Raymond II Trencavel
Raimund II Trencavel (franz: Raimond, * 1207, † 1263-1267 ), was briefly Viscount of Carcassonne, Béziers and Razès. He came from the family of Trencavel and was the only child of the Viscount Raymond Roger Trencavel († 1209) and his wife, Agnes of Montpellier. In the medieval traditions, he is simply called Trencavel.
Life
Due to the occupation of Carcassonne by the Crusaders of the Albigensian Crusade in 1209, Trencavel grew up in exile at the court of the King of Aragon. Due to his immaturity, he took no part in the fighting to retake his country. But in 1224 he was able to move again in Carcassonne, after the Crusaders had been largely displaced from Languedoc, under the protection of Count Roger Bernard II of Foix. During his reign, he tried the established church order by the crusade to eliminate and sales inter alia Guy of Vaux -de- Cernay, an uncle of the chronicler Pierre des Vaux -de- Cernay, from the diocese of Carcassonne.
Trencavel however did not last long, because in the summer of 1226 led King Louis VIII of France a new crusade in the country. The city leaders of Carcassonne, tired after more than fifteen years of war, the city surrendered without a fight to the king and Trencavel had to again go into exile in Aragon. The land of Trencavel was combined with the royal domain and set up in the Seneschallate Carcassonne and Beziers. The legal basis for it served the crown transferred to their supposed rights of the last crusade leader, Amaury de Montfort. In the following years he ruled as a vassal of the Count of Foix about Limoux and stood up for his rights in a dispute with the crown. In September 1229 he traveled to a court day to Melun, where he was transferred from the regent Blanche of Castile, the Vice- county Béziers as a fief, but in return he had to Carcassonne and all other former fief of his family do without a contract. This compensation came in the wake of a general peace, the princes of the Languedoc, which was closed a few months before the Treaty of Meaux- Paris.
Despite this success, Trencavel put back into the service of King James I of Aragon, whom he succeeded on his conquest of the Balearic Islands. He came among others, with Olivier de Termes and Xacbert de Barbaira in contact that were once vassals of his family and now stood as so-called Faydits in an underground struggle against the French crown. Probably influenced by these, Trencavel decided to violent reconquest of Carcassonne. In September 1240 he put himself at the head of an army composed mainly of Faydits and fell over the Corbières pulling into the Languedoc, took the castle of Aguilar and Montréal and completed a Carcassonne. However, it succeeded the royal seneschal, Guillaume des Ormes, in time to send a request for help to the royal court, so that this is a relief army under the royal chamberlain Jean de Beaumont and the Viscount Gottfried VI. could send Châteaudun to the south. Since the counts of the South had refused him their support, Trencavel had to break the siege and flee to Montreal, where he was besieged in his turn in the face of this threat, on 11 October 1240. But he managed to escape and took again his exile in Aragon.
In 1247 Trencavel be subjugated finally the crown by King Louis IX against it. the Holy broke his seal. He retained control of Limoux and participated in the sixth crusade (1248-1250) part. The last time he was called in 1263 and died probably at the latest in 1267, in which one of his two sons was first mentioned. With his death, the family Trencavel disappears from the historical tradition.