The US Special Forces pin and Patch, "Kill them all. Let God sort them out." derived from the Albigensian Crusade,1209 by Pope Innocent III against the Cathar heresy, at Bezier, Southern France.
http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/42/messages/1108.html
The commander of the crusade, Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, pointed out, not everybody in the city was a heretic. Some were good Catholics. How should they know which weren't? A monk present at the siege recorded the answer of the Papal Legate Crusaders, Arnaud-Amaury, the Abbot of Citeaux, as "Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet." ("Kill them all. God will know his own." ) So the Crusaders followed his advice and killed everybody they could find in Beziers. Roughly 20,000 men, women and children of the town were slaughtered to comply with the order.
1290 to the 1960s is a long dormancy.
Anyone know any war, or incident during the interim when it popped up?
How it happened to come up when it did?
2007-07-08
09:35:35
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2 answers
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asked by
Jack P
7
in
History