Templars_ History and Myth Part 4

Disciplined, honest and independent, the Templars were trusted throughout medieval society, and their experience in commerce and finance made them the ideal bankers to Popes and kings. Yet in their success as bankers and financiers lay a chief cause of their fall. The Templars, like the Church and like the Crusades, were international in conception, but the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were a time when national states were being constructed by European kings, especially by the kings of France. Just as the Templars raised money to defend the Holy Land with their arms, so they also provided money for the new nationalism arising in the West. But the nation state of France would in turn 'nationalise' the Templars and destroy them.

The Templars' Ports and Mediterranean Trade Most of the Templars' imports such as horses, iron and wheat came by sea. At first the Templars contracted with commercial s.h.i.+ppers 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 Outremerat Caesarea, Tyre, Sidon, Gibelet (ancient Byblos and present-day Jubail), Tripoli, Tortosa, Jeble and Port Bonnel north of Antioch. But their princ.i.p.al port was Acre, a walled city built on a tongue of land offering good protection for its double harbour.

All the major powers of the Kingdom of Jerusalem were represented at Acre, but in 1191, after the fall of Jerusalem to Saladin, the city became 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 seash.o.r.e, like a castle. At its entrance it had a high and strong tower, the wall of which was 28 feet thick.' He also mentions another tower built so close to the sea that the waves washed up against it, 'in which the Temple kept its treasure'.

After 1218 the Templars supplemented their facilities at Acre with a new fortress of their own thirty 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 (pelerin in French). This castle, said a German pilgrim who visited in the early 1280s, 'is sited in the heart of the sea, fortifed with walls and ramparts and barbicans so strong and castellated, that the whole world should not be able to conquer it.' in French). This castle, said a German pilgrim who visited in the early 1280s, 'is sited in the heart of the sea, fortifed with walls and ramparts and barbicans so strong and castellated, that the whole world should not be able to conquer it.'

From their ports in Outremer the Templars' s.h.i.+ps sailed to the West. Their major port of call in France was Ma.r.s.eilles from where they s.h.i.+pped pilgrims and merchants to the East. Italy's Adriatic ports were also important, especially Brindisi, which had the added advantage of being near Rome. Bari and Brindisi were sources of wheat and horses, armaments and cloth, olive oil and wine, as well as pilgrims. Messina in Sicily acted both as a channel for exports from the island and as an entrepot for s.h.i.+pping arriving from Catalonia and Provence. The Templars also built s.h.i.+ps in European ports, everywhere between Spain and the Dalmatian coast.

The White Slave TradeAnother Templar cargo was white slaves. They were transported in considerable numbers from East to West where they were put to work helping to run Templar houses, especially in southern Italy and Aragon. The Hospitallers also engaged in the trade and the use of slaves; indeed the trade in white slaves was a flouris.h.i.+ng business for everyone, including the Italian maritime powers, especially Genoa, and most of all the Muslim states in the East.

The centre of the slave trade in the late thirteenth century was the Mediterranean port of Ayas in the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia. Marco Polo disembarked at Ayas in 1271 to begin his trip to China at about the same time that the Templars opened a wharf there. The slaves, who were Turkish, Greek, Russian and Circa.s.sian, had been acquired as a result of intertribal warfare, or because impoverished parents decided to sell their children, or because they were kidnapped, and they were brought to Ayas by Turkish and Mongol slavers.

The pick of young strong males from the South Russian steppes or the Caucasus generally went to Egypt where they were converted to Islam and served as elite slave soldiers known as Mamelukes. In 1250 the Mamelukes seized power in Egypt for themselvesand led the final jihad that drove the Franks out of Outremer.

The Templar Banking Network In Outremer and the Iberian peninsula the Templars provided military services, but in England, France and Italy their primary contribution was financial. Individual monasteries had traditionally served as secure depositories for precious doc.u.ments and objects, but during an age of greater movement owing to the Crusades and the growth of trade and pilgrimages the Templar network in the West of preceptories, 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.

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 cas.h.i.+er 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.

International Financial Services An obvious extension to guarding Crusaders' doc.u.ments and money was to make funds available during the expeditions themselves. The Templars operated treasure s.h.i.+ps offsh.o.r.e from which campaigning knights and n.o.bles and kings could make emergency withdrawals. The Templars also provided loans, for example to Louis VII, the king of France, during the Second Crusade. This was the beginning of the Templars' close financial a.s.sociation with the French monarchy, effectively becoming its treasurers.

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, in which Latins overthrew the Byzantine emperors and put a Frenchman on the throne instead, the Latin Emperor Baldwin II borrowed an immense sum which was secured against the True Cross. As part of their integral relations.h.i.+p with the European financial system, the Templars also became involved in the web that Italian merchants and bankers had spun across Europe and the Levant.

In return for these services 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 exploitation 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.

Additionally the Templars made profits on currency conversions and imposed charges on their services. Though not always openly stated in doc.u.ments, they charged interest on loans, sometimes under the name of expenses to get round medieval scruples against interest, though 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.

The Paris and London TemplesThe Paris Temple was the Templar headquarters in France. Built on land acquired by the Templars in the 1140s, nothing of it survives today and it is remembered only by a street name in the Quartier du Temple, the northern part of the Marais district of the city. But from the twelfth to the fourteenth century it was one of the key financial centres of northwest Europe.

The Temple was located to the north of the city walls and was fortified with a perimeter wall and towers. Inside there was an impressive array of buildings, and in the late thirteenth century the Templars added a powerful keep about 165 feet highnearly twice as high as the White Tower, the keep at the centre of the Tower of London. This Templar keep in Paris was the heart of the Templar bank, and it was also effectively the treasury of the kings of France. During the French Revolution it served as a prison for Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and it was from the keep that the king was led out to his execution.The London Temple, or the New Temple as it was called, would have been comparable to that of Paris, but only Temple Church, consecrated in 1185, remains today, amid the Inns of Court off the south side of Fleet Street. The nave of Temple Church is round, as was typical with Templar churches, its plan following that of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. King John was actually resident at the New Temple at the time of Magna Carta in 1215 and was accompanied to his famous meeting with the barons at Runnymede by the master of the London Temple. But while the kings of England entrusted Templars with military, diplomatic and financial commissions, they were always careful to keep the royal treasury as part of the royal household where it was run by royal officials, so that at most the New Temple merely served to provide additional safe-deposit s.p.a.ce.

Vulnerable Relations.h.i.+ps with Kings The Templars' experience made them useful to the French monarchy and to the Papacy, both of which wanted to maximise their revenues from taxation and reform the managing of their finances. For example, during the 33-year reign of Philip II, which extended from the late twelfth century well into the thirteenth, the king's revenues were increased by 120 per cent thanks to Templar management.

Yet Templar holdings were never entirely secure. Only the Paris Temple presented a truly formidable obstacle to a raid; Templar houses elsewhere in France were raided by the king; the London Temple was raided by kings of England in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries when in desperate need; and in Spain the kings of Aragon did the same. But these were pa.s.sing events in desperate times of need, and rest.i.tution was made. Ultimately the Templars' best protection was not the stone walls of their treasure houses but practical and moral constraints. The kings needed the Templars and their services too much to alienate them, nor could they afford to put themselves on the wrong side of a spiritual causeat least not until Philip IV of France came up with a rationalisation in October 1307.

Medieval Heresy Nothing Is What It Seems Bernard of Clairvaux described the Templars as men whose bodies were protected by iron and whose souls were clothed in the breastplate of faith. Religious orthodoxy was seen as no less a part of their equipment than their swords and armour. This was just as well, for Outremer at this time was a hothouse of heterodox and heretical beliefs, both Christian and Muslim, as was southern France from where the order drew much of its support. The breastplate did its work; for nearly two centuries the Templars were seen as paragons of faith, and there was no suggestion that contamination had touched their souls. Moreover, within a century of their founding the Templars had entered into the Western imagination as the ideal of chivalryand the guardians of the Holy Grail.

All of which adds to the irony of the Templars' arrest in 1307 on charges of heresy and blasphemy. These charges and the Templars' prosecution and trial are covered later in the book. This chapter looks at the wider context: the Templars' encounter with strange religious systems whose doctrines can be traced back to some of the earliest Christian beliefs in the East. At the root of these beliefs, which spread westwards into Europe during the Crusades, was the radical idea that man inhabits a world of delusion in which nothing is what it seems.

Templars and Cathars During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Languedoc in southern France was the centre of a rich and complex religious life in which both Christian orthodoxy and heresy flourished. William of Puylaurens, the thirteenth-century chronicler of the region, reported heretic communities of Arians, Waldensians and Manichaeans. The Arians were the survival of that 900-year-old heresy that began in Alexandria and tended towards undermining the divinity of Jesus Christ, while the Waldensians were a new twelfth-century movement that espoused poverty, called for the distribution of property to the poor, rejected the authority of the clergy and claimed that anyone could preach, saying their literal reading of the Bible was all that was needed for salvation. According to Peter of Les Vauz de Cernay, another thirteenth-century chronicler, the Waldensians 'were evil men, but very much less perverted than other heretics; they agreed with us in many matters, and differed in some'. The 'other heretics' were the Manichaeans, also known as Cathars, meaning 'pure'.

Languedoc was a major source of Templar income and recruits. The Templars partly owed their great expansion in the region to the support of the n.o.bility with whom they were in close alliance, the combination of n.o.bles' land and Templar capital allowing the establishment of new communities and the development of previously uncultivated territories. Some of these Templar patrons were renowned Cathar supporters.

Catharism first appeared in southern France sometime in the years following the First Crusade. Its adherents quickly became numerous and well organised, electing bishops, collecting funds and distributing money to the poor. But they could not accept that if there was only one G.o.d, and if G.o.d was the creator, and if G.o.d was good, that there should be suffering, illness and death in his world. The Cathars' solution to this problem of evil in the world was to say there were really two creators and two worlds. The Cathars were dualists in that they believed in a good and an evil principle, the former the creator of the invisible and spiritual universe, the latter the creator of our material world. All matter was evil because it was the creation of the devil, but the ideal of renouncing the world was impractical for everyone, and so while most Cathars lived outwardly normal lives, pledging to renounce the evil world only on their deathbeds, a few lived the strict life of the perfecti perfecti.

Because human and animal procreation perpetuated matter, the perfecti perfecti abstained from eggs, milk, meat and women. But both ordinary Cathars and the abstained from eggs, milk, meat and women. But both ordinary Cathars and the perfecti perfecti actively shared in their belief that Christ was not part of this world of evil. Therefore he was not truly born of the Virgin Mary, nor had he human flesh, nor had he risen from the dead; salvation did not lie in his death and resurrection, which were merely a simulation; instead redemption would be gained by following Jesus' teachings. actively shared in their belief that Christ was not part of this world of evil. Therefore he was not truly born of the Virgin Mary, nor had he human flesh, nor had he risen from the dead; salvation did not lie in his death and resurrection, which were merely a simulation; instead redemption would be gained by following Jesus' teachings.

By 1200 the Cathar heresy had become so widespread that the Papacy was alarmed. Pope Innocent III said that the Cathars were 'worse than the Saracens', for not only did Catharism challenge the Church but by condemning procreation it threatened the very survival of the human race. In 1209 a crusade was launched against themthe Albigensian Crusade, as so many Cathars lived around Albiand an inquisition was introduced. In that year the core of Cathar resistance withdrew to the castle of Montsegur atop a great domed hill in the eastern Pyrenees, where they withstood a.s.saults and sieges until capitulating in 1244. Some two hundred still refused to abjure their errors, were bound together within a stockade below the castle and were set ablaze on a huge funeral pyre. The Templars played no part in the Albigensian Crusade, which was bound to attack some of their own patrons, who were likewise patrons of the Cathars.

The Gnostics The origins of Cathar dualism lay in the East where it can be traced back to the Christian Gnostics who flourished in the second and third centuries AD all round the sh.o.r.es of the Eastern Mediterranean, in Egypt, Syria and Palestine, and perhaps also in Asia Minor and Greece. Gnosis is Greek for knowledge, and the Gnostics believed that salvation lay in their understanding of the true nature of creation. They believed that there were two worlds, the material world of evil and decay that had been made by an evil demiurge, the enemy of man, and the world of light where the primal G.o.d resides.

One of the most prominent Gnostics was Valentinus, who flourished around AD 140 in Alexandria and Rome. He claimed to possess the true knowledge of how the world had been created and how evil had come into being, a story that he introduced to his followers in terms of a cosmic myth. He conceived of a primal G.o.d, the centre of a divine harmony, who sends out manifestations of himself in pairs of male and female. Each pair was inferior to its predecessor, and Sophia, the female of the thirtieth pair, was the least perfect of all. She showed her imperfection not, like the angel Lucifer, by rebelling against G.o.d, but by desiring too ardently to be united to him, so that she fell through love, and the universe is formed out of her agony and remorse. As she fell she bore a son, the Demiurge, who rules this world of sadness and confusion, yet is incapable of realising anything beyond it.

Mankind inhabits a catastrophe not of G.o.d's making, but the Gnostics said they knew the secret of salvation. At the moment of the cosmic blunder, sparks of the divine light, like slivers of shattered gla.s.s, became embedded in a portion of humankind. These people were the elect, and the Gnostic aim was to lead them back to G.o.d. Cosmic redemption, however, and not just personal salvation was necessary because the whole of creation had been a mistake; it had nothing to do with G.o.d, who had never intended that there should be a universe, indeed never intended man. Creation was a defective work, and so man lived in a meaningless world or in the iron control of evil powers; in any case he was caught in the trap of the material world which was sundered from the spirit of G.o.d.

Valentinus taught his followers that they could free themselves by attempting to quell their desires and by practising s.e.xual abstinence. For in the polarity of the male and the female was mirrored the division, the duality, of the universe, so that the Last Judgement and the world's redemption would comeas Jesus says in the Gnostic Gospel of the Egyptians'when the two become one, and the male with the female, there being neither male nor female'. Other Gnostics than Valentinus also had their stories, and some, instead of practising abstinence, promoted s.e.xual licence, though the purpose was the same: to join the male and the female in order to achieve the desired oneness of the world. The crucifixion and resurrection has no place in these Gnostic stories; instead the role of Jesus was to descend from the primal G.o.d and impart to his disciples the secret tradition of the gnosis.

Islamic Dualism Dualism was deeply rooted in the East and did not confine itself to Christianity. In fact the term Manichaean, the name some medieval French chroniclers gave to the Cathars, was used by the Byzantines to describe the dualist ideas of Mani, a third-century Persian, who drew on Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and Babylonian Mandaeism, as well as Christianity. And so it was from several sources that dualism made its appearance in Islam. Though dualism is fundamentally incompatible with Islam, which teaches that G.o.d is the sole principle and is good, the political unity of the Muslim world had long been in decay, allowing for the manifestation of new religious tendencies.

Just as the Middle East was divided into local dynasties and subject to pressures from the Abbasid caliphate, the Seljuk Turks and the Fatimids of Egypt, not to mention the Byzantines, so it was divided into numerous sects. Among the Christians there were the Jacobites, Maronites, Copts and Orthodox, and among the Muslims the Sunnis and numerous heterodox groups that had evolved out of s.h.i.+sm, among these the Qarmatian, Alawi, Druze and Ismaili movements, which were not only movements of belief but also initiatory secret societies with political aims tending towards the apocalyptic.

The Ismailis continued certain pre-Muslim beliefs, in particular dualism, in which they saw evil not as the absence of good but as part of the essence of both the world and its creator, who in turn may have been an emanation of an ultimate and unknowable G.o.d. Like the Gnostics they believed that man possesses slivers of the divine spark which, given possession of the secret knowledge, can reunite man with the unknown G.o.d. The Ismailis claimed to possess this knowledge.

But after Zengi's conquest of Edessa in 1144 and the surrender of Damascus to his son Nur al-Din, the Zengid dynasty imposed Sunni Islam on the entire Muslim population of Syria, driving the s.h.i.+a sects into inaccessible regions.

The a.s.sa.s.sins The Ismailis withdrew into that region of the coastal mountains, the Jebel al-Sariya, girded by the great Templar and Hospitaller strongholds of Tortosa, Chastel Blanc, Margat and Krak des Chevaliers, where the movement a.s.sumed its militant and murderous form known as the a.s.sa.s.sins. From such strongholds as al-Ullayqa, Qadmus, Qalaat al-Kahf and especially Masyaf, headquarters of the a.s.sa.s.sins' leader, the Sheikh al-Jebel, the Old Man of the Mountain, they employed a strategy of a.s.sa.s.sination to influence and control anyone, mostly Sunni Muslims but sometimes also Christians, who might threaten their independence.

The a.s.sa.s.sins' particular glimpse of divine knowledge was described by Marco Polo, who encountered a branch at Alamut in Persia. The a.s.sa.s.sins used drugs (including has.h.i.+sh, from which the word 'a.s.sa.s.sin' derives) to convince novices destined to become self-destructive feddayin, 'the self-sacrificers', that they had entered a garden of delights where fountains flowed with milk, honey and wine, and where houris, those maidens of Paradise, were likewise on tap. Brought back to their normal state, the initiates were told that they had indeed visited Paradise, which would certainly be forever theirs provided they gave absolute obedience to the commands of the a.s.sa.s.sins' imam.

According to the reports of European chroniclers, the a.s.sa.s.sin leaders demonstrated their complete domination over their adepts by commanding them to leap from precipices to their deaths. Their willingness to sacrifice their lives made the feddayins' attacks that much more disturbing; their mission was to sow fear of the sect and at the same time weaken the resolve of their enemies by the murder of key figures. The a.s.sa.s.sins infiltrated the ranks of their adversaries, and when they had won their victim's trust they would kill him, always using a knife. These were suicide attacks, for apparently by design they themselves perished in carrying out their orders.

Among the a.s.sa.s.sins' Christian victims were Raymond II, count of Tripoli, in 1152; Conrad of Montferrat, king of Jerusalem, in 1192; and another Raymond, heir to the thrones of Antioch and Tripoli, who in 1213 was stabbed to death outside the door of the Cathedral of Our Lady at Tortosa. But the a.s.sa.s.sins' most famous attempt was against Saladin in 1176. As the champion of Sunni orthodoxy and leader of the Muslim resurgence, Saladin had already overthrown the s.h.i.+a Fatimids in Egypt and was now in full cry against the Crusaders and the a.s.sa.s.sins. He entered the Jebel al-Sariya to lay siege to Masyaf, but his soldiers reported mysterious powers about, while Saladin was disturbed by terrible dreams. One night he awoke suddenly to find on his bed some hot cakes of a type that only the a.s.sa.s.sins baked and with them a poisoned dagger and a threatening verse. Convinced that Ras.h.i.+d al-Din Sinan, the Old Man of the Mountain, had himself entered his tent, Saladin's nerves gave way. He sent a message to Sinan asking for forgiveness and promised not to pursue his campaign against the a.s.sa.s.sins provided he was granted safe conduct. Saladin was pardoned and hastened back to Cairo.

The Templars and the Old Man of the Mountain The one effective organisation against the a.s.sa.s.sins was the Templars. Being an undying corporate body, the Templars could not be intimidated by the death of one of their members. The a.s.sa.s.sins themselves admitted that they never killed a Grand Master because they knew that someone equally good would be put in his place.

In their hatred of the Sunni, the a.s.sa.s.sins sometimes found themselves in alliance with the Christians, and even under trying circ.u.mstances they were tolerated by the Crusader states and the Templars. After the a.s.sa.s.sins murdered Raymond II, the count of Tripoli, in 1152for no reason that anyone could figure out, unless they had been hired by Raymond's wifethe Templars threatened to go after the a.s.sa.s.sins, who readily agreed to pay an annual tribute of two thousand besants as a form of protection money. The a.s.sa.s.sins and the Christians shared a common enemy, and it was in their interest to keep the peace with one another.

But on one significant occasion the Templars' distrust of the a.s.sa.s.sins led them to oppose the policy of King Amalric of Jerusalem, who had entered into talks with the Old Man of the Mountain. The Ismailis had always seen their leaders as the embodiment of emanations flowing from the unknowable G.o.d, but in 1164, in an apocalyptic moment, Ras.h.i.+d al-Din Sinan openly renounced Islam and declared that the resurrection had arrived. The contemporary Syrian chronicler Kamal al-Din described scenes of wild frenzy in the Jebel al-Sariya where 'men and women mingled in drinking sessions, no man abstained from his sister or daughter, the women wore men's clothes, and one of them declared that Sinan was G.o.d'. In fact the divine status accorded to the Old Man of the Mountain was general, according to the Spanish Muslim traveller Ibn Jubayr, who wrote that all his followers treated him as G.o.d.

It was nine years after these events, in 1173, that Amalric attempted to negotiate an alliance with Sinan, one of its conditions being that the a.s.sa.s.sins would convert to Christianity. But as Sinan's envoy was returning from Jerusalem to Masyaf, bearing a safeconduct from Amalric, he was ambushed and killed by some Templar knights. Only with the greatest difficulty was Amalric able to persuade Sinan that the attack was not of his doing. Meanwhile he accused the Templars of treason and of bringing the kingdom to the edge of ruin by destroying the chance of an advantageous alliance. The chronicler William of Tyre implied that the murder was prompted by a financial motive, for peace would have meant an end to the tribute paid by the a.s.sa.s.sins to the Templars. Another chronicler, Walter Map, wrote that the Templars killed the envoy 'lest (it is said) the belief of the infidels should be done away and peace and union reign'in other words war justified the existence of the Templars, who feared the outbreak of peace.

The argument of Templar greed is typical of William of Tyre, for the order did not need the a.s.sa.s.sins' tribute. However, the Templars were likely concerned that King Amalric was being duped, for they understood that whatever religion the a.s.sa.s.sins professed, it would be no more than an outer garment, just as Islam had been an outer garment, as the a.s.sa.s.sins saw this world as mere illusion, and despite any conversion to Christianity their inner and secret beliefs would remain. The Templars controlled important castles adjacent to the a.s.sa.s.sin enclave, castles that also controlled the pa.s.ses to the yet more dangerous Sunni-held interior, and to have let their guard down on the word of such a sect would have been grossly irresponsible and cost the Templars their credibility in the West. In the event, the negotiations were never resumed; after Amalric died in 1174 Raymond III, count of Tripoli, was made regent, and as his own father had been murdered by the a.s.sa.s.sins he shared the Templars' distrust.

Saladin and the Templars The View from the Temple Mount In the decades following the Second Crusade, visitors to the Temple Mount were impressed with how it was being developed by the Knights Templar. After prayers at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, with its chapels a.s.sociated with the crucifixion and burial of Jesus and the discovery of the True Cross, pilgrims walked to the Temple Mount, entering through the western gate near the south side of the Dome of the Rock, the Templum Domini, or Temple of the Lord, a church served by canons of the Augustinian order. On the outer court the canons and Templars had built houses and planted gardens.

According to Theoderich, a German pilgrim who wrote about his visit to the Holy Land in 1172, the Temple of the Lord bore an inscription that read 'The house of the Lord is well built upon a firm rock', but that as pilgrims were in the habit of chipping away bits of the holy rock, its surface had to be paved with marble and it was cordoned off by a tall and beautifully worked wrought-iron screen which was put up between the encircling columns.

From the Temple of the Lord, continued Theoderich, the pilgrims made their way south to the Templar headquarters at the al-Aqsa mosque, or rather what he called the Palace of Solomon: which is oblong, and supported by columns within like a church, and at the end is round like a sanctuary and covered by a great round dome. This building, with all its appurtenances, has pa.s.sed into the hands of the Knights Templar, who dwell in it and in the other buildings connected with it, having many magazines of arms, clothing, and food in it, and are ever on the watch to guard and protect the country. They have below them stables for horses built by King Solomon himself in the days of old, adjoining the palace, a wondrous and intricate building resting on piers and containing an endless complication of arches and vaults, which stable, we declare, according to our reckoning, could take in ten thousand horses with their grooms. No man could send an arrow from one end of their building to the other, either lengthways or crossways, at one shot with a Balearic bow. Above, it abounds with rooms, solar chambers, and buildings suitable for all manner of uses. Those who walk upon the roof of it find an abundance of gardens, courtyards, ante-chambers, vestibules and rain-water cisterns; while down below it contains a wonderful number of baths, storehouses, granaries, and magazines for the storage of wood and other needful provisions.

The southern part of the Temple Mount had therefore become the combined administrative, military and religious headquarters of the Templars, with a vast stable underneath. The Grand Master had his chambers there and was attended by his entourage which included a chaplain, two knights, a clerk, a sergeant, a Muslim scribe to act as an interpreter, as well as servants and a cook. The Seneschal, the Marshal, the Commander of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Draper were also here along with their attendants. In addition there were about three hundred Templar knights and a thousand sergeants in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, as well as the native Syrian light cavalry, called Turcopoles, who were employed by the order, and numerous auxiliaries, including grooms, blacksmiths, armourers and stonemasons, and many of these would have been quartered on the Temple Mount.

The Temple Mount was a busy place. Yet at its heart it was as silent as any monastery, for the Templars followed the canonical hours like any Cistercian or Benedictine monk, rising at four for Matins and retiring to bed after Compline, attending regular services and prayers in between, eating their meals in silence while listening to readings from the Bible, and otherwise caring for their horses.

The so-called Stables of Solomon were in fact a substructure of vaults and arches built by Herod to extend the platform of the Mount, and later reconstruction work was undertaken by the Umayyads and the Templars. The Templars indeed used this as a stables, but Theoderich's claim that ten thousand horses could be stabled beneath the Mount is an exaggeration; other travellers estimated the capacity at about two thousand horses, and allowing s.p.a.ce for squires, grooms and perhaps even pilgrims sleeping there, the number of horses stabled at any one time was more like five hundred.

These warrior monks were a powerful force in the Holy Land, whose defence since the Second Crusade fell increasingly on their shoulders. Contrary to popular belief the Templars were not fanatics forever in search of battle with the infidel. Generally they were pragmatic and conservative in their approach to politics and warfare, if anything more so than the counts and kings of Outremer who were driven by personal and dynastic ambitions in the here and now. In becoming a Knight Templar each man surrendered his will to the order, as in the words of one recruit: 'I, renouncing secular life and its pomp, relinquis.h.i.+ng everything, give myself to the Lord G.o.d and to the knighthood of the Temple of Solomon of Jersualem, that, as long as I shall live, in accordance with my strength, I shall serve there a complete pauper for G.o.d.'

Self-will was replaced with service to the order and its aims, and the Templars were playing a long game, dedicated to defending the Holy Land for all time. In any case conflict in the Middle Ages tended to be more about sieges of cities and castles than battle in the open field, which was unpredictable and risky even under the most favourable circ.u.mstances. And in Outremer patience had its rewards as it was usually only a matter of time before the uneasy Muslim coalitions against the Christians fell apart. And so it was with confidence that the Templars looked out from their headquarters atop the Temple Mount upon Jerusalem and the future that lay beyond.

Tunnels and Chambers Beneath the Dome of the RockIn his account of the Temple Mount, the twelfth-century pilgrim Theoderich mentioned some strange underground features. After ascending the Mount pilgrims arrived at the lower court of the Templum Domini, the Temple of the Lord, formerly the Dome of the Rock, which was built on the site of Solomon's Temple. 'One mounts from the lower court to the upper one by twenty-two steps', wrote Theoderich, 'and from the upper court one enters the Temple. In front of these same steps in the lower court there are twenty-five steps or more, leading down into a great pool, from which it is said there is a subterranean connection with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, through which the holy fire which is miraculously lighted in that church on Easter Even is said to be brought underground to the Temple of the Lord.'

The first mention of an aperture in the rock was made in AD 333 by a traveller known as the Bordeaux Pilgrim, but the first doc.u.mented reference to the cave beneath the rock was made by Ibn al-Faqih in 903: 'Under the rock is a cavern in which the people pray. This cavern is capable of containing 62 persons.' A Persian, Nasir-i Khusraw, who visited the Dome of the Rock in 1047, described the large cavern under the rock 'where they burn tapers', which was perhaps the tradition that led Theoderich to make the connection with the miraculous Easter fire at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Ali of Herat, who visited the Temple Mount in 1173 when Jerusalem was under Christian rule, gave this description: 'Underneath the rock is the Cave of the Souls. They say that Allah will bring together the souls of all True Believers to this spot. You descend to this cave by some fourteen steps. The Cave of the Souls is of the height of a man. Its length extends 11 paces from east to west and 13 paces from north to south.'Muslims say that the souls of the dead can be heard here as they await the Day of Judgement. And according to both Muslim tradition and the Talmud of the Jews the rock lies at the centre of the world. Beneath it is the abyss where Muslims say the waters of Paradise flow, but the Talmud says the waters of the Flood rage.

In some Jewish traditions it is also regarded as the place where the Ark of the Covenant stoodand where, when Solomon's Temple was destroyed in 587 BC, the Ark was concealed and remains hidden.

Amalric's Egyptian Campaigns The Fatimid garrison at Ascalon had controlled 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. When King Baldwin III captured Ascalon with Templar help in 1153 it opened the door to Egypt for the Franks. But the opportunity was only seized after Baldwin died in 1162 and was succeeded by his twenty-five-year-old brother Amalric, who on three occasions, in 1164, 1167 and 1168, entered Egypt to prevent it falling to Nur al-Din.

The Fatimid regime in Cairo had grown weak and unstable, with two viziers vying with one another for control over the enfeebled caliphs. Each of the viziers reached outside Egypt for support, drawing Amalric in Jerusalem and Nur al-Din in 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.

Each side had grounds for hope. Alaric understood that for the Fatimids, who were both s.h.i.+a and Arab, their greatest enemy was not his Christian kingdom but Nur al-Din, who was a Sunni and a Seljuk Turk. But though two centuries of Fatimid rule meant that s.h.i.+a influences were strong in Egypt, Nur al-Din knew that the ma.s.s of Egyptians remained Sunni, and he counted on the shared Muslim bond between Cairo and Damascus. For five years this contest was waged between Amalric and s.h.i.+rkuh, the Kurdish general commanding Nur al-Din's army. If either rival won Egypt to its side, the gain could be decisive.

Amalric had large contingents of Templars in his army when he twice, in 1164 and 1167, forced s.h.i.+rkuh to withdraw from Egypt and then withdrew himself. A leading Templar also took part in the mission which negotiated the treaty of alliance between Amalric and Shawar, the Fatimid vizier, prior to the Franks' military intervention in 1167. But by then the fundamental weakness of the Fatimid regime was obvious to both Nur al-Din and Amalric, and it was only a matter of time before one of them would strike the coup de grace coup de grace. Amalric struck first, marching into Egypt in 1168 with the intention of outright annexationwithout the support of Templar forces. The Fatimids withdrew within the walls of Cairo and burnt its suburbs to the ground, and they sent for help to Nur al-Din. This time it was Amalric who was forced to withdraw, and Nur al-Din's Kurdish general s.h.i.+rkuh entered Cairo, decapitated Shawar and installed himself as vizier. His rule was not long; in March 1169 s.h.i.+rkuh died and was succeeded as vizier by his nephew Salah al-Din, better known in the West as Saladin.

Templar Relations with the Kingdom of Jerusalem The capture of Egypt by Nur al-Din's forces was a strategic calamity for the Franks. Why the Templars refused to partic.i.p.ate in Amalric's 1168 invasion has been a matter of speculation and debate. Again the earliest princ.i.p.al source for these events is William of Tyre, who was commissioned by Amalric to write his history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and might have been expected to fiercely condemn the Templars. Yet William himself disapproved of the campaign and said that the Templars objected on moral grounds; 'it seemed against their conscience' to break the treaty which they had helped negotiate with Shawar in 1167.

What William did not mention, though it was true, was that the Templars were financially connected with the Muslims and with the Italian merchants, who carried on a greater trade with Egypt than with all the Crusader ports combined. William confined his criticism to the suggestion that the Templars 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.

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, which included the deaths of sixty Templar knights and numerous more sergeants and Turcopoles, precisely in the area where the Templars bore responsibility for manning strategically sited castles that were part of the ultimate defence of Outremer. The experience may have impressed upon the Templars the need to husband their resources and concentrate them where they were most needed.

Certainly there were strong differences over military strategy between Amalric and the Templars, with William of Tyre describing a dramatic incident that occurred in 1166. Learning that a Templar garrison was under siege beyond the Jordan, Amalric rode out to relieve them with a large force. But when he reached the river he was told that what William describes as an 'impregnable cave' had already fallen to Nur al-Din's general s.h.i.+rkuh. The Templars may have thought that their garrison was out on a limb too far. But outraged and confounded by the news, Amalric hanged twelve of the Templars who had surrendered to s.h.i.+rkuh. Add to this the story of the a.s.sa.s.sins' envoy killed by the Templars in 1173, an event, according to William of Tyre, that brought the kingdom to the edge of 'irrevocable ruin' as it cost Jerusalem an ally against encircling Sunni power, and there is a pattern of Templar wilfulness in military, political and religious matters. 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 protecting and advancing its own interests.

Excellent Soldiers and Humble MonksAn unknown pilgrim visiting Jerusalem sometime after the middle of the twelfth century described the Templars as follows: 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. 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', 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 s.p.a.ce 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.

From Anonymous Pilgrims Anonymous Pilgrims, translated by A. Stewart, London 1894.

The Rise of Saladin In 1171 as the Fatimid caliph al-Adid lay dying, prayers rose from the mosques of Cairo, but not for the last of Egypt's s.h.i.+a rulers, instead for Nur al-Din's puppet, the Sunni caliph in Baghdad. Notional Abbasid rule was reimposed on Egypt; in reality al-Adid was the last Arab ruler in the Middle East, and the once imperial Arabs were now governed by Turks and Kurds. Saladin continued in the office of vizier, supposedly ruling Egypt on behalf of Nur al-Din, but in effect ruling Egypt for himself. To consolidate his position, Saladin began constructing the Citadel of Cairo and extended the city walls. When Nur al-Din died in 1174 Saladin declared himself sultan in Egypt and rushed to seize Damascus. The Christians were now reaping the consequences of their failure to take Egypt; for the first time they were surrounded by a united Muslim power. Moreover the able Amalric had died in 1174 and was succeeded by his young son Baldwin IV, who suffered from leprosy.

By the end of 1177 Saladin was ready to strike, and in November he crossed the frontier from Egypt. The Templars summoned all their available knights to defend Gaza, but Saladin bypa.s.sed them for Ascalon. Raising what men at arms he could, Baldwin rushed to block him, and together with the True Cross and the commander of his army, Raynald of Chatillon, he managed to get inside the walls of Ascalon before Saladin arrived. But instead of attacking, Saladin left a small force to besiege Ascalon and marched towards an undefended Jersualem with 30,000 men, though the figure is probably exaggerated. Sending a message to the Templars, Baldwin told them to abandon Gaza and join him. When they came near, Baldwin broke out of Ascalon and chased after Saladin, marching north along the coast and then inland. On 25 November Saladin's army was crossing a ravine at Montgisard near Ramleh close by the Jaffa-Jerusalem road when Baldwin and the Templars fell upon them, taking them by surprise. The king himself was in the vanguard, and Raynald of Chatillon and Balian of Ibelin helped on the victory, and some saw Saint George himself, whose church was nearby at Lydda, fighting by their side.

The Christian force comprised 450 knights, 80 of them Templars, and a few thousand infantry, and they lost about 1100 men. But they inflicted on Saladin's forces an overwhelming defeat, killing 90 per cent of his army, Saladin himself only narrowly managing to escape back to Egypt where to cling to power he spread the lie that the Christians had lost the battle.

The battle of Montgisard had been a great victory and it saved the Kingdom of Jerusalem for the moment, but it did not alter the fundamental situation. Against the vast resources of Egypt on which Saladin could draw, the Franks were short of men and it was dangerous to risk their army on offensive operations. Had Baldwin the forces to pursue the enemy to Cairo or to make a sudden attack on Damascus, he might have destroyed Saladin with a crus.h.i.+ng blow. Instead he decided to reinforce his defences along the Syrian frontier, and at the insistence of the Templars he built the castle of Chastellet to control a ford across the upper Jordan where Jacob of the Old Testament was said to have wrestled with the angel (Genesis 32:24). But lacking neither resources nor resolution, Saladin kept up the pressure on the Damascus front, laid siege to Chastellet in June 1179 and again in August 1179, succeeded in mining the castle walls, then executed its 700 defenders and razed it to the ground.

Faced with an extreme drought that was threatening harvests throughout Syria and Outremer, in May 1180 Baldwin and Saladin agreed a two-year truce. For Saladin this was convenient as it allowed him to pursue his siege of Aleppo, which was in the hands of Nur al-Din's son. For Baldwin it bought time. And for Christian and Muslim traders the truce meant that they could pa.s.s freely through each other's territory. But the treaty was broken the following year by Raynald of Chatillon, a bold and able soldier who was lord of Oultrejourdain, which lay astride Saladin's line of communication between Cairo and Damascus. From his castle of Kerak he could see the rich Muslim caravans travelling to Medina and Mecca, and falling upon one of these, he made off with all its goods. Saladin complained to Baldwin and demanded compensation, but Raynald refused to make rest.i.tution. In 1182 Raynald took matters further when he launched a fleet of s.h.i.+ps into the Gulf of Aqaba and down the Red Sea where they raided Egyptian and Arabian ports, including those of Mecca and Medina, until they were driven back by a naval force under the command of Saladin's brother.

Chivalry and RealityThe concept of chivalry (the word derives from chevalier, the French for knight) arose in Western Europe in the century leading up to the First Crusade. A moral, religious and social code, chivalry emphasised the virtues of courage, service and honour. Combined with piety and faith, it found expression in the Crusades. G.o.dfrey of Bouillon, the leader of the First Crusade, was widely seen as an exemplar of knightly virtues, and the chroniclers celebrated Baldwin, his brother and successor, for the chivalry he showed after capturing the wife of a Muslim prince and upon discovering she was pregnant immediately sending her back to her husband with every mark of respect.

Saladin came to admire the chivalrous code of the Frankish knights, and he acted with courtesy and sometimes clemency in return. There was the famous instance when he laid siege to Raymond of Chatillon's castle of Kerak. A marriage was being celebrated within, and when Raymond's wife sent trays of the festive meal to Saladin outside he tactfully inquired in which chamber the bridal couple were lodged so that he would not bombard them on their wedding night. For gestures such as these Saladin became a legend throughout Christendom, a worthy and honourable adversarya phenomenon some naively explained by supposing that he must have had an English mother. In fact Saladin was following the precepts of Islam's own version of chivalry called futuwwa futuwwa, which roughly means n.o.bility.

But in reality chivalrous relations were rarely the rule between the Crusaders and the Muslims. The ma.s.sacre perpetrated by the Crusaders at the fall of Jerusalem in 1099 was disgraceful but it was hardly an exceptional event. Populations that did not surrender were marked down for death or slavery as Zengi showed when he captured Edessa in 1144 or as the Mamelukes would show when they stormed Acre in 1291 and beheaded every last person in the city. Not that surrender was a guarantee: the Mameluke Sultan Baybars, in spite of his oath, murdered nearly a thousand prisoners after the fall of Saphet in 1266.

Saladin could be ruthless, and in the interests of policy he did not shrink from bloodshed. He was a devout Muslim who abhorred free-thinkers, and though he made many friends among the Christians, he never doubted that their souls were doomed to d.a.m.nation. His famous magnanimity lay partly in his humanity but was also a matter of calculation. He did not shrink from cruelty when it suited his policy of instilling fear and a.s.serting his dominance over his adversaries. In Cairo he ordered the crucifixion of his s.h.i.+a opponents, and he was not averse to mutilating and executing his captives, as after the battle of Hattin when he slaughtered his Hospitaller and Templar captives in cold blood. It seems to have been only the threat made by the Frankish defenders of Jerusalem in 1187 that they would destroy all the sacred places, everything atop the Temple Mount, that caused Saladin to prefer a negotiated surrender to his original intention of purifying the city with Christian blood.

Factions in Outremer Behind the scenes of these events was a growing division within Outremer between those who wanted to pursue an aggressive policy towards Saladin and those who sought accommodation. Among the former was Raynald of Chatillon, while among the latter was Count Raymond III of Tripoli and the slowly dying king. But Saladin had his own policy, which was to annihilate the Christian states, and their internal differences only made it easier for Saladin to destroy them. But for the moment the forces of Outremer were able to make a united stand against Saladin, who in May 1182, at the expiry of the truce, rode out with an invasion army from Cairo. Baldwin, who was now almost blind and had to be carried in a litter, was waiting with his army on the west bank of the Jordan, accompanied by Heraclius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and the True Cross. Following a fierce battle Saladin was repelled but not defeated, and both sides claimed victory.

The following June, however, Saladin finally captured Aleppoand with it he gained full control of Syria. Not for two centuries had there been such a powerful Muslim ruler, his territories stretching from North Africa to the Tigris. Now Saladin was ready to unleash his jihad against the Christians. With Outremer encircled, the Templar and Hospitaller Grand Masters set sail in 1184 together with Heraclius to seek help from the West. The kings of France and England and the Holy Roman Emperor received them with honour and discussed plans for a great crusade, but they gave pressing domestic reasons for not going to the East themselves, and instead they paid barely sufficient money to cover the cost of a few hundred knights for a year. While in London early in 1185 Heraclius consecrated the new Temple Church, the one that stands there to this day. But the Templar Grand Master did not get that far; he had fallen ill en route, and died at Verona.

At about the same time as Heraclius was consecrating the new Templar church in London, Gerard of Ridefort was elected the new Grand Master by the Templars in Jerusalem, his elevation coinciding with the culmination of the factional disputes within the kingdom. Baldwin IV died in March 1185 and was buried in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and his successor the child-king Baldwin V died in 1186, not yet nine years old. Raymond III of Tripoli, leader of the party seeking accommodation with Saladin, had been the boy's regent according to his father's will, which also stated that if the child died before the age of ten Raymond was to remain as regent until a new king was chosen through the arbitration of the Pope, the Holy Roman Emperor and the kings of France and England.

Instead the boy's mother, Sibylla, who was the sister of the leper king, claimed the throne for herself and her husband Guy of Lusignan. Backed by the party that supported an aggressive policy towards Saladinamong them Raynald of Chatillon, the lord of Oultrejourdain; Gerard of Ridefort, the Grand Master of the Templars; and Heraclius, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, who had also been the lover of Sibylla's motherSibylla and Guy were quickly crowned at Jerusalem. All the barons of Outremer accepted what in effect was a coup d'etat coup d'etat; all except Raymond of Tripoli, who felt he had been cheated of the kings.h.i.+p, and his close ally Balian of Ibelin.

The Springs of Cresson Going from factional rivalry to treason, Count Raymond of Tripoli entered into a secret treaty with Saladin. Not only did it apply to Tripoli itself but also to his wife's princ.i.p.ality of Galilee, even though it was part of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, which might soon be at war with the Muslims. Saladin also promised his support for Raymond's aim to overthrow Sibylla and Guy of Lusignan and make himself king. In April 1187 Guy responded by summoning his loyal barons and marching north to Galilee to reduce it to submission before the expected Muslim attack began. But Balian of Ibelin, fearing the consequences of civil war, persuaded Guy to let him lead a delegation to Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee and try to negotiate a reconciliation between Raymond and the king. The delegation would include the Grand Masters of the Hospitallers and the Templars, and Balian would meet them at the Templar castle of La Feve on 1 May.

Meanwhile Saladin had asked Raymond's permission to send a reconnaissance party of Mameluke slave troops through Galilee on that day, and though the timing was embarrasing Raymond was obliged to agree under the terms of the secret treaty, stipulating only that the Muslims should traverse his territory within the day and be gone by dark, and do no harm to any town or village. Raymond broadcast the news that the Muslim party would be pa.s.sing through and urged his people to stay indoors. But Balian had heard nothing of this when he arrived at Le Feve in the middle of the morning on 1 May expecting to join the Grand Masters there. Instead he found the castle empty, and after waiting in the silence for an hour or two, he set out again towards Tiberias, thinking the others had gone ahead, when suddenly a bleeding Templar knight galloped by shouting out news of a great disaster.

Raymond of Tripoli's message about the Muslim party had reached La Feve in the evening of the previous day, 30 April, where Gerard of Ridefort heard the news. At once he summoned the Templars from the surrounding neighbourhood and by nightfall ninety had joined him there. In the morning they rode north through Nazareth where forty secular knights joined the hunt for the enemy's scouting party. But as they pa.s.sed over the hill behind Nazareth what they saw was a large expedition of perhaps 7000 elite Mameluke hors.e.m.e.n watering their mounts at the Springs of Cresson in the valley below. Both the Templar marshal and the Hospitaller Grand Master advised retreat, but Gerard of Ridefort, the Templar Grand Master, insisted on attack. Charging furiously down the hillside, the 130 knights rode into the ma.s.s of the Muslim cavalry and were slaughtered almost to a man, only three Templars, Gerard among them, escaping with their lives.

That at any rate was the account given by an anonymous chronicler who obtained much of his information from the lost chronicle of Ernoul, who was a member of Balian's entourage. But neither Balian nor Ernoul were at the battle, and any account issuing from Balian's camp was likely to paint their factional opponent Gerard of Ridefort in the worst possible light. Another chronicle, the Itinerarium Regis Ricardi Itinerarium Regis Ricardi, apparently based on the lost journal of an English knight writing in about 1191, contradicts the story that Gerard rushed recklessly at the enemy; instead, and much more plausibly, it reports that the Templars were caught unaware and were the victims of a Muslim attack. Even so, Saladin's expedition kept to his agreement with Raymond of Tripoli, for his hors.e.m.e.n rode home long before nightfall, and they had not harmed a town or village in Galilee. But fixed to the lances of the Mameluke vanguard were the heads of the Templar knights.

The Horns of Hattin Shamed by this tragedy, which was much his doing, Raymond of Tripoli broke his treaty with Saladin and rode to Jerusalem where he made his peace with the king. The peril was far too great for Guy of Lusignan to do anything but welcome Raymond's renewed loyalty to the kingdom, for at that moment Saladin was gathering a great army just over the frontier. Guy called every able-bodied man to arms at Acre, emptying the cities and castles of fighting men; at 12,000 strong, including 1200 mounted knights, the army was all that Outremer had to give. Against this Saladin had drawn on the Turkish and Kurdish occupiers of Egypt, Iraq and Syria, along with their Mameluke slave troops, and some Arabs too, for his invasion force of 18,000 men, and on 1 July 1187 he crossed the Jordan at Senabra where it issues from the southern end of the freshwater lake known as the Sea of Galilee.