Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 23.djvu/174

Rh of Montferrat (April 1192). It was in the disguise of a Templar and in a Templar galley that Richard left the Holy Land. When Acre was recovered, the Templars, like the Hospitallers, received their own quarters in the town, which from this time became the centre of the order. On the death of Henry of Champagne (1197) they vetoed the election of Raoul de Tabarie; after the death of his successor Amalric they refused to renew the truce with Saladin's brother, Saif al-Dín, and led an expedition against the Saracens before the arrival of the new king, John de Brienne. Brienne, at whose coronation in 1210 William de Chartres, the grand-master, was present. Seven years later, with the aid of Walter de Avennis and of the Teutonic Knights, they commenced the building of their fortress of Castle Pilgrim, near Acre, on a rocky promontory washed by the Mediterranean on every side except the east. This wonderful structure, whose ruins are still to be seen, was fortified with a strong wall, founded on the substructure of a yet more extensive one running from sea to sea, and was flanked by lofty towers of huge squared stones. Within was a spring of pure water, besides fishponds, salt-mines, woods, pastures, orchards, and all things fitted to furnish an abode in which the Templars might await the day of their restoration to Jerusalem.

It was from this castle that in May 1218 the fifth crusade started for the expedition against Egypt. The Templars were the heroes of the siege of Damietta, at which William de Chartres was slain. ‘‘First to attack and last to retreat,” they saved the Christian army from annihilation on 29th August 1219; and when the city surrendered (5th November) the only one of its twenty-eight towers that had begun to give way had been shaken by their engines. On the other hand, it was largely owing to their objections that John de Brienne refused the sultan’s offer to restore Jerusalem and Palestine.

From the very first the Templars seem to have been opposed to Frederick II., and when he landed at Acre (7th September 1228) they refused to march under the banners of an excommunicated man, and would only accompany his host from Acre to Joppa in a separate body. They were accused of notifying Frederick’s intended pilgrimage to the Jordan to the sultan, and they were certainly opposed to Frederick’s ten years’ peace with Al-Kámil, the sultan of Egypt, and refused to be present at his coronation in Jerusalem. Frederick was not slow to avenge himself: he left Jerusalem abruptly, publicly insulted the grand-master, demanded the surrender of their fortresses, and even laid siege to Castle Pilgrim. He left Acre on 3d May 1229, and on landing in Apulia gave orders to seize the estates of the order and chase all its members from the land.

Long before the expiration of Frederick’s peace Europe was preparing for a fresh crusade against the now divided realm of the Ayyubids. Theobald of Navarre and his crusaders reached Palestine about August 1239. The Templars shared in the great defeat near Jaffa, an engagement which their temerity had done much to provoke (13th November 1239). If the king ever accepted the overtures of Ṣáliḥ of Damascus, he was supporting the policy of Hermann of Perigord, the grand-master, who towards the summer of 1244 wrote a triumphant letter to England, telling how he had engaged this sultan and Násir of Kerak to make an alliance against the sultan of Egypt and restore the whole of Palestine from the Jordan to the sea. Theobald, however, before leaving the Holy Land (27th September 1240), signed a ten years’ truce with Ṣáliḥ of Egypt. The Hospitallers seem to have been won over to his view, and when Richard of Cornwall arrived (11th October) he had to decide between the two rival orders and their opposing policies. After some hesitation he concluded a treaty with the sultan of Egypt, much to the annoyance of the Templars, who openly mocked his efforts. On his departure the three orders came to open discord: the Templars laid siege to the Hospitallers in Acre and drove out the Teutonic Knights “in contumeliam imperatoris.” They were successful on all sides. The negotiations with Damascus and Kerak were reopened, and in 1244 Hermann of Perigord wrote to the princes of Europe that after a “silence of fifty-six years the divine mysteries would once more be celebrated in the Holy City.”

It was in this moment of danger that the sultan of Babylon called in the barbarous Khárizmians, whom the Mongol invasions had driven from their native lands. These savages, entering from the north, flowed like a tide past the newly built and impregnable Templar fortress of Safed, swept down on Jerusalem, and annihilated the Christian army near Gaza on St Luke’s day (18th October) 1244. From this blow the Latin kingdom of the East never recovered; 600 knights took part in the battle; the whole army of the Tempars, 300 in number, was present, but only 18 survived, and of 200 Hospitallers only 16. The masters of both orders were slain or taken prisoners. Despite the admirable valour of the Templars, their policy had proved the ruin of the land. Jerusalem was lost to Christendom for ever; and, though the Khárizmians melted away in the course of the next three years, they left the country so weak that all the acquisitions of Theobald and Richard fell an easy prey to the sultan of Babylon.

Recognizing the fact that the true way to Jerusalem lay through Egypt, Louis IX. led his host to the banks of the Nile, being accompanied by the Templars. Their master, William de Sonnac, attempted in vain to restrain the rash advance of the count of Artois at the battle of Mansúra (8th February 1250), which only three Templars survived. St Louis, when captured a few weeks later, owed his speedy release to the generosity with which the order advanced his ransom-money. Shortly after his departure from Acre (April 1254) they consented to an eleven years’ truce with the sultans of Egypt and Damascus.

A new enemy was now threatening Mohammedan and Christian alike. For a time the Mongol advance may have been welcomed by the Christian cities, as one after another the Mohammedan principalities of the north fell before the new invaders. But this new danger stimulated the energies of Egypt, which under the Mameluke Beybars (see vol. vii. p. 755) encroached year after year on the scanty remains of the Latin kingdom. The great Frankish lords, fearing that all was lost, made haste to sell their lands to the Templars and Hospitallers before quitting Palestine for ever. In 1260 the former purchased Sidon and Beaufort; next year the Hospitallers purchased Arsuf. In 1267, by a skilful adaptation of the banners of both orders, Beybars nearly surprised Antioch. The Templar fortress of Safed surrendered with its garrison of 600 knights, all of whom preferred death to apostasy (June 1266). Beaufort fell in April 1268, Antioch six weeks later; and, though the two orders still made occasional brilliant dashes from their Acre stronghold, such as that to Ascalon in 1264 and that with Prince Edward of England to destroy Ḳáḳún in 1271, they became so enfeebled as to welcome the treaty which secured them the plain of Acre and a free road to Nazareth as the result of the English crusade of 1272.

But, though weak against external foes, the Templars were strong enough for internal warfare. In 1277 they espoused the quarrel of the bishop of Tripoli, formerly a member of the order, against his nephew Bohemond, prince of Antioch and Tripoli, and commenced a war which lasted three years. In 1276 their conduct drove Hugh III., king