The Knights Templar at War, 1120–1312

Paul Hill

• Publisher: Pen & Sword Military
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781473874947
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'armée et de la marine

A look at the famed medieval Catholic order, with an emphasis on military history—includes numerous illustrations. There are many books about the Knights Templar, the medieval military order which played a key role in the crusades against the Muslims in the Holy Land, the Iberian peninsula, and elsewhere in Europe. What is seldom explored is the military context in which they operated. This book focuses on how this military order prosecuted its wars. The order was founded as a response to attacks on pilgrims in the Holy Land, and it was involved in countless battles and sieges, always at the forefront of crusading warfare. This absorbing study examines why they were such an important aspect of medieval warfare on the frontiers of Christendom for nearly two hundred years. The author shows how they were funded and supplied, how they organized their forces on campaign and on the battlefield, and the strategies and tactics they employed in the various theaters of warfare in which they fought. Templar leadership and command and control are examined, and sections cover their battles and campaigns, fortifications, and castles.

Part 1

Origins

Chapter 1

The Danger to Pilgrims

One of the greatest problems for the Franks during the early years of the Kingdom of Jerusalem was one of manpower. In fact, this was true for all the Frankish states in Outremer. Persuading fighting men to travel to the East was a hard enough task but asking them to remain there was more so. The priest Fulcher of Chartres, who was a first generation settler, recorded that only 300 knights and 300 foot soldiers remained in the Jerusalem area in 1100. Although this number would have been augmented by each knight’s entourage, it was still precious little for the defence of the crusader states. Outremer’s territories were therefore scattered and sparsely populated by Frankish folk. This left their settlements and more importantly the roads along the popular pilgrim routes vulnerable to attack. The flow of pilgrims was an important part of the young kingdom’s economic life. These routes were numerous and were particularly concentrated in an area of land stretching from the Sea of Galilee in the north through Samaria and Judaea to Hebron in the south (see Map 2).

The road between Ramla and Jerusalem was particularly treacherous with bandits hiding in caves ready to pounce on pilgrims coming up from Jaffa. Turks, Egyptians, roving Bedouin and even Ethiopians posed a threat to the Christian pilgrim, with the problem of security extending into the open country. Just a few years into the kingdom’s existence an Anglo-Saxon traveller named Saewulf visited Jerusalem in 1102–3. He not only left us one of the earliest surviving accounts of a pilgrimage in the newly founded kingdom, but also compiled a guidebook to the most important sites, not forgetting to remind his readers of the dreadful dangers faced by travellers. He travelled from Joppa to Jerusalem, a two-day journey along mountainous and rocky roads. The Saracens, he said – in this case Bedouins – lay hidden in the hollow places of the mountains and in caves ready to lay traps for the Christians, who carried much personal portable wealth. They waited through both day and night seeking to attack parties who were few in number or had become weak and weary. The resulting effects of these attacks were all too apparent:

Oh, what a number of human bodies, both in the road and by the side of it, lie all torn by wild beasts! . . . On that road not only the poor and the weak, but even the rich and the strong, are in danger. Many are cut off by the Saracens, but more by heat and thirst; many through scarcity of drink, but many more perish through drinking too much.

Map 2 – The main pilgrim sites during the era of the Crusades (after Barber)

Anyone who survived these attacks did not dare to split from their own party, not even to bury their dead. The road from Jerusalem to Jericho, taken by those wanting to visit the Jordan, was little different. A Russian abbot, Daniel of Kiev, visited the Holy Land between 1106 and 1107. He told his readers that here too the road was very troublesome and lacked water. Brigandage was rife in those high rocky mountains and ‘fearful gorges’. Daniel was widely travelled within the Holy Land. He told of the Muslims of Ascalon – in this case under the control of Fatimid Egyptians – killing travellers at the springs near Lydda not far from Jaffa. He further warned of the dangers for pilgrims travelling between Hebron in the south and Jerusalem. Between these two places were rocky mountains and deep forests from which the Muslims launched attacks.

When Abbot Daniel journeyed north to Galilee he passed near the town of Baisan, west of the Jordan. Seven rivers flowed from this town and it was ‘very difficult of access’. But the greatest danger came to anyone attempting to cross the fords he said, ‘for here live fierce pagan Saracens who attack travellers at the fords on these rivers’. Daniel was no less concerned about the many lions which inhabited the area too, mentioning them twice in the same passage. But to all of the Christian pilgrims the dangers of visiting the holy sites were largely of human origin.

William, Archbishop of Tyre (d. c.1186), whose great work A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea provides so much evidence for the twelfth-century events in the Holy Land, gives us a telling picture of the precarious world outside the main Frankish cities:

The cities which had come under our power were but few, and these were so situated in the midst of the enemy that the Christians could not pass from one to another, when necessity required, without great danger. The entire country surrounding their possessions was inhabited by infidel Saracens, who were most cruel enemies of our people. These were all the more dangerous because they were close at hand, for no pest can more effectively do harm than an enemy at one’s very doors.

Any Christian who walked along the highway without taking due precaution was liable to be killed by the Saracens, or seized and handed over as a slave to the enemy.

William goes on to tell us that the situation was not much better for those Franks inside the cities. Even here, there were too few defenders to prevent thieves and robbers climbing the walls and attacking the new settlers in their homes.

Then, at Easter 1119 occurred perhaps the most shocking of all the atrocities, an act which sent reverberations around Europe. A party of several hundred unarmed pilgrims were cut to pieces on their way from Jerusalem to the Jordan by a Muslim force from Ascalon, the sixty or so survivors being sold into slavery. They had been on a journey to the traditional baptism site of Jesus, along a road fraught with danger. King Baldwin II of Jerusalem (1118–31), when he heard of the slaughter, had sent out some armed knights, but their enemy had long departed. The pilgrims’ fate was recorded by Albert of Aachen, who says they had set out from the Holy Sepulchre ‘in joy and with a cheerful heart’ only to meet a tragic end. Although he never visited the Holy Land himself, he received his information from returning crusaders and his subsequent dissemination of the news captured the mood in both Outremer and in the West.

The atmosphere within the leadership of the crusader states at this time can only be imagined. Undermanned and always at peril in the open landscape, it must have been clearer than ever at Easter 1119 that something had to be done not only to protect the Christians of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, but to ensure the Frankish hold on the Outremer states was robust. Just a few months after the Easter massacre, in June of the same year the urgency was compounded by the annihilation at Sarmada of Roger of Salerno’s Antiochene army at the battle known as Ager Sanguinis (The Field of Blood). Ilghazi of Mardin, the Artuqid ruler of Aleppo, had out-generalled Roger (the regent of the crusader principality of Antioch) in a landscape he knew more about than Roger. Roger’s camp was surrounded at night and he was outflanked on the battlefield the next day amidst a storm of dust and confusion. The Patriarch of Antioch had advised Roger to call for the help of Baldwin II and Pons (the Count of Tripoli) in the lead-up to the battle, but Roger had decided – perhaps with good reason – that he did not have the time. Although Ilghazi was defeated by Baldwin II at the Battle of Hab in August that year, the totality of the defeat at Ager Sanguinis had shown the vulnerability of the undermanned Franks.

Chapter 2

The Poor Knights of Christ

The concept of protecting pilgrims was not entirely new. From the late tenth century in the West, pilgrims and other travellers were included in lists of groups who should not be attacked according to the Church. Moreover, in 1059 Pope Nicholas II (1059–61) had taken up the idea of protecting travellers’ persons and properties as an obligation of the papacy. Bands of fighting Christian knights were not a new concept, either. Confraternities of such men were known in the West. Wazo, the Bishop of Liège in the 1040s, had obtained oaths from a small group of warriors who pledged their support to him. Also, at the monastery of Grande-Sauve near Bordeaux ten noblemen had their swords consecrated in the monastery church, their role being to defend the monks and the property of the church as well as to protect the pilgrims who visited. It might be argued that the first Templars who were attached to the Holy Sepulchre were similar in nature. It may have been a confraternity which Hugh, Count of Champagne had joined in 1114 when Bishop Ivo of Chartres wrote to him chastising him for abandoning his wife and giving himself to the militiae Christi, or Knighthood of Christ, in order to partake of ‘that gospel knighthood’ (evangelicam militiam). Some have sought to see this event as an early foundation date for the Templars but Ivo does not mention them by name. It is perhaps more likely that the terminology of Ivo’s letter reflects the Count’s taking of crusader vows and crusader zeal in general, although in spirit at least, the move might reflect a growing religious feeling amongst many Frankish nobles of a desire to fight for the continuing defence of the holy places.

It is generally accepted that the Templars came into being as a reaction to the attacks against pilgrims on the roads to the holy places. The physical protection of such pilgrims might be seen as a complement to the care already afforded to them by the Hospitallers, who had been in a form of existence since 1080. The Hospitallers had been attached to the monastery of Santa Maria Latina in Jerusalem. The medical care and shelter they provided for pilgrims had already gained them royal favour and in 1113 they received papal recognition. In fact, what little is known of the early Templars would suggest a close relationship between the two orders in Jerusalem, with some Templars witnessing charters mainly concerning the Hospital. If the Templars had relied on this early association with the Hospital for their survival it would also be the case that as the Templars flourished, their militarism would in turn influence the Knights of the Hospital. The Frankish leadership in Outremer was keenly aware of the need for the pilgrims to be both accompanied and protected on their journeys but they clearly lacked the human resources to do it.

The sources which survive concerning the foundation of the Templars are not exactly contemporary with this early period. Nor do they say the same thing, with some seeking to emphasise one aspect of the foundation story over another. William of Tyre, Michael the Syrian, the Jacobite Patriarch of Antioch (d. 1199) and Walter Map, the Archdeacon of Oxford, each contributed to the foundation story, as did a history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in Old French usually attributed to Ernoul, a squire of Balian II of Ibelin (d. c. 1194). So too, more obliquely, does Simon the monk from the abbey of Saint-Bertin (who wrote between 1135 and 1137) and Orderic Vitalis, the Anglo-Norman monk of Saint-Évroul who wrote in the 1120s or 1130s.

William of Tyre presents an account which is perhaps the most widely quoted source for the foundation of the Templars, although his chronology is sometimes questioned. He criticised the Templars for taking advantage of the privileges they had subsequently been given and he seems to take a negative view of the order as it was at the time he wrote. In A History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea, under an entry for the year 1118, William recounts the circumstances of the foundation of the Order of the Temple. It was the very same year that both the new King of Jerusalem Baldwin II was consecrated and a new Patriarch of Jerusalem Warmund of Picquigny was appointed after the death of Arnulf of Chocques. Here is what he says:

In this same year, certain pious and God-fearing nobles of knightly rank, devoted to the Lord, professed the wish to live perpetually in poverty, chastity and obedience. In the hands of the patriarch they vowed themselves to the service of God as regular canons. Foremost and most distinguished among these men were Hugh de Payens [Hugh of Payns] and Godfrey de St. Omer. Since they had neither a church nor a fixed place of abode, the king granted them a temporary dwelling place in his own palace, on the north side by the Temple of the Lord [the name the Franks gave to the Dome of the Rock, which is to the north of al-Aqsa mosque]. Under certain definite conditions, the canons of the Temple of the Lord also gave them a square belonging to the canons near the same palace where the new order might exercise the duties of its religion.

The king and his nobles, as well as the Patriarch and the prelates of the churches, also provided from their own holdings certain benefices, the income of which was to provide these knights with food and clothing. Some of these gifts were for a limited time. Others in perpetuity. The main duty of this order – that which was enjoined upon them by the Patriarch and the other bishops for the remission of sins was ‘that as far as their strength permitted, they should keep the roads and highways safe from the menace of robbers and highwaymen, with especial regard for the protection of pilgrims’.

Baldwin II had given these knights residence in his own palace. This palace was at al-Aqsa mosque which the crusaders believed was on the site of the ancient and revered Solomon’s Temple. Moreover, the canons of the Temple of the Lord had given the knights an area around the palace. William of Tyre goes on to say that for the first nine years they wore secular garb and were only nine in number. Their given task – to protect pilgrims – may seem to be a particular challenge in respect of their apparently small numbers. This seeming lack of military resources has led people to speculate that the first Templars were in fact more interested in something other than merely protecting pilgrims. Templar excavations beneath the southern end of the Haram al-Sharif or Temple Mount in Jerusalem are postulated by many. Secretive searches for the Ark of the Covenant, or the Holy Grail are sometimes purported to be the goals of Hugh of Payns and his companions. The paucity of historical evidence exposes this period of time to extravagant theories designed to fill the gaps. It is certainly the case that the choice of the site as the first home of the order was no accident. They would take their very name from it. As to what the true motives were for these first few, we cannot really say. It may also be important that nine knights is not the sum total of the force in question. The knights had their entourages, other attendants and possibly were assisted when the time came by a number of stipendary turcopoles, native auxiliary troops who were nominally Christian. The numbers Hugh of Payns could bring to answer the Patriarch’s call will almost certainly have been more than nine, but the figure remained stubbornly attached to Templar mythology.

Hugh of Payns, First Templar Grand Master (c.1119–c.1136)

About 8 miles north of Troyes in France lies the village of Payens, or Payns, Hugh’s seat from at least 1113 or before. Hugh was closely associated with his overlord, Hugh the Count of Champagne whose charters he witnessed. The two men may have gone on crusade together in 1104 and returned again to the East in 1114. However, Hugh of Payns did not assume his role as Master of the Temple until around 1125, at about the same time as the Count of Champagne joined the order himself in a move which placed the Count under the leadership of his own vassal. The first Grand Master’s role in the early years between c.1119 and c.1125 remains unclear. He is recorded as ‘Master of the Temple’ in 1125 at Acre in a royal confirmation of a grant of privileges to the Venetians at Tyre. Hugh tirelessly travelled across Europe seeking support for his fledgling brotherhood. He came to England in 1128 to the court of Henry I (1100–35). This resulted in the Templars receiving much-needed wealth. Hugh was able to argue his case for his order’s acceptance at the Council of Troyes in January 1129 from a position of growing strength.

Michael the Syrian provides some further information which is thought to be less reliable than William of Tyre, but which raises the numbers of those early Templars by at least a factor of three. Michael, although ambiguous in his account of the founding of the order, says it was King Baldwin II who persuaded Hugh and thirty of his men to serve as guardians against robbers. Hugh had come to the East and served in the king’s army for three years, intending to become a monk afterwards. The brothers lived without spouses, possessions or bathing. Those who died and were found to have kept back possessions from the order were denied burial. Michael the Syrian’s Templars were kind to Christians, charitable to pilgrims, buried any who died and gave a tenth of the order’s goods to the poor. Moreover, as the order grew, it became more involved in fighting battles against the Turks and building castles, becoming rich whilst individual brothers remained poor.

Walter Map (who died around 1210) recounts a tale of a knight from Burgundy named Paganus. This knight, perhaps Hugh of Payns, heard of pilgrims being attacked at a horse pool near Jerusalem and decided to protect them. He could not do it alone so he was given lodgings by the canons of the Temple of the Lord and recruited from there amongst the pilgrim knights who visited the city. In an interesting observation as to an early modus operandi for the fledgling Templars Map says ‘he frequently sprang to their [the pilgrims’] aid from well-chosen hiding places and slew many of the enemy’. The knights led chaste and sober lives together. Map also states that some ‘warlike pilgrims’ in this early period joined the Templars ‘for only a time’, allowing room for an argument that in these early days numbers may have been in flux.

Ernoul’s History of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, written in the 1190s, gives us an account which links the early Templars with the prior of the Sepulchre. After the first crusaders had taken Jerusalem, a large number of knights went to the Holy Sepulchre and were joined by more from many countries. They gave their obedience to the prior but were frustrated that their martial skills were not being put to use. They chose themselves a master and approached King Baldwin II, who received them willingly. Summoning the Patriarch, senior clerics and barons, the king made a decision to support these knights with gifts of lands, castles and villages. Pressure was thus put on the prior of the Sepulchre to release the knights from obligations to him. The freed knights took with them only a part of the emblem of the habit of the Sepulchre, this being a one-barred cross instead of the Sepulchre’s two bars. Of the king’s three rich manors in Jerusalem, the knights lobbied for the one ‘in front of the Temple where Christ was offered, called Solomon’s Temple . . . As it is called the Temple of Solomon, and they lived there, they are called Templars’. It was here the Templars provided a banquet for the king on his coronation day (Easter, 14 April 1118). They went on to constr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Photographs, Illustrations, Maps and Tables
• List of Grand Masters of the Temple
• List of Military Campaigns and Milestones
• Introduction
• Part 1 – Origins
• Part 2 – Battles and Campaigns
• Part 3 – Military Organisation
• Part 4 – Castles and Fortifications
• Part 5 – After Acre
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Plate section