The Tragedy of the Templars

by Michael Haag

  Baldwin III fell ill and died in February 1163; he had no children and before his death he named his younger brother Amalric his successor. But there were some among the nobility and the Church who objected to Amalric taking the throne on the grounds of incest – arguing that he and his wife, Agnes of Courtenay, were third cousins (they shared the same great great grandfather) and were therefore too closely related. Agnes was the daughter of Joscelin II of Edessa, but after the destruction of the city of her birth she came to Jerusalem; there she married Amalric and bore him three children. But now in order to assume the throne Amalric agreed to an annulment of his marriage provided his children were considered legitimate; two would eventually rule, his son as Baldwin IV, the ‘leper king’, and his daughter Sibylla becoming queen on her brother’s death. During his reign Amalric commissioned William of Tyre, who became a close friend, to write a history of Outremer.

  Within months of becoming king, Amalric was challenged by the deteriorating situation in Egypt. The Fatimid regime in Cairo had grown weak and unstable, with two viziers vying with one another for control over the enfeebled caliphate. Each of the viziers reached outside Egypt for support, drawing Amalric at Jerusalem and Nur al-Din at Damascus into their quarrel. For the Franks the prize was potentially enormous: by installing a friendly government in Cairo the kingdom of Jerusalem would not only gain access to the vast resources of Egypt but would also protect its southern flank. But the prize was no less great for Nur al-Din: not only would his acquisition of Egypt give him control over the trade route from Damascus that terminated in Cairo, but he would entirely surround the Christian states. The Fatimid garrison at Ascalon had stood astride the route into the Nile Delta and to Cairo, the same line of attack taken by the Arabs when they invaded Egypt in 640 after their conquest of Syria and Palestine. Baldwin’s capture of Ascalon with Templar help in 1153 likewise opened the door to Egypt for the Franks, and now in 1164, and later in 1167 and again in 1168, Amalric entered Egypt to prevent it falling to Nur al-Din.

  Nur al-Din moved first when he sent his Kurdish general Shirkuh into Egypt to install the vizier Shawar in power. But Shawar soon resented Shirkuh’s heavy hand, and with the prospect of open warfare breaking out between the two, Shawar sent to Amalric for help. In 1164 Amalric led a Frankish army, including a large contingent of Templars, into Egypt, besieging Shirkuh at Bilbeis in the eastern Delta. After three months, with Bilbeis about to fall, Shirkuh’s desperate situation was relieved by Nur al-Din, who laid siege to Harim, between Antioch and Aleppo; when Harim fell in August, the heads of its defending Christians were sent to Bilbeis with instructions to Shirkuh to display them on the walls to frighten his besiegers. The worst of it was that, in attempting to relieve Harim, a Frankish army was defeated by Nur al-Din, and its leaders, Bohemond III of Antioch and Raymond III of Tripoli, as well as several others, were captured and held for ransom; Bohemond was released a year later, Raymond not until 1173. To meet the emergency in the north of Outremer, Amalric agreed to withdraw from Egypt if Shirkuh would do the same, leaving the question of the failing Fatimid caliphate unresolved.

  But as the Templars immediately understood, the adventure had exposed the vulnerability of Outremer. Bertrand of Blancfort, the Grand Master of the Temple, addressing himself in November 1164 to King Louis VII of France, wrote:

  Although our King Amalric is great and magnificent, thanks to God, he cannot organise a fourfold army to defend Antioch, Tripoli, Jerusalem and Babylon [as Fustat, the original Arab capital of Egypt, adjacent to Fatimid Cairo, was called in the Middle Ages].2 [. . .] But Nur al-Din can attack all four at one and the same time if he so desires, so great is the number of his dogs.3

  By sheer force of numbers the Turks threatened to overwhelm Outremer.

  Nor were the Turks fighting alone. Under Nur al-Din their numbers were augmented by the Kurds, a mountain people inhabiting parts of the Caucasus, Mesopotamia, Persia and eastern Asia Minor; Nur al-Din’s generals Shirkuh and his brother Ayyub were Kurds, and their prominence in Nur al-Din’s army attracted large numbers of their fellow-countrymen. In contrast, Arabs played little or no role in Nur al-Din’s campaigns; instead, for fear that they would revolt against their Turkish overlords, they were actively suppressed. The Kurds were Sunni Muslims, like the Turks, and fitted in well with Nur al-Din’s object of conquering Fatimid Egypt. The Fatimids were not only Arabs but also Ismailis, an offshoot of Shia Islam, a heresy as far as the Sunni were concerned, and their rivals for universal domination. Although two centuries of Fatimid rule meant that Shia influences were strong among the Muslims of Egypt, Nur al-Din was determined to use the argument of jihad to bring Egypt to orthodoxy and under his control.

  The rivalry between Sunni and Shia was to Amalric’s advantage; the Shia had brought him into Egypt in defence against the Sunni. But Amalric had another advantage too. The Muslim ruling elite was concentrated in Cairo and the port city of Alexandria; ‘elsewhere, Egypt’s indigenous Coptic Christian population predominated’4 – five hundred years after the Arab conquest Egypt was still a substantially Christian country. Indeed Christians still formed an absolute majority in Egypt, as recent research by the Egyptian historian Tamer el Leithy ‘discredits the notion of large-scale conversion before the thirteenth century’.5

  For five years the contest to control Egypt was waged between Amalric and Nur al-Din’s general Shirkuh. As each side understood, Egypt’s geography, resources and manpower would prove decisive for whoever gained control.

  Again Nur al-Din was the first to act; in 1167 he sent Shirkuh into Egypt, and Amalric once again went to the assistance of Shawar. This time the vizier paid handsomely for the king’s services; in a treaty probably drafted by Geoffrey Fulcher, a senior Templar, Shawar agreed to pay an annual tribute in addition to 400,000 gold bezants, half of it at once, on the Frankish pledge that they would destroy Shirkuh and his army or drive them out of Egypt. With Amalric standing in Cairo, Shirkuh withdrew southwards towards Minya, where the Franks, in a desert battle at al-Babayn, cost the Turks fifteen hundred lives against a hundred of their own. Nur al-Din’s forces made a last attempt to hold on, barricading themselves within the walls of Alexandria; their commander was a young Kurd, Shirkuh’s nephew Salah al-Din, better known in the West as Saladin, who, after two or three months of mounting hunger in the town, surrendered to the Franks, who escorted them out of the city for their own safety as the population would have torn Saladin and his men to pieces for the misery they had made them endure. As the army of Amalric, together with the Templars, marched through the streets of the city of St Mark, their triumph meant the liberation of the last of the great patriarchal sees; and from the top of what remained of the Pharos, the ancient lighthouse that had been a wonder of the world when Alexandria had been the cultural capital of Western civilisation, they flew the banner of Jerusalem. To ensure that Nur al-Din’s forces would not return, Amalric installed a garrison in Cairo and Frankish commissioners in the caliphal palace itself. Effectively Egypt was now a protectorate. And then Amalric and his army returned home.

  But the fundamental weakness of the Fatimid regime remained, and it was only a matter of time before Nur al-Din or Amalric would strike the coup de grâce. In August 1167, just after his return from Egypt, Amalric married Maria Comnena, the great grandniece of Manuel Comnenus, the emperor of the Byzantine Empire. Over the following months a plan was developed for a joint Frankish–Byzantine military expedition to conquer, divide and annex Egypt, the Franks taking the interior, the Byzantines the coast. Amalric’s friend and adviser the historian William, who had recently been appointed archdeacon of Tyre, drew up a formal treaty of alliance and was sent to Manuel with full power to ratify the agreement in the emperor’s presence. But before William of Tyre could return to Jerusalem, Amalric had struck; in October 1168 he marched into Egypt. Shawar had refused to pay the tribute as agreed, and rumours reached Jerusalem that the vizier had once again turned to Nur al-Din, this time to rid himself of the Franki
sh garrison and commissioners in Cairo. But why Amalric would not wait for his Byzantine allies is not clear. The argument has been made that Amalric or his barons believed they could take Egypt for themselves without having to share the country with the Byzantines. Also that Amalric was goaded by the Hospitallers. Whatever Amalric’s reasons, the Templars were opposed and refused to join the expedition.

  If urgency was the need behind Amalric’s sudden decision to invade, he was subsequently criticised by none other than William of Tyre for failing to pursue the conquest with purpose and energy. First, the Frankish army captured Bilbais in the Delta and ran amok, slaughtering many of its inhabitants, including numerous Christians. Then siege was laid to Cairo, where, after the example of Bilbeis, Shawar was determined to defend his city to the end while denying Fustat to the Franks by burning it to the ground, a conflagration that lasted fifty-four days. Throughout all this while Amalric and Shawar haggled over tribute, and as money was handed over in stages so Amalric, apparently as part of the deal, withdrew somewhat from Cairo. But now Nur al-Din’s general Shirkuh appeared in the Delta, and in January 1169, after slipping round Amalric’s army, he entered Cairo unopposed, promptly decapitated Shawar and installed himself as vizier. His rule was not long; Shirkuh died in March and was succeeded as vizier by his nephew Saladin.

  The capture of Egypt by Nur al-Din’s forces was a strategic calamity for the Franks. Their protectorate over Egypt was at an end, the strategic and economic advantages it had brought were lost, and Syria and Egypt were now effectively united under an alien Turkish hand. The final encirclement of Outremer had begun.

  And why had the Templars refused to participate in so critical a venture? The question has been a matter of speculation and debate ever since. William of Tyre, who was commissioned by Amalric to write his history of the kingdom of Jerusalem, might have been expected fiercely to condemn the Templars. Yet William himself disapproved of the campaign and said that the Templars objected on moral grounds; ‘it seemed against their conscience’6 to break the treaty they had helped negotiate with Shawar in 1167. Moreover, for all the strategic importance of Egypt, there were other strategic considerations that the Templars would reasonably have taken into account. In 1164, when the bulk of Templar forces had been with Amalric on campaign in Egypt, Nur al-Din had taken advantage by striking in the north, inflicting heavy losses against the army of the prince of Antioch. ‘There is no one to check their savagery’, Geoffrey Fulcher, the preceptor of the Temple, wrote to Louis VII in September that year; ‘of the six hundred knights and twelve thousand foot soldiers scarcely any are known to have escaped.’7 Numbered among these captives and casualties were sixty Templar knights, all of them dead, and numerous more sergeants and Turcopoles who had met the same fate, precisely in the region of the Amanus mountains where the Templars bore responsibility for manning strategically sited castles that were part of the ultimate defence of Outremer. The experience may have impressed on the Templars the need to husband their resources and concentrate them where they were most needed.

  Nevertheless William of Tyre could not let pass the opportunity to criticise the Templars. Apart from other reasons they may have had, the Templars had jibbed at the 1168 Egyptian campaign, he suggested, because they may have been jealous of the Hospitallers, who had taken the lead in urging Amalric to undertake the expedition and had already claimed Pelusium on the edge of the Egyptian Delta for themselves. The perpetual rivalry between the two orders was a problem; it was seldom that they could be induced to campaign together, and each followed its own line regardless of the official policy of the kingdom of Jerusalem. In fact, the Hospitallers could be no less independent of secular authority, but their image was softened by the alms and care they lavished on pilgrims, whereas the image of the Templars rested more exclusively on their military prowess, and then there was their involvement in financial activities. The independence of the orders was liable to provoke resentment, and in the case of the Templars it led increasingly to criticism that the order was primarily concerned with advancing and protecting its own interests.

  As well as the usual monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, every entrant to the Order of the Knights Templar swore ‘to conserve what is acquired in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, and to conquer what is not yet acquired’.8 To meet their obligations an iron discipline was required; its effect made a forceful impression on an unknown pilgrim visiting Jerusalem some time after the middle of the twelfth century.

  The Templars are most excellent soldiers. They wear white mantles with a red cross, and when they go to the wars a standard of two colours called balzaus is borne before them.9 They go in silence. Their first attack is the most terrible. In going they are the first, in returning the last. They await the orders of their Master. When they think fit to make war and the trumpet has sounded, they sing in chorus the Psalm of David, ‘Not unto us, O Lord’,10 kneeling on the blood and necks of the enemy, unless they have forced the troops of the enemy to retire altogether, or utterly broken them to pieces. Should any of them for any reason turn his back to the enemy, or come forth alive [from a defeat], or bear arms against the Christians, he is severely punished; the white mantle with the red cross, which is the sign of his knighthood, is taken away with ignominy, he is cast from the society of brethren, and eats his food on the floor without a napkin for the space of one year. If the dogs molest him, he does not dare to drive them away. But at the end of the year, if the Master and brethren think his penance to have been sufficient, they restore him the belt of his former knighthood. These Templars live under a strict religious rule, obeying humbly, having no private property, eating sparingly, dressing meanly, and dwelling in tents.11

  All this was in accordance with the Templar Rule, which stated that, if any brother leaves the field of battle without permission,

  severe punishment will be given, and he cannot keep the habit. [. . .] Nor should he leave the squadron because of cuts or wounds without permission; and if he is so badly hurt that he cannot obtain permission, he should send another brother to get it for him. And if it happens that the Christians are defeated, from which God save them, no brother should leave the field to return to the garrison, while there is a piebald banner raised aloft; for if he leaves he will be expelled from the house for ever.12

  Every Templar was a highly trained and expensive mounted knight. Such a knight in the second half of twelfth-century France required 750 acres to equip and maintain himself as a mounted warrior, and a century later that cost had quintupled to 3,750 acres.

  For a Templar knight operating overseas the costs were even greater, as much had to be imported to Outremer, not least horses. Each Templar knight had three horses, and because they fell victim to warfare and disease, and had a lifespan of only twenty years, they needed to be renewed at a rate greater than local breeding allowed. The cost of horses rose six-fold from the twelfth to the thirteenth centuries. Moreover, horses consumed five or six times as much as a man and required feeding whether or not they were in use. A bad harvest in the East, and urgent food supplies had to be shipped in for men and horses alike.

  Each Templar also had a squire to help look after the horses. And in addition there were sergeants, more lightly armed than knights, who each had a horse but acted as their own squires. Sergeants were often locally recruited and wore a brown or black tunic instead of white. In fact, for every Templar knight there were about nine others serving in support, whether as squires, sergeants or other forms of help. This is not much different from modern warfare, in which every frontline soldier is backed up by four or five who never see combat, not to mention the many thousands of civilians producing weapons and equipment and providing clothing, food and transport.

  Growing responsibilities increased Templar costs immensely. As secular lords found themselves unable to maintain and defend their castles and their fiefs, they handed these responsibilities over to the military orders. Only their vast holdings in Outremer and, more especially, in the
West permitted the Templars to operate on such a scale and recover after losses and setbacks to continue the defence of the Holy Land.

  Until the 1160s the Franks possessed military superiority on the battlefield and pursued a strategy of offensive warfare. Although the Turks could assemble large armies of light cavalry and archers, their forces presented little threat to even lightly defended castles, provided that the Franks could come to their defence within a few days. The arrival of a Frankish force, even the report of its approach, was usually enough for the Turks to break off their siege. Moreover, when the Franks attacked fortified Muslim positions, they had the craftsmen and engineers to transport heavy wooden beams and other materials to the site and build siege engines on the spot. Antioch, Jerusalem, Tyre, Ascalon and many other cities had fallen to the Franks in this way. But a shift became evident during the Egyptian expeditions; while Amalric was tied up at Cairo, Alexandria or the Delta, he was unable to come speedily to the rescue of cities and castles in Outremer that were attacked by Nur al-Din. The farther the Franks advanced in one direction, the more exposed they became elsewhere; and meanwhile the number of Turks was increasing all the time, a vast migration comparable to the barbarian invasions that had destroyed the Roman Empire in the West centuries before. The Turks were also learning siegecraft from the Franks.