throughout the Middle Ages. These were bands of mercenaries of mixed nationalities and no fixed loyalties who would fight for anyone who paid them, and when they were dismissed during intervals of peace, they devoted themselves to private plunder. Because of the nature of their activities, these brigands were generally men of no fixed abode, but when they discovered the Castrum de Roquefort, one of these companies decided to set up permanent home here. Any merchant who travelled the country had to pay a levy or risk forfeiting his wares and his life, and nearly all the towns and villages in the surrounding countryside as far as Carcassonne and Toulouse had to buy off the plunderers – in some cases several times – or risk destruction.

The kings of France made numerous attempts to disperse les Grandes Compagnies in general and the brigands of Roquefort in particular. Some of them were recruited into the French armies that invaded Spain and Italy, but many of the brigands preferred to continue with their easy life of crime. In the lands around Roquefort, the common people grew more and more desperate, and in 1393 they raised enough money to bribe the brigands to disperse. Unfortunately, the bandits took the cash, went on holiday, and came back a few months later to resume business as usual. In 1415 the king ordered his lieutenants to clear them out by force. They succeeded, but the following year the brigands rolled back into Roquefort like a pocketful of bad pennies. The king’s men evicted them a second time, and realised the only way to stop the brigands coming back was to destroy the Castrum de Roquefort.

Fortunately for modern visitors like my wife and I, destruction was not fully comprehensive. Once we had passed through the gate, our path continued to climb until we reached the first moss-covered foundations of medieval village houses. We followed the faint trace of a street and then turned back on ourselves and continued climbing over treacherous overgrown rubble onto a flat grassy area which would once have been the enclosed courtyard or bailey. In a castrum, the majority of the population lived inside the walls, and the stone tower or keep served as the last line of defence. Roquefort’s tower stands on the highest point of the rocky outcrop, and its walls are pierced by a solitary window. In contrast with the rest of the site, the cut stones of the tower are so clean they look as if they have been sandblasted. In reality, they have been fried and dried by the sun and wind for a thousand years.

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