In the year 1129 Hugh de Payens, accompanied by 300 knights of the n.o.blest families in Europe, who had become members of the order, and followed by a large train of pilgrims, returned to the Holy Land.
Shortly after his arrival, the unlucky expedition to Damascus above narrated[74], was undertaken, and the Templars formed a portion of the troops which marched, as they fancied, to take possession of that city.
As has been observed, this is the first occasion on which we find the Christians in alliance and connection with the Ismalites; and as Hammer, the historian of the last, makes the grave charge against Hugh de Payens, of having modelled his new society on the plan of that deadly a.s.sociation, and of having been the chief planner and instigator of the treacherous attempt on Damascus, we will suspend the course of our narration, to discuss the probability of that opinion, though in so doing we must antic.i.p.ate a little respecting the organisation of the Order of the Temple.
[Footnote 74: _See_ p. 88.]
Hammer argues an ident.i.ty between the two orders, as he styles them, of the Ismalites and the Templars, from the similarity of their dress, their internal organisation, and their secret doctrine; and as the two societies existed in the same country, and that of the Ismalites was first inst.i.tuted, he infers that this was the original, and that of the Templars the copy.
First, with respect to the outward habiliment, the dress of the order.
Nothing, as appears to us, can be weaker than to lay any stress on so casual a circ.u.mstance as similarity of forms or colours, more especially when a true and distinct cause for the a.s.sumption of them on either side can be a.s.signed. The colour of the khalifs of the house of Ommiyah was _white_; hence the house of Abbas, in their contest with them, adopted _black_, as their distinguishing hue; and hence, when the Abba.s.sides were in possession of the supreme power, all those who, under pretence of supporting the rights of the family of Ali, or on any other pretext, raised the standard of revolt against them, naturally selected _white_, as the sign of their opposition. Ha.s.san Sabah, therefore, only retained the use of the colour which he found already established. When he formed the inst.i.tution of the Fedavee, or the _Devoted to Death_, what more suitable mark of distinction could he a.s.sign them than a _red_ girdle or cap, which indicated their readiness to spill their own blood or that of others? With respect to the Templars, the society of the Hospitallers was already existing when Hugh de Payens and his companions resolved to form themselves into a new a.s.sociation. The mantle worn by the members of the Hospital was _black_: what colour then was so natural for them to adopt as its opposite, _white_? and when, nearly thirty years after their inst.i.tution, the pope appointed them or gave them permission to wear a cross on their mantle, like the rival order, no colour could present itself so well suited to those who daily and hourly exposed themselves to martyrdom, as that of blood, in which there was so much of what was symbolical.
With respect to internal organisation, it will, we apprehend, be always found that this is, for the most part, the growth of time and the product of circ.u.mstances, and is always nearly the same where these last are similar. The dominion of the a.s.sa.s.sins extended over large tracks of country; hence arose the necessity of appointing lieutenants. In like manner, when the Templars got large possessions in the West and the East, they could not avoid, after the example of the Hospitallers, appointing persons to manage the affairs of the society in different countries. Hence, then, as the Ismalites had their Sheikh-al-Jebal, with his Dais-al-Kebir of Kuhistan and Syria, so the Templars had their Master and their Priors of different provinces. The resemblance is so far exact, but, as we see, easily accounted for. That which Hammer goes on to draw between the component parts of each society is altogether fanciful. To the Refeek, Fedavee and Lazik of the Ismalites, he sets as counterparts the knights, esquires, and serving-brethren of the Templars. It is needless to point out the arbitrariness of this comparison. The chaplains of the Templars, we may see, are omitted, and it was, perhaps, they who bore the greatest resemblance to the Refeeks, while neither knights nor esquires had the smallest similarity to the Fedavee.
As to a secret doctrine, we shall hereafter discuss the question whether the Templars had one or not. Here we shall only observe, that the proof of it, and of the ultimate object of the Templars being the same with that of the Ismalites, namely, the acquisition of independent power, adduced by Hammer, is by no means satisfactory. He says that it was the object of both societies to make themselves masters of the surrounding country, by the possession of fortresses and castles, and thus become formidable rivals to princes; and he sees, in the preceptories or houses of the Templars, the copies of the hill-forts of the Ismalites. That such was the design of this last society is quite apparent from the preceding part of our work; but what resemblance is there between such formidable places of defence as Alamoot and Lamseer, and the simple structures in which a few knights and their attendants dwelt in the different parts of Europe, and which were hardly, if at all, stronger than the ordinary baronial residences? and what resistance could the Temple of London or that of Paris offer to the royal strength, if put forth? Hammer has here again fallen into his usual error of arguing too hastily from accidental resemblances. The preceptories of the Templars were, as we shall show, the necessary consequence of the acquisition of property by the order, and had nothing hostile to society in their nature.
When we reflect on the character of the first crusaders, and particularly on that of the first Templars, and call to mind their piety, ignorance, and simplicity, nothing can appear more absurd than to ascribe to them secret philosophical doctrines of impiety, imbibed from those whose language they did not even understand, and whose religion and manners they held in abhorrence, and to suppose that the first poor knights of the Temple could have had visions of the future power of their order, and have looked forward to its dominion over the Christian world. "But this is a common mistake with ingenious men, who are for ever ascribing to the founders of empires, religions, and societies, that attribute of divinity which sees from the beginning the ultimate end, and forms all its plans and projects with a view to it. It is thus that some would fain persuade us that Mahommed, in his solitary cave at Mecca, saw clearly and distinctly the future triumphs of Islam, and its banners floating at the Pyrenees and the Oxus; that Cromwell, when an obscure individual, already in fancy grasped the sceptre of England; and that Loyola beheld the members of his order governing the consciences of kings, and ruling an empire in Paraguay. All such results are in fact the slow and gradual growth of time; one step leads to another, till the individual or the society looks back with amazement to the feeble commencement."
The Templars and the Ismalites are mentioned together by history in only one more relation, that is, on occasion of the tribute paid to the former by the Syrian branch of the latter, and the murder of the Ismalite amba.s.sador above related[75]. As this act was very probably committed by order of the Master of the Temple, who, it might be, doubted the ability or the future inclination of the king to pay the 3000 byzants a year, it testifies but little for any very friendly feeling between the Templars and the Ismalites. Yet Hammer opines that the 3000 byzants were paid, not as the tribute of the weaker to the stronger, but by way of pension for the secret services which the Templars were in the habit of rendering their cause; such, for example, as refusing on one occasion to join in the expedition against the khalif of Egypt, the great head of the society of the a.s.sa.s.sins.
[Footnote 75: Page 116.]
To narrate the various exploits of the knights of the Temple, would be to write the history of the Crusades; for, from the time that the order acquired strength and consistency, no action with the Infidels ever was fought in which the chivalry of the Temple did not bear a distinguished part. Their war-cry was ever heard in the thickest of the fray, and rarely was _Bauseant_ seen to waver or give back in the conflict. The knights of St. John fought with emulative valour; the example of the rival orders stimulated all parts of the Christian army; and to this influence may be, in great measure, ascribed many of the most wonderful triumphs of the Cross during the twelfth century.
In the year 1147, when Pope Eugenius III. came to Paris to arrange the proposed crusade with Louis VII., both the pope and the king honoured with their presence a general chapter of the order of the Temple, which was holden at that place. It was probably on this occasion that the supreme pontiff conferred on the order the important privilege of having ma.s.s said once a year in places lying under interdict. The newly-elected Master of the Temple, Eberhard de Bar, and 130 knights, accompanied the king on his march for the Holy Land; and their valour and their skill greatly contributed towards the preservation of the crusading army in their unfortunate march through Lesser Asia. The siege of Damascus, which was undertaken after the arrival of the French and German kings in the Holy Land, miscarried, as is well known, through treachery. The traitors were doubtless the _Pullani_, as the Latins of Syria were called, who were at this time capable of every thing that is bad. Some writers most unjustly charge the Templars with this guilt; but those who are the best informed on the subject make no accusation against them.
The charge, however, while it shows the power and consideration of the Templars at that time, may be considered to prove also that they had degenerated somewhat from their original virtue; for otherwise it could never have been made.
The Christian army laid siege in 1153 to the town of Ascalon, which the Saracens still held, and would have taken it, but for the cupidity of the Templars. A large heap of wood had been piled by the besiegers against a part of the wall, and set fire to. The wind blew strong towards the town during an entire night, carrying the smoke and heat into the town, so that the garrison was forced to retire from that quarter. The Christians fed the flames with pitch, oil, and other inflammable substances, and the wall next the pile, cracked by the heat, fell down, leaving a considerable breach. The army was preparing to enter at this opening when Bernard de Tremelai, the Master of the Temple, taking his station at it with his knights, refused all ingress.
It was the law of war in those days, among the crusaders, that whatever house or spoil any one took when a town was stormed, became his property. The Templars, therefore, were eager to have the first choice; and having kept off all others, Tremelai, with forty of his knights, boldly entered a strongly-garrisoned town. But they paid the penalty of their rashness and cupidity; for the garrison surrounded and slew them all, and then closed up the breach.
One of the most disgraceful acts which stain the annals of the Templars occurred in the year 1155, when Bertrand de Blancford, whom William of Tyre calls a "pious and G.o.d-fearing man," was Master of the order. In a contest for the supreme power in Egypt, which the viziers, bearing the proud t.i.tle of _Sultan_, exercised under the phantom-khalifs, Sultan Abbas, who had put to death the khalif his master, found himself obliged to fly from before the vengeance of the incensed people. With his harem, and his own and a great part of the royal treasures, he took his way through the Desert. A body of Christians, chiefly Templars, lay in wait for the fugitives near Ascalon; the resistance offered by the Moslems was slight and ineffectual; Abbas himself was either slain or fled, and his son Na.s.sir-ed-deen and the treasures became the prize of the victors. The far larger part of the booty of course fell to the Templars; but this did not satisfy their avarice; and though Na.s.sir-ed-deen had professed his desire to become a Christian, and had begun, by way of preparation for that change, to learn the Latin language, they sold him to his father"s enemies for 60,000 pieces of gold, and stood by to see him bound hand and foot, and placed in a sort of cage or iron-latticed sedan, on a camel, to be conducted to Egypt, where a death by protracted torture awaited him.
The Hospitallers were at this time become as corrupt as the Templars; and in this same year, when the patriarch demanded from them the t.i.thes which they were bound to pay him, they treated the demand with scorn; raised, to show their superior wealth, stately and lofty buildings, before the humble church of the Holy Sepulchre; and whenever the patriarch entered it to exhort the people, or p.r.o.nounce the absolution of sins, they rang, by order of their Master, the bells of the Hospital so loud, that, with the utmost efforts, he could not succeed in making himself heard. One day, when the congregation was a.s.sembled in the church, the Hospitallers rushed into it in arms, and shot arrows among them as if they were robbers or infidels. These arrows were collected and hung up on Mount Calvary, where Christ had been crucified, to the scandal of these recreant knights. On applying to the Pope Adrian IV.
for redress, the Syrian clergy found him and his cardinals so prepossessed in favour of their enemies,--bribed by them, as was said,--that they had no chance of relief. The insolence of the Hospitallers became in consequence greater than ever.
In fact, as an extremely judicious writer[76] observes, valiantly as the knights of the spiritual orders fought against the heathens, and great as was their undoubted merit in the defence of the helpless pilgrims, it cannot be denied that these knights were, if not the original promoters, at least active partic.i.p.ators in all the mischiefs which prevailed in the Holy Land, and that they were often led to a shameful dereliction of their duties, by avarice and thirst after booty.
[Footnote 76: Wilken Geschichte der Kreuzzuge, Vol. iii. pt. ii. p. 39.]
The year 1162 is conspicuous in the annals of the Templars, as the date of the bull _Omne Datum Optimum_, the Magna Charta of the order, and the great key-stone of their power. On the death of Adrian IV. two rival popes were elected,--Alexander III. by the Sicilian,--Victor III. by the Imperial party. The Templars at first acknowledged the latter; but at a synod, held at Nazareth, in 1161, they took the side of his rival.
Alexander, who came off victor, was not ungrateful; and on the 7th January, of the following year, the aforesaid bull was issued. By this doc.u.ment, which would almost appear to be the dictation of the order, the Templars were released from all spiritual obedience except to the Holy See; they were allowed to have peculiar burial-grounds at their houses, and to have chaplains of their own; they were freed from the obligation to pay t.i.thes, and could, with the consent of the bishop, receive them. It was also prohibited to any one who had once entered the order, to leave it, unless it were to enter into a stricter one. These great privileges necessarily awakened the envy and enmity of the clergy against the Templars and the Hospitallers, which last were equally favoured by the pontiffs; but these artful prelates, who were now aiming at universal power, knew well the advantage which they might derive from attaching firmly to them these a.s.sociations, which united the valour of the knight to the obedience of the monk, whose members were of the n.o.blest families in Europe, and whose possessions were extensive and spread over all parts of the Christian world.
In 1167 occurred one of the few instances of cowardice, or rather, we might say, treachery, which the annals of the Templars present. Almeric, king of Jerusalem, had committed to the Templars the charge of guarding one of those strong fortified caverns which were on the other side of the Jordan. Here they were besieged by the Turks, and, though the king was hastening to their relief, they capitulated. Almeric, incensed at their conduct, though he was a great friend of the order, and particularly of the Master, Philip of Naploos, instantly had twelve of the cowardly or treacherous knights hanged, and he experienced no opposition whatever on the part of the order. Philip, we may observe, was the first Master of the Temple who was a born Syrian; but he appears to have been a man of fair and honourable character. He was lord of the fortresses of Krak and Montreal in the Stony Arabia, which he had obtained with his wife. It was not till after her death that he became a Templar. Alter holding the dignity of Master for three years he resigned it. The cause of his resignation is unknown; but he was highly honoured and respected during the remainder of his life, and was employed on various important occasions.
It was during the mastership of Philip of Naploos, that King Almeric, at the instigation of the Master of the Hospital, and in violation of a solemn treaty, undertook an unprosperous expedition into Egypt. The Templars loudly protested against this act of perfidy, and refused to take any share in the war, either, as William, the honest Archbishop of Tyre, observes, "because it was against their conscience, or because the Master of the rival order was the author and projector of it." The prelate seems to regard the more honourable as the true cause. Perhaps we should express ourselves correctly if we said that in this, as in many other cases, duty and prejudice happily combined, and the path which was the most agreeable was also the most honourable.
In the mastership of Ado of St. Amando, the successor of Philip of Naploos, occurred the treacherous murder of the Ismalite envoy above narrated[77]--an act which brought the Templars into great disrepute with pious Christians, as it was quite manifest that they preferred money to winning souls to Christ.
[Footnote 77: Page 116.]
CHAPTER IV.
Heroism of the Templars and Hospitallers--Battle of Hittin--Crusade of Richard of England and Philip of France--Corruption of the Order--Pope Innocent III. writes a Letter of Censure--Frederic II.--Great Slaughter of the Templars--Henry III. of England and the Templars--Power of the Templars in Moravia--Slaughter of them by the Hospitallers--Fall of Acre.
The fall of the Christian power in the East was now fast approaching, and it was not a little hastened by the enmity of the rival orders. The truth of the old sentence, that the Deity deprives of sense those whom he will destroy, was manifested on this as on so many other similar occasions; and while the great and able Saladin was consolidating his power and preparing for the accomplishment of the object which, as a true Moslem, lay nearest his heart, the recovery of the Holy City, discord, enmity, and animosity, prevailed among those who should have been actuated by one soul and by one spirit.
Yet the two orders of religious chivalry had not derogated from their original valour, and the last days of Jerusalem were illumined by some n.o.ble feats of prowess. On the 1st of May, 1187, when Malek-el-Afdal, the son of Saladin, was returning from an expedition into the Holy Land, which he had undertaken with the consent of the Count of Tripolis, regent of the kingdom, the Masters of the Temple and of the Hospital, having collected about 140 knights and 500 footmen, met the Moslems, who were 7,000 in number, at the celebrated brook Kishon. They immediately charged them with the utmost impetuosity; the Turks, according to custom, turned and fled; the Christian knights pursued, leaving their infantry unprotected. Suddenly a large body of the Turks emerged from a valley, and fell on and slaughtered the footmen. Their cries brought back the knights to their aid, but, impeded by the narrowness of the ground, they could neither lay their lances in rest nor run their horses against the enemy, and all fell beneath the weapons of the Turks, with the exception of the Master of the Temple and three of his knights, who were saved by the fleetness of their horses. The Master of the Hospital was among the slain. In this unfortunate fight, James De Mailly, the marshal of the Templars, and a Hospitaller, named Henry, especially distinguished themselves. After all their brave companions had been slain around them, they still maintained the conflict; the Turks, filled with admiration of their valour, repeatedly offered them quarter, but in vain; and they fell at last, overwhelmed with darts flung from a distance, no one venturing to approach them. The historian, Vinisauf, tells us that De Mailly was mounted on a white horse, which, joined with his relucent arms and white mantle, made him appear to the infidels to be St. George, and they exulted greatly in having slain the tutelar saint of the Christians. He adds, what is not an unlikely circ.u.mstance, that the Turks covered his body with dust, which they afterwards powdered on their heads, thinking thereby to acquire some portion of his valour.
At the fatal battle of Hittin, where 30,000 Christians lost their lives, where the king and all his princes became captives, and where the Latin power in the East was broken for ever, the Master of the Temple, Gerard of Ridefort, and several of his knights and those of the Hospital, were among the captives. Saladin, who bore a particular hatred to the spiritual knights, would spare them on no condition but that of their renouncing their faith. To a man they gallantly refused; and, with the exception of the Master, the heads of all were struck off. Many who belonged not to the orders, smit with desire for the glory of martyrdom, cast the mantles of Templars around them, and went cheerfully to death as such. One Templar, named Nicolaus, evinced such joy and impatience for this glorious fate, that, according to the ideas of those times, heaven was believed to testify its approbation by a visible sign, and during three nights a celestial light illumined the unburied corpse of the Christian martyr.
It was indeed rare for a Templar to renounce his faith: prejudice, or honour, we may style it, or a better principle, always kept him steady in it, whatever the irregularities of his life might be. We recollect but one instance of a brother of the Temple abjuring his faith, and he was unhappily an English knight, named Robert of St. Albans. From some una.s.signed cause, he flung away the dress of his order, broke his vows, went over to Saladin, and became a Musselman. The sultan gave him one of his female relatives in marriage, and the recreant knight appeared before Jerusalem at the head of an army of the infidels. He had promised to Saladin to reduce the Holy City; but her hour was not yet come; and after wasting all the country from Mont-royal to Jericho with fire and sword, he was forced to retreat before the chivalry of Jerusalem, who came forth with the holy cross, and gave him a signal defeat. This event occurred in the year 1184; and the apostacy of this Templar caused extreme dismay among the Christians, and excited great ill-will against the order in general.
It had hitherto been the maxim of the order, not to redeem any of their members out of captivity with any higher ransom than a girdle, or a knife, or some other insignificant matter, acting in this on the same principle with the old Romans, who never redeemed prisoners. The Master, Ado de St. Amando, had died in captivity; but to redeem Gerard de Ridefort, no less a ransom was given than the city of Ascalon.--Gerard died of a wound received in battle the following year.
During the memorable crusade of Philip of France and Richard of England to the Holy Land, which their rivalry and animosity rendered utterly ineffectual, we find the Hospitallers on the side of the king of England, and of course the Templars the warm partizans of the king of France. Yet, when Richard was on his return to Europe, he sent for the Master of the Temple, and said to him, that he knew by many he was not loved, and that he ran great risk of his life on his way to his kingdom; he therefore besought him that he would permit him to a.s.sume the dress of the order, and send two of the brethren with him. The Master readily granted the request of so potent a monarch, and the king went on board in the habit of a Templar. It was probably on account of the known enmity of the order to him, that King Richard adopted this expedient, thinking that no one would ever suspect him of being with the Templars.
His brother John, we may here observe, was, on the contrary, a great favourer of the order, to whom he gave Lundy Island, at the mouth of the Bristol Channel. Throughout his reign, this odious prince attached himself to the Templars as the faithful servants of his lord the pope, reckoning on their aid against his gallant barons, who would not leave the liberties of the nation at the feet of a faithless tyrant. It was now very much the custom for monarchs to deposit their treasures in the Temple houses; and in the year 1213 we find King John demanding 20,000 marks which he had committed to the Templars to keep. We meet with no instance of breach of trust on the part of the knights.
The Templars shared in the common dishonesty of the church with respect to false miracles, and they felt no scruple at augmenting their wealth by deceptions calculated to impose on the ignorance and zeal of the laity. In the year 1204 it was given out that an image of the Virgin, in a convent not far from Damascus, had become clothed with flesh, and that there issued from its b.r.e.a.s.t.s a kind of juice or liquor of wondrous efficacy in removing the sins of pious pilgrims. As the place was distant, and the road beset with danger, the knights of the Temple took upon themselves the task of fetching the mirific fluid to the part of the coast still held by the Latins, and accommodating pilgrims with it, and the coffers of the order were largely replenished by this pious traffic.
Though, like all other proprietors in the Holy Land, the order of the Temple had been losers in consequence of the conquest of it by Saladin, their possessions in the West were so extensive that they hardly felt the loss. At this very time we find the number of their possessions of various kinds in Europe, stated at 7050, princ.i.p.ally situated in France and in England. Their arrogance and luxury naturally kept pace with their wealth; and, though writers of the twelfth century, and even the Troubadours--the satirists of the age--always speak of the knights of the Temple with honour, there was a secret dislike of them gaining ground, especially with the clergy, in consequence of the great privileges granted to them by the bull _Omne Datum Optimum_, and the insolent manner in which these privileges were exercised.
Accordingly we find, in the year 1208, the great Innocent III. the most ambitious of popes, and one who was a steady friend to the order, under the necessity of pa.s.sing the first public censure of them, and endeavouring to set, by authority, a limit to their excesses. In his epistle to the Master on this occasion, the holy father says that they abused the privilege of having ma.s.s celebrated in places which were under interdict, by causing their churches to be thrown open, and ma.s.s to be said every day, with loud ringing of bells, bearing the cross of Christ on their breast, but not caring to follow his doctrines, who forbids to give offence to any of the little ones who believe on him. He goes on to state that, following the doctrines of demons, they affixed the cross of their order on the breast of (i.e. _affiliated_) every kind of scoundrel, a.s.serting that whoever, by paying two or three pence a year, became one of their fraternity, could not, even though interdicted, be deprived of Christian burial; and that hence, known adulterers, usurers, and others who were lying under sentence of interdict, were honourably interred in their cemeteries; "and thus they themselves, being captive to the devil, cease not to make captive the souls of the faithful, seeking to make alive those whom they know to be dead." The pontiff laments, that instead of, like religious men, using the world for the sake of G.o.d, they employed their religious character as a means of indulging in the pleasures of the world. Though, on account of these and such abuses, they deserved to be deprived of the privileges which had been conferred on them, the holy father will not proceed to extremity, relying on the exertions of the Master to effect a reformation.
In this epistle we have all the charges, which, as will hereafter appear, could be at any time brought with justice against the order, whose corruption proceeded in the ordinary course of human nature, and no otherwise,--privileges and exemptions producing insolence and a.s.sumption, and wealth generating luxury and relaxation of morals. It was the lavish generosity of popes, princes, and n.o.bles, that caused the ruin of the Templars.
The Templars bore a distinguished part in the expedition to Egypt and siege of Damietta, in 1219, as the chief commander on that occasion was the papal legate, whose conduct, under show of obedience, they chiefly directed. But when, in 1228, the Emperor Frederic II., then under the sentence of the church, undertook the crusade which he had vowed, he found nothing but opposition and treachery from these staunch adherents of the pope. Considering the spirit of the age, their opposition is, perhaps, not so much to be blamed; but no principle will excuse the act of their writing to inform the Egyptian sultan of the plans of the emperor. The generous Moslem, instead of taking advantage of this treachery, sent the letter to Frederic, to the confusion of its authors.
Frederic checked his indignation at the time, but on his return to Europe he took his satisfaction on those who were most guilty, and he seized the property of the order in Sicily and his Italian dominions.
Though he was excommunicated again for so doing, Frederic persisted in his enmity both to them and the Hospitallers; and though, perhaps, the least given to superst.i.tion and illiberality of any man of his age, he did not disdain to make friendly intercourse with the Moslems a serious charge against them. "The haughty religion of the Templars," writes he, "reared on the pleasures of the native barons of the land, waxes wanton.... We know, on good authority, that sultans and their trains are received with pompous alacrity within the gates of the Temple, and that the Templars suffer them to celebrate secular plays, and to perform their superst.i.tious rites with invocation of Mahommet."
The hostility between the Templars and the Hospitallers still continued, though the Christian power was now nearly restricted to the walls of Acre. The Templars were in alliance with the prince of Damascus: the Hospitallers were the friends of the sultan of Egypt. The Templars extended their enmity against the emperor to the Teutonic knights, whom they deprived of their possessions in Syria. The appearance of a new enemy, however, brought concord for a time among them. The Turks of Khaurizm, on the east of the Caspian, were now in flight before the hordes of the Mongols, and 20,000 of their hors.e.m.e.n burst into the Holy Land. They took and plundered Jerusalem, which was unfortified and open, and then united themselves with the troops of Egypt. The Christians applied to the prince of Damascus for aid, who forthwith sent the required troops, and their combined forces went in quest of the foes. In the battle the Templars and the militia occupied the centre; the Hospitallers were posted on the left wing, the light horse on the right.
The battle lasted two days, and ended in the total defeat of the Christians, a result which is ascribed, though probably with injustice, to the treachery of the Damascenes. The Master of the Temple and the whole chapter, with the knights, in all 300, were slain; only four knights and fourteen esquires escaped.
The improvident and needy Henry III. of England, in general such a dutiful son of the holy father, who, for a share of the spoil, usually aided him in the pious work of robbing his subjects, summoned courage in 1252 to speak of seizing some of the property of the church and the military orders. "You prelates and religious," said he, "especially you Templars and Hospitallers, have so many liberties and charters, that your enormous possessions make you rave with pride and haughtiness. What was imprudently given, must be therefore prudently revoked; and what was inconsiderately bestowed must be considerately recalled.... I will break this and other charters which my predecessors and myself have rashly granted." But the prior of the Templars immediately replied, "What sayest thou, O king? Far be it that thy mouth should utter so disagreeable and silly a word. So long as thou dost exercise justice thou wilt reign; but if thou infringe it, thou wilt cease to be a king!"
These bold words appear to have checked the feeble king, who next year besought the two orders to become his security for a large sum of money which he owed. They refused his request, and Henry thenceforth did them all the injury in his power.
There occurred an event in Moravia in 1252, which may serve to show the power of the order in Europe. A n.o.bleman, named Vratislaf, who had been obliged to fly from that country, became a Templar in France. He made over all his property, among which was the castle of Eichhorn in Moravia, to the order. But his elder brother, Burian, took possession of his property, as having fallen to himself as head of the family. King Winzel, on being applied to, decided in favour of the order. Burian, however, still kept possession. The next year the Templars collected some thousands of men, and marched, under the command of their Great Prior, to take the castle. Burian, a.s.sembling 6000 men, 900 of whom he placed in the castle, advanced to give them battle. The engagement was b.l.o.o.d.y; 1700 men, among them the Great Prior of the Templars, lay slain, when night terminated the conflict. A truce was made for three days, at the end of which Burian and his men were driven into the castle, which they defended bravely, till king Attocar sent to threaten them with his wrath if they did not give it up. Burian surrendered it, and Vratislaf, returning to Moravia, became Prior of Eichhorn, in which thirty Templars took up their abode.
Though the Templars were so extremely numerous in Europe, they were little disposed to go out to the East to encounter toil and danger, in the performance of their duties. They preferred living in ease and luxury on their rich possessions in the West; and the members of the chapter alone, with a few knights, and other persons attached to the order, abode in Syria. It would even seem that the heads of the society were meditating a final retreat from the East, where they probably saw that nothing of permanent advantage was to be achieved. The Hospitallers, on the other hand, whatever may have been the cause, appear to have been more zealous in their calling, and to have had a greater number of their members in Syria; and it is, probably, to this cause, that we are to a.s.sign the total defeat which they were enabled to give their rivals in 1259: for the animosity between the orders had come to such a height, that, in this year, they came to open war. A b.l.o.o.d.y battle was fought, in which the Templars were defeated, when, such was the bitterness of their enmity, that the victors made no prisoners, but cut to pieces every Templar who fell into their hands, and scarce a Templar remained to carry the intelligence to Europe.
From this period till the capture of Acre and final destruction of the Latin power in the East in 1291, after a continuance of nearly two centuries, the annals of the Templars are bare of events. The rivalry between them and the other orders still continued; and in the opinion of some historians, it was their jealousy that hastened the fall of that last remnant of the Christian dominion in the East. Not more than ten knights of the Temple escaped in the storm of the town, and these, with the remnants of the other orders, and the garrison, sought a retreat in Cyprus.
We have now traced the history of the order from its inst.i.tution to within a few years of the period of its suppression. Of this most important event we shall delay the consideration for some time, and shall occupy the intervening s.p.a.ce with an account of the internal organisation of the society, its officers, its wealth, and various possessions. This will, we trust, prove no slight contribution to our knowledge of one of the most curious portions of the history of the world--that of the middle ages--and gratify the reader by the display of manners and inst.i.tutions which have long since pa.s.sed away[78].
[Footnote 78: The organisation and the rules of the Hospitallers were similar to those of the Templars; but as that order existed down to modern times, the rules, &c., given by Vertot, contain a great number of modern additions.]