The Tragedy of the Templars (41 page)

From Sidon, Theobald Gaudin sailed to Cyprus with the Templar treasure. His intention was to bring back reinforcements. But Gaudin never returned. Instead, a message came from the Templars in Cyprus urging their brethren in Sidon to abandon their castle there, and on the night of 14 July they put to sea. Cyprus had long been a Frankish kingdom. A century earlier Richard the Lionheart had seized it from the Byzantines, and after a brief period in Templar hands, Richard sold it on again to Guy of Lusignan, the former king of Jerusalem, whose dynasty would continue to rule Cyprus for nearly three hundred years. Meanwhile the Templars and the Hospitallers had built castles in Cyprus, and now, as the Franks were being driven from the coast of Outremer, the island became a refuge for both military orders.

In the Holy Land, after the fall of Acre and Sidon, only Tortosa and Chastel Pelerin remained in Christian hands. Both were Templar strongholds, but as the Mamelukes gathered for the kill, the knights slipped away to Cyprus from Tortosa on 3 August 1291 and from Chastel Pelerin eleven days later. ‘This time', wrote the Templar of Tyre, ‘everything was lost, so that the Christians no longer held a palm of land in Syria.'
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As the Templars looked back along the receding mainland, the devastation was already beginning. For some months after the fall of Tortosa in 1291, Mameluke troops laid waste to the coastal plain. As usual, the Muslims saw this as an act of sanctification, Abu al-Feda writing, ‘Thus the whole of Syria and the coastal areas were purified of the Franks.'
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Orchards were cut down and irrigation systems wrecked, while native Christians fled into the Jebel al-Sariya. The only castles left standing were those far back from the sea, and Margat, high up on its coastal mountain, all occupied by the Muslims. Contemptuous of the lives and welfare of the local people, anything that might be of value to the Franks should they ever attempt another landing was destroyed.

Even four centuries after the Franks were driven from this coast, the devastation wrought by the Mamelukes was still apparent. In 1697 the English traveller Henry Maundrell recorded the ‘many ruins of castles and houses, which testify that this country, however it be neglected at present, was once in the hands of a people that knew how to value it, and thought it worth the defending'.
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P
OWERFULLY PROTECTED
by its walls and supplied by sea, Acre had seemed invincible to attack, and the news of its fall after only forty-four days came as a terrible shock. The loss of the city also marked the end of a nation that had survived for almost two hundred years. The massive numbers and resources of the Turkish aggressors were not fully comprehended; instead the fault was taken to lie within, and along with feelings of grief and anger there was a sense of failure. The sins of the inhabitants of Outremer were blamed, as was the failure of the leaders of European Christendom to provide ample and timely aid, and the Italian merchant states which had traded with Mameluke Egypt, and the military orders, Templars and Hospitallers alike. No one was exempt
.

But it was the Templars who felt the loss most intensely. The defence of the Holy Land and the protection of pilgrims were their raison d'être. For the Hospitallers the ethos of their charitable work took precedence; they had never abandoned their original function of caring for the sick. But the Templars were founded as a military knighthood, their role to patrol the pilgrimage routes, to fight against the infidel and to preserve the Christian East, and in that cause they had serviced crusades and directed the finances of popes and kings. Now cast out from the Holy Land, the Templars found themselves in limbo
.

T
O MANY THE FALL OF ACRE
did not seem the decisive end of things, more an interlude, and there were expectations that the mainland would be regained. Certainly in the mind of Jacques de Molay, a man approaching fifty when he became the Templars' new Grand Master in 1292, the dream of recovering the Holy Land was not yet over. He had spent thirty years in the order, much of it in Outremer, and his vision for the Templars was that they should take the lead in a new crusade. The Templars had established their headquarters in Cyprus, and later they recovered the tiny island of Ruad (Arwad) just 2 miles off the coast of Syria opposite Tortosa, and from these places Jacques de Molay envisioned that the counter-attack against the Mamelukes would begin.

Meanwhile on the mainland there were numerous local insurrections against Mameluke rule, which was brutal and repressive. Already in 1291, while Sultan al-Ashraf Khalil was busy fighting the Franks and their allies at Acre and elsewhere along the coast, Shia Muslims living in the northern part of the Bekaa valley and in the mountains north-east of Beirut had joined with Druze in an uprising against the Sunni Mamelukes. On his return from Acre, al-Ashraf Khalil had the Sunni caliph, who after the fall of Baghdad was made a Mameluke puppet in Cairo, declare jihad against dissenting Muslims, who outnumbered Sunnis in Palestine and Syria, with the aim of breaking their resistance to Mameluke domination; they were finally crushed in 1308.

In 1293 al-Ashraf Khalil built a fleet with the intention of invading Cyprus, but he was murdered that December by another Mameluke, touching off a battle for power which after further murders, crucifixions and chopping off of hands saw al-Nasr Mohammed eventually emerge as sultan. He built himself a splendid mosque–madrasa–mausoleum in Cairo and for its entrance used the Gothic portal to the Church of St Andrew brought from Acre, an advertisement of Islam's victory over Christianity. Also during al-Nasr's reign a new emphasis was placed on Jerusalem; building on the story of the Night Journey initiated by the Umayyads, continued by the Fatimids and deployed by Saladin's jihad, the sanctity of Jerusalem was extolled, Muslims were encouraged to make pilgrimage there and were told that the Prophet Mohammed had said that a prayer at the Aqsa mosque was worth a thousand times more than one in any other, apart from at Mecca or Medina.

Under regulations imposed by al-Nasr in 1301 Christians and Jews throughout Palestine, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt were again oppressed by the old laws which reduced them to the status of
dhimmis;
among other things they were forbidden to ride horses or mules and were forced to wear distinctive clothing; al-Nasr also abolished a national Coptic feast and closed many Coptic churches in Egypt. In 1321, still during al-Nasr's long reign, fanatical Muslims looted and destroyed all the principal churches of Egypt and Christians suffered wholesale massacre, while Copts were expelled from official positions and subjected to a range of indignities. Each of these events was followed by conversions to Islam. Even so, Copts continued to outnumber Muslims in much of Egypt until a further great wave of persecution in 1354.

In Syria and Lebanon things were hardly less difficult for the Maronites. They had been condemned by the Church as heretics in the seventh century not for their belief in the single nature of Christ (Monophysitism), but rather for their belief in the single will of Christ (Monothelitism), but in 1182 the Franks helped bring them into communion with the Catholic Church at Rome. Over fifty thousand Maronites were said to have died fighting alongside the Franks during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries to defend Outremer against the Muslims. When the Franks left, some Maronites went with them to Cyprus, where their communities continue to thrive, while those who remained never surrendered their connection with Rome, despite persecution by the Mameluke jihad; instead they escaped into the mountains of northern Lebanon, which remain a Christian stronghold to this day.

Eager to take the initiative in recovering the Holy Land, in 1294 Jacques de Molay travelled from Cyprus to the West to promote the Templars as the vanguard of a new crusade. He received encouragement from Pope Boniface VIII in Rome and King Edward I in London, and practical assistance too, with both pope and king making it easier for the Templars to raise new funds in Europe in order to rebuild their forces after their terrible recent losses at Acre and elsewhere in Outremer. Foodstuffs and treasure were shipped from European ports to the Templars in Cyprus, and galleys were bought from Venice, part of the war fleet that the Templars would need to lead the attacks against the Syrian and Egyptian coasts.

The best hope for a new crusade lay with the Mongols. Since their defeat at the hands of the Mamelukes in 1260 the Mongols had shown an interest in forming alliances with the Christians in the West and with the Byzantine Empire. Maria Paleologina, daughter of the Byzantine emperor Michael VIII Paleologus, who had recovered Constantinople from the Latins, was sent East in the 1260s to marry the son of the Mongol khan and to proselytise for Christianity. And when two Mongol emissaries converted to Christianity at the Council of Lyon in 1274, hopes were raised further that the Mongols might convert wholesale. Twice, in 1281 and 1299, the Mongols advanced into northern Syria; and when news came from the West in 1300 of a new crusade, the Mongols offered the Christians the Holy Land if they would help them defeat the Mamelukes.

A wave of excited anticipation swept across Europe in 1300 at the prospect of this new expedition to the East. The mood was reminiscent of those days when Pope Urban II had preached the First Crusade. Being the 1,300th anniversary of the birth of Christ, the pope declared this to be a jubilee year, promising full remission of sins to those who visited the Basilica of St Peter in Rome. Two hundred thousand pilgrims answered his call and were welcomed by a triumphant Pope Boniface sitting on the throne of Constantine the Great and holding the symbols of temporal dominion, the sword, the sceptre and the crown, and calling to the crowd, ‘I am Caesar!' In the familiar battle between the Church and the secular claims of kings, no one could be left in doubt that the pope was proclaiming the universal jurisdiction of the Church over the monarchs of the West and celebrating the victory yet to come over the infidels in the East.

In the summer of 1300 the Templars, together with the Hospitallers and the king of Cyprus, launched a series of probing attacks against Alexandria and Rosetta, and at Acre, Tortosa and Maraclea. These were preliminaries to a planned joint operation with the Armenians in Cilicia and the Mongols, and they were followed up in November by a combined Templar, Hospitaller and Lusignan force from Cyprus, about six hundred knights in all, which was landed on the island of Ruad. From there they made raids against Tortosa, waiting for the Mongols to appear.

But the Mongols failed to arrive. A year later, writing from Cyprus, Jacques de Molay gave an outline of the situation to King James II of Aragon.

This time, towards the end of 1301, the Templars took it upon themselves to establish a considerable force on the island and rebuild its defences. In preparation for a serious assault on the Syrian mainland, they garrisoned Ruad with 120 knights, 500 archers and 400 workers and servants, almost half the number of Templar knights and auxiliaries as would normally have defended the entire kingdom of Jerusalem in the twelfth century. Yet still the Mongols failed to arrive, but in April 1302 the Mongol Khan wrote to Pope Boniface saying they were coming soon. ‘We are continuing preparations. [. . .] You too should prepare your troops. [. . .] If the heavens hear our prayers our entire effort will be directed to this great enterprise. [. . .] You, too, should pray to the heavens and prepare your troops.'
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Instead, later that year, while waiting for the Mongols, the Templars found themselves isolated on their tiny island, against which the Mamelukes sent a fleet of sixteen ships. A prolonged siege and repeated attacks finally wore down the starving Templars, who surrendered on condition of safe conduct, a promise that was betrayed, the Templars being slaughtered or sold into slavery.

Despite this setback in the East, Pope Boniface VIII was no less adamant about his claims of papal supremacy in the West, which he reinforced with a bull in 1303 called
Unam Sanctam
. This asserted that there was only one holy (
unam sanctam
) Catholic Church, and that to attain salvation it was necessary to submit to the pope in all matters both spiritual and material. The bull was in response to various trespasses against the authority of the Church that had been committed by Philip IV of France, often known as Philip the Fair for his golden locks if nothing else, who inherited a massive debt when he became king in 1285 and was forever in need of money to finance the expansion of his kingdom and make war against Flanders and England, and who therefore imposed taxes on the clergy. To Philip this was no different to raising taxes for a crusade, for he ruled with a divine mission; in 1297 he had obtained a sainthood for his grandfather, the crusading Louis IX, and he was convinced that France was the chosen kingdom of God and his dynasty, the Capets, its chosen instrument. In effect, the conflict was between the universalist claims of the Church and the new phenomenon of nationalism as asserted by the king of France, both of which claimed to have God on their side. The pope might be the Vicar of God, but Philip, according to his admirers, was ‘the most Christian king' and if not wholly divine then at least ‘semi-divine'.
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