Montgey: hilltop castle and village in the Tarn Lauragais, near Le Falga

On its Tarn hilltop, Montgey keeps a castle tied to a 1211 episode of the Albigensian Crusade, a Gothic church and a panorama from the Montagne Noire to the Pyrenees.

Montgey is one of those villages you see long before you reach it: a silhouette of square towers set on a hill above the plain that runs from Toulouse to Revel, in the Lauragais, south-west France. The commune lies in the Tarn department, just across the border with Haute-Garonne, less than ten kilometres as the crow flies north-east of Le Falga. It even belongs to the same group of communes as we do, Aux sources du Canal du Midi, which straddles the departmental line. There are three reasons to come here: a private castle steeped in history, linked to one of the first battles of the Albigensian Crusade; a listed Gothic church; and one of the widest panoramas in the Lauragais.

Where is Montgey in relation to Le Falga?

From the Château du Falga, Montgey lies to the north-east, on the slopes that lead towards Puylaurens and the Agout valley. The village is small: fewer than three hundred inhabitants today, compared with more than seven hundred in the mid-nineteenth century. Its land, entirely agricultural, is drained by the Sor, the river that flows down from the Montagne Noire, and by the Thiers stream. The fields are given over to cereals and oilseed crops, as everywhere in this Lauragais of rolling hills.

The terrain explains everything. The centre of the commune sits at around 217 metres, but the castle itself is built on a rocky promontory of about 320 metres, and its crenellated watchtower, which serves as a geodetic survey point, rises to some 350 metres. From up there, it is easy to see why the site was occupied so early: it commands the whole plain.

Where does the name Montgey come from?

The most frequently cited etymology derives Montgey from Mons Jovis, the "mountain of Jupiter". It is considered credible given the many Gallo-Roman remains found in the commune. A carved Roman head was discovered set into the castle walls, and the official historic monuments record mentions a former oppidum. Local historians also mention fragments of amphorae in the fields, a Roman camp on the neighbouring hill and a villa on the plain, where a chapel recalls the original church.

Medieval Montgey therefore grew on a site that was already ancient. In the early thirteenth century, a charter of 1209 attests to the existence of the castle, the fief of a powerful Lauragais family, the Roqueforts.

What happened at Montgey in 1211, during the Albigensian Crusade?

This is the episode that put Montgey's name into the history books. In the spring of 1211, Simon de Montfort was besieging Lavaur, some twenty kilometres to the north. A force of crusader reinforcements, mostly Germans and Frisians led by the knight Nicolas de Bazoches, left Carcassonne to join him. Forewarned, the Count of Foix, Raymond-Roger, with his son Roger-Bernard and Giraud de Pépieux, laid an ambush in the woods near Montgey. Taken by surprise, the crusaders were almost entirely wiped out.

The chronicles of the time tell the story, each in its own way:

• the Song of the Albigensian Crusade, by William of Tudela, speaks of five thousand men, a figure historians consider exaggerated, and describes a long and fierce fight;
• the Historia Albigensis of Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay describes crusaders caught without their armour and massacred;
• the chronicle of William of Puylaurens, born nearby, also reports a massacre;
• Alberic of Trois-Fontaines gives the more plausible figure of 1,500 men.

This battle is often regarded as the first true pitched battle of the crusade. According to the history of the castle, the lord of Montgey, Jourdain de Roquefort, took part alongside the Count of Foix, together with his villagers. His family was deeply bound up with the southern resistance: an uncle who was Bishop of Carcassonne, a father among the leaders opposed to Montfort, Cathar "perfects" among his relatives, a wife, Marquesa, condemned as a heretic, and a brother-in-law, Raymond de Péreille, who was the last lord of Montségur.

The victory, however, had only limited consequences. Lavaur fell on 3 May 1211, and the defeat at Montgey no doubt weighed on the harsh fate inflicted on the town. Montfort then took his revenge on Montgey, whose village was destroyed. The official monuments record reports, after an anonymous fourteenth-century author, that Simon de Montfort stayed at the castle before having it dismantled. After his death in 1218, Jourdain de Roquefort, who had taken refuge in Toulouse with the count, regained possession of the place, and his descendants held it until the fourteenth century. A patched breach in the old western rampart is, according to legend, the one through which the crusaders entered.

To place this episode in the wider story, our article on the Cathar castles from the Lauragais is the natural next step.

How has the Château de Montgey come through the centuries?

The present castle bears the marks of every period. The western walls and part of the northern ones date back to the twelfth century and are often more than three metres thick. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the building took its final shape: a quadrangle around a central courtyard, flanked by four towers, with a convex south façade. An Italian-style gallery of eight arches links the main building to the so-called Knight's Tower (tour du Chevalier).

The seventeenth century brought terraces, a great gate, a grand staircase and a Renaissance fireplace showing the influence of the School of Fontainebleau. The outbuildings were built around 1723 over a vaulted cellar, outside the old northern rampart; the small crenellated keep that rises above the roofs dates from the second half of the nineteenth century. Further down, a second, ruined enclosure still has its water-filled moat.

From 1464 onwards, owners succeeded one another through sales, marriages and inheritances. Two figures stand out:

• Charles de Franc, lord of Cahuzac, owner of the castle in 1639 and one of Cardinal Richelieu's guards, who appears as Cahusac in Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers, wounded by d'Artagnan;
• his son Alexandre de Franc, who took the title of Marquis de Montgey and is said to have grown rich from the trade in pastel (woad), the great source of the Lauragais's wealth that we describe in the Lauragais, land of Cocagne.

A charming legend, set during the Hundred Years' War, tells how a small garrison drove off English attackers by shaking the castle's beehives over them. The village is said to have earned the nickname "Montgey la Mouche" ("Montgey the Fly"), since bees were then called "honey flies".

The castle is now privately owned. Its façades and roofs have been listed as historic monuments since 1975. It sometimes opens during the European Heritage Days: check each year before making the trip. The rest of the time, you can admire it from the village and the surrounding roads, which is already well worth it.

What is there to see in the village of Montgey?

The church of Saint-Barthélemy alone justifies a stop. Listed as a historic monument in 1979 and owned by the commune, it has a Gothic plan, and its nave and bell tower may date from the sixteenth century. The single nave ends in a seven-sided choir; two chapels open to the north; you enter from the south, under an added porch, through a round-arched doorway topped by two medallions. To the west, the square-based bell tower ends in two octagonal storeys.

Around it, the village has kept a fortified gateway: the castle's defences once joined those of the village. Elsewhere in the commune you can also spot the chapel of Notre-Dame-de-l'Assomption at Auvezines, seat of a former parish re-established in 1846, and, in the hamlet of Le Burq, a neoclassical château from the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century, also private.

What panorama does Montgey offer?

This is the great reward of the visit. From the promontory, the view is stopped only by the Montagne Noire to the east and, to the south, by the Pyrenees, which on a clear day you can follow from the Canigou to the Pic du Midi de Bigorre. You take in the whole plain of Revel, the hills of the Lauragais and, below, the Sor valley.

Our advice: choose a crystal-clear autumn or winter morning, when the autan wind has swept the horizon clean, or a late summer afternoon, when the low light picks out every hill. The snow-capped Pyrenees, seen from here above the golden fields, are worth the trip on their own.

Where to walk in Montgey and the neighbouring hilltop villages?

Montgey is best discovered on foot, with no sporting ambitions: a stroll through the lanes from the church to the fortified gateway, then a few steps along the quiet roads that skirt the hill and reveal the castle from different angles. Simply respect the private character of the estate and its grounds.

To make a lovely half-day of it, we like to combine Montgey with its hilltop neighbours in the Lauragais:

• Puylaurens, a little further north-east, overlooks the plain from its 375 metres, at the gateway to the Montagne Noire. Birthplace of the chronicler William of Puylaurens, it was also home, from 1660 to 1685, to a renowned Protestant academy, and the cobbler Guillaume Lavabre is credited there with the song La Garisou de Marianno, associated with the name of Marianne, the emblem of the French Republic;
• Saint-Félix-Lauragais, on the other side of the plain, with its collegiate church and castle, which we present in our article on Saint-Félix-Lauragais;
• Revel, the bastide town and its great covered market hall, ideal for ending the day, described in our guide to Revel.

Frequently asked questions

Can you visit the Château de Montgey?
It is a private, lived-in property. It sometimes opens its doors during the European Heritage Days; the programme changes every year, so it is best to check with the local tourist offices.

Is Montgey a Cathar castle?
In the thirteenth century the castle belonged to the Roqueforts, a family linked to Catharism and to the southern resistance, and the battle of 1211 took place nearby. But the building you see today owes most to the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

How far is Montgey from Le Falga?
Less than ten kilometres as the crow flies, to the north-east, in the neighbouring Tarn department. It makes an ideal outing for a morning or late afternoon.

When is the best time to see the Pyrenees from Montgey?
In dry, clear weather, often in autumn and winter, or after a spell of autan wind has cleared the horizon.

Staying at the Château du Falga to discover Montgey

Montgey is one of those places best discovered when you are staying nearby and can choose your day of fine light. From the château, where we welcome up to 21 guests, or from the Petite Maison, open all year round for four people, Montgey, Puylaurens and Revel are easily combined with the rest of the Lauragais. To plan your stay, do not hesitate to write to us.

For further reading, the castle's entry in the Mérimée database of the French Ministry of Culture and that of the church of Montgey detail the protected features.

Sources: Mérimée database (records PA00095608 and PA00095609, French Ministry of Culture); Wikipedia (articles Montgey, Château de Montgey, Château de Burq, Puylaurens, Battle of Montgey); Michel Roquebert, "Les seigneurs de Montgey au XIIIe siècle", Revue du Tarn, 1977, and Pierre Bouyssou, as cited by Wikipedia; Banatic (French Ministry of the Interior).