The Tragedy of the Templars

by Michael Haag

  The Frankish answer was to alter radically their military architecture, to build more powerful castles which could withstand sieges for longer periods of time. This meant building higher walls, introducing round towers, creating posterns for sorties, digging deeper and wider moats and constructing glacis – that is, smooth sloping surfaces of stone that deterred the scaling of fortifications and exposed attackers to fire. Also the Franks now built their castles with vast chambers for storing quantities of food and water capable of lasting months, even years. But above all, and most characteristic of Frankish castles in the East, they added outer defensive walls, a ring or several rings of walls round the central keep, creating great concentric castles such as Saphet, Beaufort, Margat, Chastel Blanc, Krak des Chevaliers.

  Castles were never just military outposts, nor did they necessarily serve a primarily military purpose. As in Europe, castles served as core developments for new settlements and as centres of production and administration – battlemented country houses, containing corn mills and olive presses, and surrounded by gardens, vineyards, orchards and fields. Their lands in some cases encompassed hundreds of villages and a peasantry numbering tens of thousands. Wood to Egypt, herbs, spices and sugar to Europe, were important exports; indeed throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Europe’s entire supply of sugar came from the Latin East.

  But from the 1160s, as the Franks found themselves increasingly on the defensive, the military nature of castles became more important. Often large and elaborate, and continuously improved by the latest innovations in military science, the Franks built over fifty castles in Outremer, many of them standing sentinel at strategic locations along the frontiers. The crusader states were long and narrow, lacking defence in depth. The principality of Antioch, the county of Tripoli and the kingdom of Jerusalem stretched 450 miles from north to south, yet rarely were they more than 50 to 75 miles broad, the county of Tripoli perilously constricting to the width of the coastal plain, only a few miles broad, between Tortosa (present-day Tartus) and Jeble. The inland cities of Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus had all been captured by the Turks, who now occupied Egypt too. The mountains were a natural defensive line for the Franks, and they built many of their greatest castles to secure the passes.

  Increasingly the cost of building or remodelling these castles and garrisoning them outstripped the wherewithal of local feudal lords. In this situation the military orders came into their own. They had the resources, the independence, the dedication – the elements of their growing power. After the Second Crusade both the Hospitallers and the Templars came to provide the backbone of resistance to the Muslims, and in due course the military orders were put in possession of the great castles, a task for which they were perfectly suited. The frontier castles could be remote, isolated and lonely places; they did not appeal to the secular knighthood of Outremer. But the monastic vows of the military orders suited them to the dour life of castles, where the innermost fortifications served as monasteries for the brothers. Their members were celibate, which made them easy to control, and they had no outside private interests. Superbly trained and highly disciplined, the Hospitallers and the Templars were led by commanders of considerable military ability; the capabilities of the orders generally stood in marked contrast to those of the lay institutions of Outremer.

  When the First Crusade marched into the Middle East, it came over the Belen Pass, about 16 miles north of Antioch. In 1136 the task of policing the pass was given to the Templars. Their key fortress was Baghras, built high above the pass itself, and the Templars built several others in the Amanus mountains. As the danger from Zengi and Nur al-Din grew, these castles formed a defensive screen across the northern frontier where the Templars ruled as virtually autonomous border lords, effectively independent of the principality of Antioch.

  The Templars also took charge of the kingdom of Jerusalem’s southern frontier with Egypt when they were made responsible for Gaza during the winter of 1149–50. Gaza was uninhabited and ruinous at this time, but the Templars rebuilt a fortress atop a low hill and slowly the Franks revived the city around it. This was the first major castle in the kingdom of Jerusalem that the Templars are recorded as receiving, and its purpose was to complete the blockade of Ascalon 10 miles to the north, that troublesome Fatimid outpost on the Mediterranean, which thanks to a bold Templar assault fell to King Baldwin III in 1153.

  Another vital strategic site as well as an important spot for pilgrims was Tortosa on the Syrian coast, said to be the place where the apostle Paul gave his first Mass. A chapel dedicated to the Virgin Mary was built there in the third century, long before Christianity was officially tolerated within the Roman Empire, and it contained an icon of the Virgin said to have been painted by St Luke. To help the pilgrims who came to pray, the Franks built on this history with the construction of Our Lady of Tortosa in 1123, an elegant cathedral that architecturally marks the transition from the Romanesque to the Gothic. But in 1152 Nur al-Din captured and burned the city, leaving it deserted and destroyed; and as the county of Tripoli lacked the means for its restoration, Tortosa was placed in the care of the Templars, who greatly improved its defences, building a massive keep and halls within a triple circuit of tower-studded walls, and with a postern in the seawall enabling the city to be supplied from the sea.

  The strategic significance of Tortosa was that it stood at the seaward end of an opening in the range of coastal mountains that runs back into the interior towards the Muslim city of Homs. Towards the eastern end of this Homs gap, as it is called, and towering high above the route between the interior and the sea, is the great concentric castle of Krak des Chevaliers gained by the Hospitallers in 1144, while in the mountains between Krak and Tortosa is the castle of Chastel Blanc, now known as Safita, already in the hands of the Templars some time before 1152. From the roof of the massive keep at Chastel Blanc, round which the pattern of streets and houses is the only trace of its concentric fortifications, can be seen both Krak des Chevaliers to the east and the Templar castle of al-Arimah to the west on the Mediterranean coast just south of Tortosa. In short, the Templars, together with the Hospitallers, entirely controlled the one important route between the interior of Syria and the sea. Moreover, they did so with sovereign rights within their territories, having been granted full lordship over the population of their estates, the right to share in the spoils of battle, and the freedom to have independent dealings with neighbouring Muslim powers.

  In the 1160s the Templars took over further castles, this time across the River Jordan at Ahamant (present-day Amman), and in Galilee at Saphet (also called Safad), to which was added Chastellet, better known as Jacob’s Ford (Vadum Iacob) in 1178, all of these granted to the Templars by the kings of Jerusalem. Gaza, Ahamant, Saphet and Jacob’s Ford were all within the kingdom of Jerusalem but close to its borders, where they served defensive purposes. Jacob’s Ford was the northernmost crossing point of the River Jordan, a weak point where Saladin would come down out of Damascus and make easy raids against the Christians. So alarmed was Saladin when the Templars installed themselves at Jacob’s Ford that he immediately attacked, failing in his first attempt in June 1179 but two months later storming the castle and taking seven hundred prisoners, whom he then slaughtered, although the Templar commander threw himself to his death to avoid capture.

  More centrally placed was La Feve, at the crossroads of the route between Jerusalem and Acre via Galilee. Acquired by the Templars in about 1170, it served as a major depot for arms, tools and food, and it housed a large garrison. It was later the launching point for the expedition that led to the disastrous defeat at the Springs of Cresson on 1 May 1187, a foreboding of the catastrophe at Hattin.

  As well as fighting in the defence of the kingdom of Jerusalem, the Templars continued to fulfil their original role of protecting pilgrims coming up to the holy sites at Jerusalem from the ports of Acre, Haifa and Jaffa, or going down from Jerusalem to the River Jordan. One of the duties of the Templa
r commander in Jerusalem was to keep ten knights in reserve to accompany pilgrims to the Jordan and to provide a string of pack animals to carry food and exhausted travellers. The Templars had a castle overlooking the site at the River Jordan where Jesus had been baptised, to protect not only pilgrims but also the local monks after six of them were gratuitously murdered by Zengi.

  The acquisition of castles was accompanied by lands which helped to support them, especially round Baghras, Tortosa and Saphet. In these areas the Templars held many villages, mills and much agricultural land. The details are lacking because of the destruction of the Templar archives on Cyprus by the Ottoman Turks in the sixteenth century. But from what can be pieced together it seems that the orders between them, the Hospitallers and the Templars, may have held nearly a fifth of the lands in Outremer by the middle of the century, and by 1187, the year of the battle of Hattin, something like a third.

  16

  Templar Wealth

  FROM THEIR INCEPTION the Templars were an international organisation. Their purpose was in the Holy Land, but their support came from Europe, where they held land, collected tithes and received donations from the pious. They organised markets and fairs, managed their estates and traded in everything from wool and timber to olive oil and slaves. In time they built up their own formidable Mediterranean merchant fleet capable of transporting pilgrims, soldiers and supplies between Spain, France, Italy, Greece and Outremer.

  Although it is usual to think of the Templars as knights on horseback charging into battle, in a very real sense the thrust of their lances depended on a vast network of support, not just from sergeants and Turcopoles but also from men like Odo of Wirmis, a brother who served the Templars but had never gone to war. Odo was among those arrested by the agents of Philip IV, king of France, at dawn on Friday, 13 October 1307 on charges of heresy, blasphemy and other heinous crimes. Sixty years old at the time of his arrest, he had joined the order at the late age of forty-four, well beyond the time that he could have served as a mounted knight; in fact, he never saw battle and probably never travelled beyond his native France. Instead Odo had been recruited to the order because he was a master carpenter, just as others manned the Templars’ preceptories in the West as administrators, agricultural workers and artisans of all kinds. Already by the 1160s the Templars had arranged their European holdings, the properties donated to them by the faithful, great and small, into seven large provinces extending from England beyond the Channel to Montenegro on the eastern coast of the Adriatic. These land holdings were the foundations of their power.

  One such property was Cressing Temple, on the high road between London and Colchester in Essex. It was donated to the Templars in 1137 by Queen Matilda, wife of King Stephen of England and niece of Baldwin, the first king of Jerusalem. Unlike most other Templar sites, which were built of stone, the structures at Cressing Temple were built of wood, and they still survive today: two vast wooden barns, magnificent constructions which dominate the flat alluvial landscape, their timbered interiors of cathedral-like proportions. The Wheat Barn and the Barley Barn, built between 1206 and 1256, are the two finest Templar-built barns in Europe, while the Barley Barn is the oldest timber-framed barn in the world.

  Cressing Temple, originally over 14,000 acres in extent, occupied a fertile site with good transport links by road and river, and by establishing a market there the Templars developed their holding as a considerable agricultural enterprise. The property was in the charge of a preceptor, who would have been accompanied by two or three knights or sergeants, together with a chaplain, a bailiff and numerous household servants, while the land was worked by over 160 tenant farmers. In time the estate included a mansion house with associated buildings including a bakehouse, a brewhouse, a dairy, a granary and a smithy, as well as gardens, a dovecote, a chapel with cemetery, a watermill and a windmill, its entire purpose being to produce a surplus whose profit went towards paying for the order’s activities in Outremer.

  The same network of European estates that funded the Templars in Outremer and in the Iberian peninsula developed naturally into an international financial system. Individual monasteries had traditionally served as secure depositories for precious documents and objects, but during an age of greater movement owing to the crusades and the growth of trade and pilgrimages the Templar network of preceptories in the West – that is, houses and estates – could offer a better service. The Templars developed a system of credit notes whereby money deposited in one Templar preceptory could be withdrawn at another upon production of the note, a procedure that required the meticulous and scrupulously honest record-keeping at which they excelled.

  Disciplined, pious and independent, the Templars were trusted throughout medieval society. Whether at Paris or Acre or elsewhere, the Templars kept daily records of transactions, giving details of the name of the depositor, the name of the cashier on duty, the date and nature of the transaction, the amount involved and into whose account the credit was to be made. These daily records were then transferred to a larger register, part of a vast and permanent archive. The Templars also issued statements several times a year, giving details of credits and debits and stating the origin and destination of each item. With their branch offices, so to speak, at both ends of the Mediterranean, and with major strongholds at the Paris and London Temples, not only could they take deposits but they could also make funds internationally available where and when they were needed.

  An obvious extension to guarding crusaders’ documents and money was to make funds available during the expeditions themselves. The Templars operated treasure ships offshore, from which campaigning knights and nobles and kings could make emergency withdrawals; for services such as these, as well as for the currency exchange offices they ran in Jerusalem and the ports of Outremer for crusaders, pilgrims and merchants alike, they imposed charges and from them they turned a profit. An early stimulus to their activities and recognition of their potential came from King Louis VII himself when he found himself financially embarrassed during the Second Crusade and borrowed heavily from the Templar treasury. This was the beginning of the Templars’ close financial association with the French monarchy, effectively becoming its treasurers. The episode also marked the beginning of their career as Europe’s bankers, a development unintended and unforeseen yet one that arose naturally out of their situation.

  From financing crusades it was a small step for the Templars to become an integral part of the European financial system. King John of England borrowed from the master of the Temple in London around the time of Magna Carta, in 1215. After the Fourth Crusade, which overthrew the Byzantine emperors and put a Frenchman on the throne instead, the new Latin emperor Baldwin II borrowed an immense sum which was secured against the True Cross. Although it was not always openly stated in documents, the Templars charged interest on loans, sometimes under the name of expenses to get round medieval scruples against interest, although sometimes they felt bold enough to declare that too. In 1274, for example, Edward I of England repaid the Templars the sum of 27,974 livres tournois together with 5333 livres, 6 sous, 8 deniers for ‘administration, expenses and interest’ – the total cost of the loan approaching 20 per cent.1 Italian merchants were already financing and insuring shipments in grain, but the stimulus of the crusades and the activities of the Templars created an international system extending across Europe and the Levant on a scale unknown before.

  In return for these services and in addition to their charges, expenses and interest the Templars received various privileges and concessions. By papal bull and the decrees of French and English kings, the Templars were given full jurisdiction over their estates and their inhabitants. They also obtained royal consent to organise weekly agricultural markets and annual fairs, which formed a focus for local trade and brought much income to the order both from the dues paid by those taking part and through boosting the local economy generally. Combining agriculture with capital, the Templars were notably successful in the commercial e
xploitation of their estates, as in sheep-farming in England, for example, which in combination with the Templars’ ability to provide credit turned them into major suppliers of wool. Not least among the benefits they obtained was the unimpeded export of goods and funds from the West to Outremer.

  As naturally as their land holdings led the Templars into the world of international finance, so they also became traders who operated their own merchant marine. Most of the Templars’ imports to Outremer such as horses, iron and wheat came by sea. At first the Templars contracted with commercial shippers and agents, but early in the thirteenth century they began building up a fleet of their own. They had a substantial presence at all the important ports of Outremer – at Caesarea, Tyre, Sidon, Gibelet (ancient Byblos and present-day Jubail), Tripoli, Tortosa, Jeble and Port Bonnel, north of Antioch. But their principal port was Acre, a walled city built on a tongue of land offering good protection for its double harbour.

  In 1191, after the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin, Acre became the capital of the kingdom and the Templars’ new headquarters in the Holy Land. According to the thirteenth-century chronicler known as the Templar of Tyre, ‘The Temple was the strongest place of the city, largely situated along the seashore, like a castle. At its entrance it had a high and strong tower, the wall of which was 28 feet thick.’ He also mentioned another tower built so close to the sea that the waves washed up against it, ‘in which the Temple kept its treasure’.2

  After 1218 the Templars supplemented their facilities at Acre with a new fortress of their own 30 miles to the south; known today as Atlit, the Templars called it Chastel Pelerin, because it was built on a rocky promontory with the help of pilgrims (pèlerin in French). This castle, said a German pilgrim who visited in the early 1280s, ‘is sited in the heart of the sea, fortified with walls and ramparts and barbicans so strong and castellated, that the whole world should not be able to conquer it’.3