The Templars

by Michael Haag

  Frederick II did eventually appear in the East, but only eight years later, by when he was openly at loggerheads with the Church. Crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 1212 at Frankfurt, Frederick was also king of both Germany and Sicily. He preferred to rule from Palermo, where he had been raised amid the Norman, Byzantine, Jewish and Arab influences at the Sicilian court. He learnt German, Italian, French, Latin, Greek and Arabic, and was a student of mathematics, philosophy, natural history, medicine and architecture, as well as being a talented poet. These accomplishments contributed to his broadness of outlook, his exceptionally cultivated mind and his rather idiosyncratic character, which earned him the title of Stupor Mundi, Wonder of the World. But they also engendered suspicion. It was rumoured that Frederick did not believe in God, and it was put about that he scoffed at the virgin birth of Jesus and described Mohammed, Jesus and Moses as ‘the three impostors or deceivers of the world’.

  This might have been the black propaganda of the Papacy at Rome, which was worried at being encircled by his domains and was also agitated by Frederick’s claim to supreme authority and his boast that he would revive the Roman Empire, to which the Papacy countered by saying the Church had a higher authority in God.

  Frederick had been twenty-one when he was crowned Holy Roman Emperor and vowed to take the cross, but he failed to appear in Egypt during the Fifth Crusade and time and again put off his departure for the East. But in 1225, when John of Brienne, the aged King of Jerusalem, came West seeking a husband for his fourteen-year-old daughter Yolanda, whom he had crowned queen at Acre, Frederick saw his opportunity. Marrying her at Brindisi, Frederick broke his promise that John of Brienne could continue as regent; instead Frederick claimed the right as Yolanda’s husband to become king, a move that would confirm him, he imagined, as the supreme sovereign in the Christian world.

  Now in 1228 at the age of thirty-six Frederick finally set out for the Holy Land, but he fell ill en route and rested in Italy for a while before continuing his journey. Pope Gregory IX, who distrusted Frederick’s imperial intentions in Italy, excommunicated him at once, using the excuse that this was yet one more instance of the Emperor’s failure to fulfil his crusading vow. Then when Frederick eventually arrived at Acre in September, the Pope again asserted his authority, excommunicating him again, this time for attempting to go crusading without having first obtained Papal absolution for his earlier excommunication. Frederick was not impressed, but the barons and clergy in Outremer were, as were the Templars and the Hospitallers who owed their allegiance to the Pope, only the Teutonic Knights braving Papal wrath to support their fellow German.

  However, even before Frederick had left Sicily, he and al-Kamil had been in secret negotiations over the objects of this Sixth Crusade. Frederick wanted Jerusalem if only because it would be useful in promoting himself as the supreme power in the West. Al-Kamil was prepared to oblige provided Frederick helped him capture Damascus. But by the time Frederick arrived in Outremer, al-Kamil had changed his mind. Determined to gain Jerusalem, Frederick now made a feint towards Egypt, in November leading his army from Acre towards Jaffa. The Templars and Hospitallers followed a day behind, not wanting to seem part of a crusade led by an excommunicant, but when Frederick placed the expedition under the nominal authority of his generals, the orders abandoned their scruples altogether and joined up with the main force. The show of unity did not last long.

  Frederick’s advance was enough to make al-Kamil fear that he would have to abandon his siege of Damascus, and he quickly agreed a deal with Frederick: a ten-year truce and the surrender of Jerusalem to the Christians. It was a sudden and sensational result and gave Frederick what he wanted, but it outraged the Patriarch and the military orders. The walls of Jerusalem had been torn down during the Fifth Crusade; if it was going to be given to them then, the intention was that it should not be defensible, and that remained the idea now, for part of the agreement was that the city should remain unfortified, and its only connection to the coast should be a narrow corridor of land. Moreover the orders were forbidden to make any improvements to their great castles of Marqab and Krak des Chevaliers of the Hospitallers and Tortosa and Chastel Blanc of the Templars. And then there was the galling provision–a necessary face-saver for al-Kamil–that the Temple Mount should remain under Muslim control and that the Templars were absolutely forbidden to return to their former headquarters at the al-Aqsa mosque.

  On 29 March 1229 Frederick was crowned King of Jerusalem at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The Patriarch had placed an interdict on the city, forbidding church ceremonies while Frederick was in Jerusalem, and so with no priests to crown him, and with the Templars and the Hospitallers keeping away, it was left to Frederick to place the crown of Jerusalem on his own head. Calling himself God’s Vicar on Earth, the title usually reserved for the Pope, Frederick swore in the presence of the Teutonic Knights to defend the kingdom, the Church and his empire. He afterwards toured the city, and going to the Temple Mount he entered the Dome of the Rock through a wooden lattice door, put there he was told to keep the sparrows out. Venting his feelings about his Papal enemies to whom he had restored the holy city, Frederick pronounced, ‘Now God has sent you pigs.’

  Frederick stayed in Jerusalem for only two days. He had achieved what he wanted and was eager to get back to Europe and the serious business of expanding his powers there. But he also feared that the Templars might make an attempt upon his life while he was in the city. Chroniclers as far apart as Sicily, Damascus and England reported this story, which if nothing else reflected the intensity of ill-feeling and suspicion between the Emperor and the Pope, an enmity in which the Templars had become involved. When Frederick returned to Sicily he seized the property of the military orders there, released their Muslim slaves without paying compensation and imprisoned the Templar brothers. Yet again the Pope excommunicated him, and again Frederick ignored the Pope. It was a foreboding of what could happen when the Templars stood in the way of the needs and ambitions of a secular prince.

  The Rise of the Mamelukes

  In 1239 the ten-year truce had run out, but there was no immediate threat to Outremer. Al-Kamil had died the year before and Egypt was riven by factions, while the bitterness between the Cairo and Damascus branches of the Ayyubid family had increased. Nevertheless the Templars remained opposed to the rapprochement between Outremer and Egypt brought about by Frederick II, and with good reason: Templar emissaries sent to Cairo in 1243 were held as virtual prisoners for six months, and the Egyptians would still not return Gaza, Hebron and Nablus in accordance with the truce.

  The Templars saw this as a delaying tactic by the new Egyptian Sultan al-Salih Ayyub, giving him time to overcome Damascus and other Muslim rulers, and then to overwhelm Outremer. Templar policy was to favour Damascus, and this showed some results: the Christian kingdom gained by negotiation all the land west of the Jordan except Hebron and Nablus, and the Franks were given a free hand to celebrate Christian services in every former church throughout Jerusalem, and to expel the Muslims from the Temple Mount and to reconvert to Christian use the al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock.

  When war broke out again between Cairo and Damascus in spring 1244 the Templars persuaded the barons of Outremer to intervene on the side of the Damascene ruler Ismail. The alliance was sealed by the visit to Acre of al-Mansur Ibrahim, a Muslim prince of Homs, who on behalf of Ismail offered the Franks a share of Egypt when al-Salih Ayyub was defeated. The continuing factionalism in Cairo meant that al-Salih could not rely on the regular army, but he had taken steps to counter that by purchasing Mamelukes in large numbers.

  These military slaves were mostly Kipchak Turks from the steppes of southern Russia; bought, trained and converted to Islam, they became al-Salih’s powerful private army. Also al-Salih had bought the help of the Khorezmian Turks, ferocious mercenaries then based in Edessa, who had been displaced from Transoxiana and parts of Iran and Afghanistan by the expansion of the Mongols. In June the Khorezmian horse
men, twelve thousand strong, swept southwards into Syria, but deterred by the formidable walls of Damascus they rode on into Galilee, captured Tiberias, and on 11 July broke through the feeble defences of Jerusalem and brutally massacred everyone who could not retreat into the citadel. Six weeks later the defenders emerged, having been promised safe passage to the coast. The garrison together with the entire Christian population, six thousand men, women and children, left the city but were cut down by Khorezmian swords, only three hundred making it to Jaffa. For good measure the Khorezmians ransacked the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, tore up the bones of the Kings of Jerusalem from their tombs, set the place alight and burnt all the other churches of the city, pillaged its homes and shops, then left the smoking wreckage of Jerusalem to join al-Salih’s Mameluke army at Gaza.

  * * *

  The Mamelukes

  The Mamelukes as seen through the eyes of Ibn Khaldun, fourteenth-century North African historian:

  It was God’s benevolence that he rescued the faith by reviving its dying breath and restoring the unity of the Muslims in the Egyptian realms, preserving the order and defending the walls of Islam. He did this by sending to the Muslims, from this Turkish nation and from among its great and numerous tribes, rulers to defend them and utterly loyal helpers, who were brought from the House of War to the House of Islam under the rule of slavery, which hides in itself a divine blessing. By means of slavery they learn glory and blessing and are exposed to divine providence; cured by slavery, they enter the Muslim religion with the firm resolve of true believers and yet with nomadic virtues unsullied by debased nature, unadulterated with the filth of pleasure, undefiled by the ways of civilised living, and with their ardour unbroken by the profusion of luxury. The slave merchants bring them to Egypt in batches, like sandgrouse to the watering places, and government buyers have them displayed for inspection and bid for them…Thus, one intake comes after another and generation follows generation, and Islam rejoices in the benefit which it gains through them, and the branches of the kingdom flourish with the freshness of youth.

  From Bernard Lewis, Islam from the Prophet Muhammed to the Capture of Constantinople, Oxford University Press, 1987

  * * *

  Catastrophe at La Forbie and the Seventh Crusade

  The Frankish forces which had been scattered throughout the castles of Outremer gathered at Acre. Not since Hattin had such a considerable Christian army been put into the field, its numbers including over 300 knights from the Templars, at least another 300 from the Hospitallers, also some Teutonic Knights, and a further 600 secular knights, as well as a proportionate number of sergeants and foot soldiers. To these were added the yet more numerous if lighter-armed forces of their Damascene ally under the command of al-Mansur Ibrahim and a contingent of Bedouin cavalry.

  On 17 October 1244 this Christian-Muslim army drew up before the smaller Egyptian army with its elite core of Mamelukes and the Khorezmians outside Gaza on a sandy plain at a place called La Forbie. The Franks and their allies attacked, but the Egyptians stood firm under the command of the Mameluke general Baybars, and while the Franks were pinned in place, the Khorezmians tore into the flank of al-Mansur Ibrahim’s forces. The Damascene forces turned and fled; the Franks fought on bravely but after a few hours their entire army was destroyed. At least 5000 Franks died in the battle, among them 260 to 300 Templars, while over 800 Christians were captured and sold into slavery in Egypt, including the Templar Grand Master, who was never seen again. The catastrophe was comparable to Hattin, and when Damascus fell to al-Salih the following year it looked as though time had run out for Outremer.

  Relief to Outremer came in the form of the Seventh Crusade, led by King Louis IX of France, Saint Louis as he afterwards became thanks to his incessant warfare against enemies of the true faith, be they Muslims or Cathars–it was during Louis’ reign that the Cathars were finally beaten and incinerated at the stake. Now in the summer of 1249 he landed with his French army at the Delta port of Damietta with the familiar idea of overturning the Ayyubid regime in Cairo. Al-Salih Ayyub was suffering from cancer and when he died in November his wife, Shagarat al-Durr, hid his corpse and kept morale alive by pretending to transmit the Sultan’s orders to his army of Mameluke slave troops led by Baybars.

  In February 1250 the French advanced through the Delta towards Cairo but owing to the impetuosity of the king’s brother, the Count of Artois, suffered heavy losses at Mansurah. He had urged the Crusader knights to charge into the town, where they were trapped within the narrow streets, the Templars alone losing 280 mounted knights, a massive blow so soon after La Forbie. A stalemate followed and the Crusaders were weakened by scurvy and plague. In April they retreated but were captured by the Mamelukes, along with King Louis himself, who was released only after a huge ransom was paid to which the Templars, who as bankers to members of the crusade had a treasure ship offshore, refused to contribute.

  That same year Shagarat al-Durr openly declared herself sultan, basing her claim to the succession on having borne al-Salih a son, though the child had predeceased the father. The Abbasid caliph refused to recognise her, so she married Aybek, one of her Mameluke slave warriors, and ruled through him instead, then murdered him in 1257 when she suspected him of turning his attentions to another woman. Purchased as a slave by al-Salih, then made one of his concubines, Shagarat al-Durr had eventually become his wife, and then became the first and last female ruler of Egypt since Cleopatra. Owing to her courage and resourcefulness she had saved Egypt from the Seventh Crusade, but she proved to be the last of the Ayyubid line. Aybek’s supporters killed her and threw her naked body over the wall of the Citadel at Cairo to be devoured by the dogs. The Mamelukes then made themselves the masters of Egypt in the person of their first sultan, Qutuz.

  But it was the shock of the Mongol invasion of the Middle East that established the Mamelukes as the legitimate defenders of Islam against the infidels of East and West. In February 1258 the Mongols, led by Hulagu, a grandson of Genghis Khan, captured Baghdad, put the Abbasid caliph to death, then plundered and destroyed the city. In January 1260 they took Aleppo, and in March Damascus fell. The Mongols appeared to be unstoppable. The Franks sent urgent letters westwards pleading for help; ‘a horrible annihilation will swiftly be visited upon the world,’ went a message carried by a Templar to London. But it was the Mamelukes who responded to the threat. That summer when Mongol ambassadors arrived in Cairo demanding Egypt’s submission, they encountered an adversary more ferocious than themselves; Qutuz had them killed on the spot. And in September, after being allowed free passage through Christian lands, a Mameluke army under Qutuz inflicted a stunning defeat upon the Mongols in the battle of Ain Jalut southeast of Nazareth.

  But among the jealous Mamelukes victory was no guarantee of success, and a month later Qutuz was murdered by a group of fellow Mamelukes, among them Baybars, al-Salih’s general at La Forbie, who then became sultan. With Syria and Egypt under Baybars’ control, Outremer was encircled, and the Franks were confronted by one of the most formidable fighting machines in the world.

  * * *

  Abandoned by God

  Medieval Christians believed that God’s judgement was revealed through history, and that he often declared his will by determining the outcome of a battle. As Saint Bernard had written in his panegyric In Praise of the New Knighthood, a Templar was a knight of Christ and ‘the instrument of God for the punishment of malefactors and for the defence of the just’. A defeat in battle could mean that the Christians were paying the price for some sin. Confession, prayers and penance would cleanse their souls and lead to ultimate victory. But what were Christians now to make of the repeated defeats in the Holy Land? After Baybars captured Caesarea and Haifa in 1265, a Provençal troubadour called Bonomel, who may have been a Templar, sang that given this, ‘Then it is really foolish to fight the Turks, now that Jesus Christ no longer opposes them…Daily they impose new defeats on us: for God, who used to watch on our behalf, is now asleep
, and Bafometz [Mohammed] puts forth his power to support the sultan.’ Another Provençal poet wrote that because God and Our Lady wanted Christian troops to be killed, he would become a Muslim. As defeats continued it became impossible to attribute Muslim victories to the sins of the generality of Christians, and increasingly the military orders and especially the Templars attracted the suspicion and resentment of a disillusioned Christian world.

  * * *

  Templar Plans for Defending the Holy Land

  In a series of devastating campaigns Baybars captured Caesarea and Haifa in 1265, the Templar castle of Saphet in 1266, Jaffa and the Templar castle of Beaufort both in 1268, and then struck at Antioch in the north, which he captured that same year, treating its inhabitants with a murderous brutality that shocked even Muslim chroniclers. The Templar castle at Baghras in the Amanus mountains was now utterly isolated. Baghras had been their first castle, but now the Templars had no choice but to abandon it. Chastel Blanc of the Templars was surrendered in 1271 together with the Hospitallers’ great castle of Krak des Chevaliers. Baybars then marched on Montfort between Acre and the Sea of Galilee and that too was soon handed over to the Muslims by its garrison of Teutonic Knights.

  With all their great inland fortresses taken, the Franks were pinned to their remaining coastal defences, crucially Acre and Tripoli, both powerfully fortified cities, and the Templars’ stronghold of Tortosa, which had held out against Saladin, and their castle of Athlit, south of Haifa. But meanwhile the Franks gained some relief when Prince Edward, the future Edward I of England, led a fresh crusade to the East and in 1272 persuaded Baybars to agree to a ten-year truce.