Birth of the Crusader States

Ever since the death of the Prophet Mohammed in 632AD, the forces of Islam had pursued an aggressive policy of expansion, compelling the peoples of conquered lands to learn Arabic and convert to the new faith. By 669 AD the Arab armies had pushed as far east as Afghanistan, north to Constantinople and west into Egypt, as well as harrying the islands of the Eastern Mediterranean. In 682 AD they overran the North African coast, invading the Visigoth kingdom of Spain in 711 AD and crossing the Pyrenees into southern France, capturing the city of Narbonne in 720 AD. The Arab incursion into Western Europe was finally halted when a huge Moorish army was defeated at the Battle of Tours in northern France in 732AD, but for centuries to come the Christian lands that bordered the Mediterranean Sea would suffer harassment by Arab raiders and armies of conquest, even Rome suffering assault in 846AD. Chief among their victims was the crumbling Byzantine Empire, home of the Eastern Church, which would suffer a slow and lingering death over the next seven centuries as it fought a desperate rear-guard action against the rising tide of Islam.

This war would enter its final phase in the 11^th Century with the appearance on their eastern borders of the Seljuk Turks. Relatives of the infamous Huns, the Seljuks were nomadic horsemen from the steppes of Asia who had converted to Islam and thrown their weight into the war against the Christian Byzantines. Unable to resist this new wave of invaders, the Byzantines had lost Anatolia and with it their major source of food, men and wealth. Facing annihilation, they turned to their Christian cousins in the west.

In the Spring of 1095AD, emissaries from the Byzantine Emperor, Alexius Comnenus, appeared before the Pope in Rome, describing the suffering of Christians at the hands of their Islamic conquerors. Jerusalem was in the hands of the infidel and pilgrims suffered heavy tolls and violence on their journeys to the Holy places. In addition, should Constantinople fall to the Turks, the gateway to Europe would stand open and unguarded. Something must be done.

In November of that year, Pope Urban II called together over 300 bishops and nobles from all over Europe to a Church Council at Clermont in France. On a platform outside the city’s eastern gate, he exhorted the Christians of the west to save Byzantium and liberate the Holy City from the hands of the infidels, returning it’s sovereignty to those of the True Faith. Thus was the first crusade proclaimed – and Europe responded to the call.

The First wave of would-be liberators, forming what became known as the ‘Peasant’s Crusade’, was doomed to failure. Refusing to wait for a more organised force and led by an unlikely pair – Peter the Hermit and Walter the Penniless, a French knight – this rabble of thousands, ill-prepared and ill-equipped, would ravage it’s way across eastern Europe, committing atrocities along the way, before finally being annihilated by the Turks in Anatolia on 21^st October 1096. Two months later, the first contingents of a real crusading army began to arrive at Constantinople.

First to arrive was Hugh de Vernandois, cousin of the King of France, with a small contingent of knights and men-at-arms, while on 23^rd December a major force arrived led by Godfrey de Bouillon, Duke of Lower Lorraine, along with his brothers Eustace, Count of Boulogne, and Baldwin of Boulogne and their cousin, Baldwin of Le Bourg. Descended from the legendary Emperor Charlemagne, these four were exemplars of the Frankish warrior class and typical of those elements of the European nobility who would form the backbone of the crusading armies for the next three centuries. Next came the Normans of southern Italy under Bohemund of Otranto, along with his dashing young nephew Tancred, and following these a group of powerful nobles from northern realms; Robert II, Count of Flanders; Robert, Duke of Normandy, brother to the English King; Stephen, Count of Blois, son-in-law of William the Conqueror; and the largest contingent of all, the Provencals and Burgundians under Count Raymond of Toulouse. All together, over 30,000 fighting men are estimated to have mustered for the march on Jerusalem.

Crossing the Bosphorus in April 1097, the crusaders met the army of the Turkish Sultan, Kilij Arslan, outside their capital at Nicaea. Lured into a false sense of security by his easy defeat of the earlier force, the Sultan attacked the crusader army, only to be met by a weapon as yet unknown to him – European heavy cavalry. Anna Comnena, daughter of Emperor Alexius, would later write to her father that the ‘irresistible first shock’ of a charge of Frankish knights ‘would make a hole in the walls of Babylon’.

Having captured the Seljuk capital, the crusaders moved on towards Syria, successfully fighting three more battles against the Turks on their harrowing march through Anatolia. Unprepared for the heat and terrain, the two columns of Europeans would face starvation, exhaustion and thirst before reaching the safety of the Christian kingdom of Armenian Cilicia, so many horses and pack mules having been eaten that two thirds of the knights travelled on foot. Here they were treated as honoured guests, resting for a time at the capital, Marash, before pushing on through the hills towards the river Orontes and their first real prize.

After the capture of Nicaea, Stephen of Blois had written optimistically to his wife that, barring major problems, they hoped to make it to Jerusalem within five weeks. Six months later, on October 21^st 1097, the crusader army crossed the Orontes and came before the mighty walls of the city of Antioch. Almost three miles long and a mile deep, built half on the plain and half on the slopes of Mount Silpius, Antioch was a formidable sight. It’s massive walls, built by the Romans under the Emperor Justinian and reinforced by the Byzantines a century before, were guarded by four hundred towers and over-watched by a huge citadel that perched a thousand feet above the plain. Although under Turkish control, the city had been a Byzantine possession until only twelve years before and so had a largely Christian population. This would prove to be its’ weakness.

The siege dragged on for nine-months, the crusaders facing such privation that some had resorted to eating dead Turks and so many had died of starvation and disease that the bodies could not all be buried. The Christian army was on the point of collapse. Desertion was becoming a problem and in February 1098 the Byzantine contingent abandoned the siege. In addition, news reached the crusaders that a large relieving force was on it’s way under Kerbogha of Mosul. Now Bohemund of Otranto made his play. He could deliver the city into the crusaders’ hands, but wanted assurances from the other princes that Antioch would be his. Despite the objections of Raymond of Toulouse, the deal was done.

Bohemund was an experienced campaigner in the wars of southern Italy – he had been besieging the city of Amalfi when he took the cross – and knew the value of guile. It was obvious the city could not be stormed, the crusaders at this point lacking sufficient knowledge of siege-craft to reduce such walls as these, so Bohemund had worked to acquire a traitor instead. Raising the siege, the Christian army withdrew from the walls of the city, returning under cover of darkness to find the gates standing open. Antioch was taken.

By now it was the height of the eastern summer and the commanders decided that conditions were too harsh to move against Jerusalem. They would wait for cooler weather, All Saints’ Day (November 1^st) being decided on as their departure date.

During this lull in the action, Baldwin of Boulogne established the first Latin State – the County of Edessa – on the far side of the river Euphrates, while the forces remaining at Antioch suffered plague and internal friction, particularly between the Normans and Provencals.

It was 13^th January 1099 before the crusaders finally resumed their march, striking camp before the walls of Jerusalem on 7^th June. The Egyptian governor of the city, Iftikhar, had advanced warning of their approach and had amassed great stores of food and water within the city, while ensuring that the wells outside were blocked or poisoned. No wood could be found for siege engines and food was scarce and while the walls of Jerusalem could not be compared to those of Antioch, the defences were still considerable, once more the product of Roman engineering. In addition, the governor had learned the lesson of Antioch and expelled all Christians from the city, allowing only Jews and Muslims to remain. There would be no treachery from within.

Under these conditions, and aware that reinforcements had been summoned from Egypt, the crusaders knew they could not afford a protracted siege. Only a third of the fighting men who had mustered at Constantinople had made it this far – about 12,000 infantry and 1,300 knights – leaving the commanders no option but to take Jerusalem by storm.

Luckily, ships from England and two Genoese galleys had arrived at the port of Jaffa – which the Muslims had abandoned – with cargoes of food, nails, nuts and bolts. Tancred and Robert of Flanders went as far as Samaria to find suitable wood, returning with tree trunks strapped to camels’ backs, allowing the carpenters from the Genoese galleys to construct towers, catapults and scaling ladders. On the night of 13^th July the assault began.

The siege tower of Raymond of Toulouse, commander of the crusader army, was the first to reach the walls, but he found himself opposed by Iftikhar himself and was repulsed. But next morning Godfrey of Bouillon’s tower was brought against the northern wall and by midday a bridge had been made to the ramparts of the city. From here Godfrey and his brother Eustace personally directed the assault, Flemish, Lotharingian and Norman contingents fighting their way into the city, opening the gates from within. From that moment, the city’s fate was sealed as the crusaders set about butchering the 40,000 inhabitants, man, woman and child. The only Muslims to escape with their lives were Iftikhar and his bodyguard, escorted from the city by Raymond of Toulouse after surrendering, on condition that they could take the treasury with them. Raymond’s chaplain, Raymond of Aguilers, described how he walked up to his ankles in blood and gore on Temple Mount, piles of heads, hands and feet strewn through every street and court.

On July 17^th 1099, the assembled mass of the crusader army processed through the deserted streets of Jerusalem to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, celebrating Mass and giving thanks to God for their victory on the site where Christ had risen from the dead.

The Poor Brothers

From the very beginning, the Crusader States were vulnerable. Having fulfilled their vows, most of the crusaders headed home after the capture of Jerusalem and the defeat of the Egyptian relief force, leaving an army of only 300 knights and 1000 infantry to protect the Holy City. Refusing the title of king in the lands where Christ had walked, Godfrey of Bouillon was elected the first overlord of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, taking the title Defender of the Holy Sepulchre. Godfrey and his successors worked tirelessly to consolidate their gains, capturing the coastal cities that would be the kingdom’s lifeline and securing its southern approaches.

In 1104 Hugh, Count of Champagne, a powerful noble from northern France, visited the Holy Land, accompanied in his retinue by one of his vassals, a knight called Hugh de Payn. It is not known whether he travelled back to France with his liege-lord in 1108, returning once more to Jerusalem with his master in 1114, or whether he remained there from the start, but over the next few years Hugh de Payn and a small group of like-minded knights clearly recognised a dire need. Although the kingdom seemed secure, the nature of the terrain and native inhabitants meant that travel was never very safe. On Holy week 1119, a few months before the Order’s official foundation, a party of 700 pilgrims travelling from Jerusalem to the River Jordan were ambushed by Saracens; 300 were killed and 60 taken as slaves. Saracen raiders had reached to the very walls of the Holy City and later in the year news reached the kingdom that in the northern Principality of Antioch, the Regent for the young Bohemund II had been ambushed and his forces annihilated at a place that became known as the ‘Field of Blood’.

By now Godfrey’s successor, his brother Baldwin of Boulogne (Baldwin I) had been succeeded in turn by their cousin, Baldwin of Le Bourg, who reigned as King Baldwin II. It was to this king and the Patriarch of Jerusalem, Warmund of Picquigny, that Hugh de Payn and Godfrey de Saint Omer proposed the formation of a community of knights who would follow the Rule of a religious house, but devote themselves to the protection of pilgrims. No doubt grateful for any armed assistance, the King and Patriarch accepted. On Christmas Day 1119, Hugh de Payn, Godfrey de Saint Omer, Archambaud de Saint-Aignan, Payen de Montdidier, Geoffrey Bissot and a knight called Rossal, or Roland, together with three whose names are lost, took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, swearing to hold to the Rule of St Augustine and calling themselves ‘The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Jesus Christ’. At this point they wore no distinct habit, keeping to the clothes of their secular profession.

To provide for the knights financial needs, the King and Patriarch awarded them a number of benefices and in addition, Baldwin gave them accommodation in the palace he had built from the al-Aqsa mosque, on the southern edge of Temple Mount. Known by the crusaders as the Temple of Solomon, it was this location that led to the Order being known successively as ‘The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Jesus Christ and the Temple of Solomon’, ‘The Knights of the Temple of Solomon’, ‘The Knights of The Temple’, ‘The Templars’ or simply ‘The Temple’.

The following year, in January 1120, a gathering of lay and spiritual leaders at the Palestinian city of Nablus welcomed the formation of this new brotherhood and later in the year, the powerful noble of central France, Faulk of Anjou, arrived on pilgrimage and enrolled as an associate of the Poor Fellow-Soldiers. On his return home he would endow the brothers with a regular income. The growth of membership among the rank-and-file of the fledgling order is not known but in 1125, the Master’s temporal overlord, Hugh of Champagne, arrived once more in Jerusalem. Having divorced his unfaithful wife and disowned the child of that union, the Count of Champagne had given over his title to his nephew, renounced his worldly wealth and now took vows as a Fellow-Soldier of Jesus Christ. Among those others who had benefited from Hugh’s pious charity was a young Burgundian nobleman who had taken holy vows. Ten years earlier, the Count of Champagne had granted the monk a tract of wild, forested land. His name was Bernard, and the lands given by Count Hugh would be known as Clairvaux.

In 1127 Hugh de Payn was sent by King Baldwin II on a diplomatic mission to Europe. Having three daughters but no son, the king needed to find a powerful husband for his eldest, Melisende, in order to keep safe the kingdom. He had chosen Faulk of Anjou and sent the Templar Master with a contingent of knights to conduct the negotiations and to generate support for an assault on Damascus. Hugh de Payn had his own reasons for travelling to Europe; he needed recruits and funds but more importantly, sought papal support and approval for his Order. Although chroniclers mention only the nine founders at this point, the fact the Master was chosen for this mission and could afford a knightly entourage suggests that the Order had achieved some standing in Outremer, now he needed recognition in the west.

Securing the marriage of Faulk and Melisende, Hugh then travelled through France, England, Scotland and Flanders, picking up donations ranging from horses and armour to tracts of land and financial benefices. Henry I of England responded with ‘great treasures, consisting of gold and silver’ and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle reports (with some exaggeration) that the Master gathered more recruits than Pope Urban II had for the First Crusade, although many of these were not recruits to the Order, but forces enrolled for the forthcoming Damascene campaign.

But having men and means at his disposal, as well as the fervent backing of kings and nobles, was not enough. To fully validate his Order’s existence Hugh needed the support of the Church – and this was far from guaranteed. Despite the arguments of St Augustine and others, many believed that violence in all forms was evil and could not countenance a religious order under arms. But the Master had already paved the way, having earlier written from Jerusalem, seeking the support of the most influential theologian of his age and a man with intimate connections to the Knights of the Temple – Bernard of Clairvaux.

Although a cloistered monk, Bernard was aware of the founding of the Order. When his friend and patron, Hugh of Champagne, joined in 1125, Bernard wrote to congratulate him, though lamenting the fact that he had not become a monk at Clairvaux. In addition, Bernard’s younger uncle, Andrew de Montbard, was also a brother, so when Hugh de Payn appeared before the Church Council at Troyes in January 1128, he could not have had a more powerful ally.

Accompanied by five of the original members, Hugh recounted the founding of their order and presented their Rule of Life. After much debate, and convincing argument by Abbot Bernard, the Order was approved; their regulation scrutinised and revised by the Church Fathers into the 73 clauses of The Primitive Rule. The endorsement was later confirmed by Pope Honorius II and further enhanced by Bernard when, on returning to Clairvaux, he wrote the treatise De laude novae militae ‘In Praise of the New Knighthood’ to support the decision of the Council and promote the mission of The Temple. Although there were still dissenters, the future of the Order seemed assured.

The Rise of The Temple

Almost immediately, the Order began its astronomical rise to power. Although the Master returned to Palestine directly after the Council of Troyes, several of his key lieutenants remained in Europe, gathering recruits, accepting donations and establishing the administrative hierarchy of the Order in the west. The great and the good granted extensive benefices – money, estates, the rights to operate mills and hold markets – while those of more modest means offered what they could – a few denier, a horse, a sword or shirt of mail, even the rents from a small parcel of land.

Throughout the 1130’s the Templar Order grew in wealth and influence. After Baldwin II’s abortive campaign against Damascus, the Templars were given their first specific responsibility in the defence of Outremer, guarding the northern frontier of the Principality of Antioch against the Turks. Through this they would acquire the castles of Gaston, Darbsaq and la Roche de Roussel in the Amanus March, while also building their own defences in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. A castle, road-station and chapel were constructed between Jerusalem and Jericho at Cisterna Rubea; a tower closer to Jericho at Bait Jubr at-Tahtani; a castle and priory on the summit of Mount Quarantene where Jesus had fasted for forty days and was tempted by Satan; and a castle near the place on the Jordan River where Christ was baptised.

By the time of the first Master’s death in 1136, the Order in Europe was firmly established as one of the most powerful organisations of the age. Castles had been occupied and preceptories established across the west. The Temple of London had been founded shortly after the death of Henry I of England (1135) to act as the Order’s headquarters for it’s extensive holdings in the kingdom. It had already been granted great estates by generous donors, particularly in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire, in addition to which, many of those knights who joined the Order across Europe, including the founders, were of the middle and upper nobility and brought their possessions with them. When Hugh de Bourbouton joined in 1139 he brought sufficient lands to found the preceptory of Richerenches in Provence, which became a major centre of horse breeding for the Order and still stands as one of the best preserved Templar houses.

From the earliest days, particular support had come from the Iberian Peninsula. Countess Teresa of Portugal had been one of the first to donate lands, promising the Order the castle of Soure, while Raymond Berenguer IV, Count of Barcelona, had pledged himself and a group of his vassals to serve The Temple for a year. Most generous of all, in 1134 Alfonso I of Aragon bequeathed a third of his kingdom to the Order which, while it was impractical to accept in full, resulted in The Temple acquiring half-a-dozen castles, one tenth of royal revenues, exemption from certain taxes and one fifth of all lands conquered from the Moors. And here we have the reason for the enthusiasm of the Iberian nobility.

After crossing the Straits of Gibraltar in 711AD, the Moors had quickly overrun Iberia, eventually establishing the city of Cordoba as the seat of a new Caliphate and major centre of Muslim power in 929AD. In the mountainous north of the country, however, a small group of quarrelsome and warlike Christian kingdoms had survived – Aragon, Castile, Navarre and Leon – and these would fight a centuries-long war to drive the invaders back across the sea.

Despite their initial reluctance, donations such as those by the Aragonese king would draw The Temple inexorably into the Reconquista, opening a second front in the war against Islam. Although the Order would always remain true to its mission in Outremer, the kingdoms of Iberia would forever remain as centres of Templar power and influence, to the point that when Pedro II of Aragon was killed in battle in 1213, his five year old son, Jaime I, was put into the Templar’s care at the pope’s insistence.

The period of the Order’s infancy ended on Christmas Eve 1144AD, when the army of the Muslim governor of Mosul, Imad ad-Din Zengi, captured the city of Edessa and brought to an end the oldest of the Crusader States. In response to the disaster, Pope Eugenius III called for a new crusade, appealing to the French King, Louis VII, to take the cross in defence of the Holy Land. It would take almost three years to raise sufficient support, Bernard of Clairvaux once more being drafted in to sway the masses, eventually convincing Conrad III of the Germans to join the expedition. The pope himself crossed the Alps in January 1147 to present Louis with a royal standard and pilgrim’s staff before attending a Templar chapter at their new enclave just north of Paris on 27^th April.

It was a grand and solemn occasion that cemented forever the importance of The Temple. The third Master, Everard de Barres, had assembled 130 knights from France, Spain and Portugal, together with an equal number of sergeants and squires, to appear before the pope, King Louis and four other bishops. The sight of the bearded monks, clad in the white habits they had worn since before the Council of Troyes in imitation of the Canons of the Holy Sepulchre, impressed the chroniclers of the time and those gathered as witness. It was almost certainly here that Pope Eugenius III granted the Templars the right to wear a scarlet cross over their hearts, to serve as a spiritual shield so that ‘they would never turn away in the face of the infidels’.

Although the Second Crusade would achieve nothing of worth, being characterised by dissention and disaster among the rival factions of the crusader army, it can be seen as the Order’s coming of age, for without the discipline of the Templars, the army would never have reached the Holy Land.

Once again following the overland route through Anatolia, the French contingent had been weakened by long marches through the bitter winter weather and the constant harassment of Turkish horse-archers. Moving through the narrow passes of the Cadmus Mountains, the column could not deploy its heavy cavalry and came under intensified attacks until it was on the point of collapse. Louis then turned to Everard de Barres and his Templars for help. Dividing the column into smaller units, each one sworn to obey the Templar brother that led them, the Master guided the army through the mountains, fighting a rearguard action all the way, to the safety of the Byzantine port of Attalia and from there to Palestine. One of the most capable Masters of the Order, Everard de Barres would resign his post in 1152 to become a Cistercian monk at the abbey of Clairvaux.

The following year would see the first ‘disaster’ to befall the Order, and the first case of a chronicler peddling anti-Templar propaganda – a trend which would continue for the next hundred and fifty years.

In this case, it was during the campaign to secure the weak southern frontier of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. This had always been the most vulnerable point in the defences of the crusader states, the coast road out of Egypt being guarded by the mighty fortress of Ascalon, which was still under the control of the Fatimid caliph in Cairo. Supplied over land across the Sinai and by sea from Alexandria, the fortress provided a base for raids against the Christian states and allowed free passage between Egypt and the east. Only by taking this city could Jerusalem be safe.

Its position on the coast meant that Ascalon could not be starved into submission and any attempt to besiege the city would simply lead to reinforcements being sent from Egypt. In order to neutralise its advantage, King Faulk had begun to encircle the fortress with four castles at Ibelin, Blachegarde and Bethgibelin (given to the Hospitallers), the process being completed in 1150 with the construction of the most southerly fortress at Gaza. This was given over to the Templars, to protect the approaches from the south, the brothers successfully repelling an attempt by the Egyptians to take it.

In 1153, with the southern frontier now secure, Faulk’s successor, Baldwin III, could proceed to take Ascalon itself. In January of that year the king’s army massed before the walls of the city, supported by both the Hospitallers and Templars, the Order being led by the newly elected fourth Master, Bernard de Tremelay.

The city held out for several months while the Christian army constructed the engines of war necessary to reduce the walls, one being a massive tower that reached higher than the city’s battlements. The tower was in the Templar sector of the besieging army and would serve the crusaders in an unexpected way when, on the night of 15^th August, a group of defenders made a sortie against the tower and set it alight. Once it was fully ablaze, however, the wind changed direction, blowing the flames against the walls. The masonry cracked and finally crumbled, a section of wall collapsing in the intense heat of the fire.

Seizing the moment, the Master led forty Templars in a charge through the breach and into the city, taking the defenders by surprise. They quickly recovered from the shock however, and when the main force failed to follow, the knights were trapped and killed, their headless bodies hung from the city walls next morning. Despite this loss, Ascalon fell four days later.

The chronicler William of Tyre would later accuse the Order of greed in their actions at Ascalon, reporting that Bernard de Tremelay instructed his knights to prevent anyone from joining their assault in order to secure the lion’s share of any plunder. Recent analysis has shown that William’s account was biased, based on defensive reports given by the secular commanders after the event, having been criticised for ‘failing to follow the Templars into the breach’.

Over the next twenty years the Order would reach the heights of its power – and decide once and for all to keep its own counsel in military matters. After being led into several disastrous defeats by the kings and princes of the Latin states, against the advice of the officers of the Temple, the Order resolved to decide for itself what was best for the defence of the Holy Land, a stance that would often lead to entanglement in the politics of the region.

The only military advance in Outremer during this period was against the Armenians of Cilicia, a favour to the Byzantine Emperor, by which the Order acquired the port of Alexandretta and became involved with a mercenary adventurer called Reginald of Chatillon. But in the west the advancement of the Temple continued apace.

By now Templar brothers were advisors and confidants to half the monarchs of Europe, the keepers of royal treasuries and bodyguards of the pope. Subject only to the Holy Father, above all other secular and clerical law, free from tithes and taxes and undisputed defenders of Christendom, the Order of the Temple had become one of the most powerful organisations of the medieval world. But trouble was brewing in the east.

The End Begins

The last quarter of the 12^th century was a time of destiny in Outremer, when larger-than-life figures would contend in the heat and dust for possession of the Holy Places – and their place in the pages of history. In 1174 both King Amalric of Jerusalem and Nur-ed-Din, the powerful ruler of Aleppo, died, making way for new players on the stage who would enact some of the most turbulent scenes in crusader history.

By the established hereditary principle, the throne of Jerusalem now passed to Amalric’s son from his first marriage to Agnes of Courtenay, but she had also been the dead king’s cousin and many blamed that for the new monarch’s condition. On the death of his father the boy was only thirteen years old – too young to rule – but more importantly, Baldwin IV was a leper. For the first years of his reign Baldwin’s cousin, Raymond III of Tripoli, would act as his Regent. Raymond was the most powerful of the “doves” among the rulers of the Christian states. He had been imprisoned in the dungeons of the enemy, was fluent in Arabic, had an interest in Muslim texts and perhaps understood the politics of the region better than any other European. By 1177 Baldwin IV had come of age and, while his strength held out, would rule the Kingdom of Jerusalem with wisdom and courage. But he would never father any children - and so the future of their line would be decided by his sister.

Nur-ed-Din’s death would have even greater consequences. His son, Malik as-Salih Ismail, was only eleven years old at the time and such was the nature of his father’s realm that rival claims came from several of his most powerful vassals. Although Nur-ed-Din’s bloodline would fade, he had been the one to prove that a leader of the right character could bring together the disparate Muslim states of the region under one banner, welding the forces of Islam into a single army. The man who succeeded him in this role would be remembered forever in the west as the greatest leader of the Muslim cause and the very epitome of the chivalrous warrior-philosopher, Salad ad-Din Yusuf, better known by his Latinised name – Saladin.

In addition to making way for Saladin’s rise, the old sultan’s death also unleashed the Turks to the north. Fear of Nur-ed Din’s armies had restrained the advance of the Seljuks against the Byzantine Empire and his death enabled them to redeploy their forces and completely overrun Anatolia, driving the Christian Byzantines out of Asia forever. The overland routes were cut. The Crusader States were on their own.

Saladin’s first advance on the Latin States failed when his army was surprised by Baldwin IV at Montgisard in November 1177 and driven back to Egypt, but he would return two years later, laying siege to the Templar fortress at Jacob’s Ford in the summer of 1179. In the battle that followed the arrival of a relief force under the leper-King, the eighth Master of the Temple, Odo de St. Armand, was taken prisoner, dying in the dungeons the following year, too proud to be exchanged for a captive Muslim.

Some time after Jacob’s Ford the two leaders agreed a two-year truce due to a worsening drought and the increased risk of famine. Taking advantage of this, the new Grandmaster, Arnold of Torroja, sailed for Europe along with the Master of the Hospital and Patriarch of Jerusalem to seek aid against the growing threat posed by Saladin. Although his visit to the west was highly successful, the ninth Master would never return, falling ill and dying at Verona on 30^th September 1184. The following year the leper-king finally succumbed to his illness and died, the deaths of these two men, King and Master of the Temple, unleashing disaster on the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

There now opened one of the most shameful periods in the Temple’s history, when the proud Order would come to be governed by a man who would involve the Brethren in his own ambitions and personal vendettas.

Exactly why the Chapter in Jerusalem elected Gerard de Rideford as Master will never be known. He was Seneschal at the time of Arnold of Torroja’s death but was not a “career” Templar, having joined the Order as little as six or seven years before after having his ambitions thwarted in the secular world. An Anglo-Norman or Flemish knight, Gerard had come to the Holy Land in the early 1170’s to seek his fortune. He originally took service with Raymond of Tripoli and was said to have been offered a fiefdom by the Count as soon as one became available in his realm. When William Dorel, Lord of Botron, died in 1180, leaving his lands to his daughter, Raymond apparently went back on his word and ‘sold’ the young heiress to a Pisan merchant for her weight in gold. Infuriated by being passed over in preference for a mere merchant, Gerard joined the Temple, his enmity for the Count of Tripoli going with him.

In the years before his death, Baldwin IV had attempted to secure the future of his Kingdom by attempting to arrange a suitable marriage for his successor – his sister, Princess Sibylla. Her first husband, William of Montferrat, was ‘imported’ from Europe some years earlier and they had conceived a son together. But William had died of malaria in 1177. This left their son as first in line for the throne and although he was duly declared Baldwin V (with Raymond of Tripoli once more acting as Regent) he died soon after. This left Sibylla heiress once more.

By now she had remarried, having badgered her brother in his final years to consent to her marrying a man more to her own liking. Baldwin IV had known this was a bad idea, but his growing weakness and his affection for his sister no doubt won out. The man she had chosen was Guy de Lusignan, brother of the Queen Mother’s current lover, the Constable of the Kingdom, and a weak and ineffectual man.

The royal regalia of the Kingdom of Jerusalem were kept in a strongbox secured by two keys, both of which were necessary to open it, symbolically demonstrating that the monarch about to be crowned had the blessing of both key-holders. One was the Grand Master of the Temple, the other Grand Master of the Hospital. The Hospitaller refused to produce his key, throwing it out of the window rather than consenting to what was about to happen. But Gerard de Rideford had it found and retrieved. Princess Sibylla was now crowned queen by another of her mother’s former lovers, the Patriarch of Jerusalem, and once enthroned placed another crown upon the head of her husband. It is said that as Guy was declared King of Jerusalem, Gerard cried out that this crown repaid the marriage of Botron. This was his revenge on Count Raymond.

At the same time, other unwise decisions were coming home to roost with the Count of Tripoli. As part of a truce negotiated with Saladin following the leper-king’s death, Raymond had secured the release of Christian captives from the Sultan’s dungeons. Among them was Reginald of Chatillon, the mercenary knight who had fought alongside the Templars some years earlier. Had Raymond known of the chaos he would wreak, he may well have left him to rot.

Since his release, Reginald had acquired the fief of Oultrejourdain – which stretched all the way to the Gulf of Akabah on the Red Sea - through strategic marriage and had also been one of the main engineers of Guy’s ascension as King. In 1182 he had outraged the Muslim world by launching a fleet on the Red Sea, pillaging the ports of Egypt and Arabia before landing a raiding party with the ultimate objective of attacking Mecca and stealing the Prophet’s body. The raid failed, survivors being executed in Cairo and Mecca, but as Defender of Islam and it’s Holy Places, Saladin could not ignore the audacity and godlessness of such a man.

But Reginald’s fief was of massive strategic importance - and he would use this to his own ends. Not only was Oulrejourdain a land link between the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, it also cut Saladin’s realm in two and controlled the caravan routes between Cairo and the East. Now that Guy was king, Reginald no doubt felt free to do as he pleased and used the position of his lands to seize a Muslim caravan travelling from Egypt to Syria, killing the armed escort – Saladin’s men. This violated the truce which existed between the sultan and the Christian states and Saladin demanded recompense. Reginald himself would not receive any envoys so Saladin appealed directly to King Guy, who asked the offender to make amends, but not too forcefully. Reginald ignored the request. Guy was a weak man who owed him his throne.

Such was the state of division among the Latin nobles at this time that Count Raymond had entered into negotiations with the sultan to rid Outremer of King Guy. As part of the agreement Raymond had given permission for a contingent of Saladin’s cavalry, led by his son, to conduct a non-belligerent reconnaissance of the area around Galilee. In order to avoid panic, Raymond had informed his people of this force’s presence – they would be gone within a day – but this information reached a contingent which had been sent by Guy to effect a reconciliation with the Count of Tripoli. Among the party were the Grandmasters of both Temple and Hospital.

Incensed by what he saw as outright collaboration with the enemy, Gerard de Rideford summoned ninety Templar knights from local garrisons and rode in search of the “invaders”. Joined by another forty secular knights at Nazareth, the party came upon the enemy watering their horses at the springs of Cresson, at which point the Master of the Hospital advised withdrawing to await reinforcements due to the size of the Muslim contingent. The Templar Marshal agreed. De Rideford accused his fellow Grand Master of cowardice and derided his own Marshal, saying that he was too fond of his blond head to risk losing it. The Marshal replied, ‘I shall die in battle like a brave man. It is you who will flee like a traitor.’

On the orders of the Templar Master, the knights charged. Both Master of the Hospital and Marshal of the Temple died in the engagement, only three Templars escaping with their lives, Gerard de Rideford among them. The only achievement at the Springs of Cresson was that it shamed Raymond of Tripoli into breaking his pact with Saladin.

All bets were now off, all treaties and truces broken. The call went out across Saladin’s domains - to Aleppo, Mosul, Damascus and Egypt – to gather his armies at al-Ashtara, on the eastern side of the River Jordan. The sultan was massing the largest force he had ever commanded for his assault on the crusader states.

In response, King Guy proclaimed a ‘levee en masse’, all the forces of the Latin realms being called to muster at Acre. In Jerusalem, the military Orders released 30,000 marks which had been lodged with them by Henry II of England for a projected crusade and used it to hire every mercenary in the kingdom and to equip the Christian armies. Every city, fortress and garrison was emptied, every fighting man of the crusader states gathering to the King’s banner. In all, around 20,000 men mustered at Acre, including 12,000 cavalry.

On July 1^st 1187 Saladin’s army crossed the Jordan at Sennabra, near lake Tiberias, numbering around 30,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry. Here he split his forces, half marching into the arid hills while the other followed the shoreline and besieged Tiberias itself. While the town fell quite quickly, Eschiva, Count Raymond’s wife, held out in the citadel and sent urgent word to her husband who was with the king at Acre.

Unaware of this, Raymond advised caution. Saladin could not possibly hold such a large force together for long in arid territory at the height of summer. Time would weaken him. The ‘hawks’ would have none of it. Led by Reginald of Chatillon and Gerard de Rideford, they taunted Raymond for his dealings with the sultan and demanded an immediate advance. Unable to resist the pressure of those who had made him king, Guy ordered the army to march.

On the afternoon of 2^nd July the crusaders camped at Sephora. They occupied a strong position, with ample water and fodder for their horses and Raymond once more advised that they hold their ground and let Saladin come to them. Word now arrived of the situation at Tiberias but still Raymond recommended that they hold their position, despite standing to lose his wife and his city. The barons of the War Council agreed. But, once the council had adjourned, the Master of the Temple returned to the king’s tent and pressed Guy to order an advance. He wanted revenge for the humiliation at Cresson and brought every pressure to bear on the weak monarch to achieve this. Eventually, Guy agreed. The army marched at dawn.

Taking the northern route across the parched hills towards Tiberias, harassed by muslim archers all the way and tormented by heat and thirst, the army reached the village of Lubiya on the exposed plateau known as the Horns of Hattin. Word then came from the Templars, who formed the rear-guard that day, requesting that they camp here, on the high ground, overlooking the village of Hattin where Saladin’s army waited. Count Raymond, whose forces formed the vanguard, was aghast when Guy agreed. ‘Ah, Lord God,’ he declared, ‘the war is over. We are dead men. The kingdom is finished.’ The well at Lubiya was dry.

As darkness fell, Saladin’s forces moved closer. Any Christian soldier who left his position in search of water was captured and killed, then the Muslims set fire to the arid brush, the smoke drifting through the crusader’s camp, increasing their discomfort. At dawn, the Muslim assault began.

The Christian infantry fell quickly. Maddened by thirst, they charged the Muslim phalanx in an attempt to reach the lake but were easily killed or captured. On the high ground, the heavy knights repelled Saladin’s cavalry time and time again but they too were weakened by thirst and every assault reduced their numbers. Leading his knights against the Muslim ranks, Raymond suddenly found that they parted before him, closing again once he had passed through. Unable to rejoin the main army, he withdrew to Tripoli.

The remaining knights formed a circle around the king and the relic of the True Cross, brought by the Bishop of Acre, but the battle began to take it’s toll as the heavy armoured warriors began to fall, not by the sword but from exhaustion. The True Cross was lost. The battle was over.

The most eminent of those captured, including King Guy and Gerard de Rideford, were treated reasonably, though Reginald of Chatillon was beheaded by Saladin himself, but the rank-and-file of the military Orders were not so lucky. The sultan maintained a strict policy of summary execution where the Templars were concerned but, true to the teachings of The Prophet, they were given a choice between converting to Islam, or death. Of the 230 captured Templar Knights, none chose to deny Christ. They were beheaded at dawn to the wild cries of Sufi mystics.

In the aftermath of Hattin, the Kingdom of Jerusalem collapsed. The levee en masse had emptied the garrisons and after Saladin’s victory fifty two cities and castles either surrendered or were taken with little effort. Acre was given up without a fight less than a week later, on July 10^th, by Jocelyn de Courtney, a former hawk and ardent supporter of the war. At the massive Templar fortress at Gaza, the sultan played his ace card. Holding true to their vow of absolute obedience, the garrison opened the gates on the command of their Master, Gerard de Rideford.

But all this was mere preparation, clearing the ground in readiness to claim the real prize. So effective had been Saladin’s strategy and so total his victory at Hattin that only two knights opposed the sultan when his army appeared before the walls of Jerusalem, so desperate the need for fighting men that Balian of Ibelin, the defender of the Holy City, bestowed the honour of knighthood upon thirty bachelors of the bourgeoisie.

The final outcome was never really in doubt, but threats to raze the Dome of the Rock and burn the city forced Saladin to parley. The sultan demanded 100,000 dinars as ransom for the population of the city but, as this could not be raised, the rate was set at ten dinars for a man, five for a woman and one dinar per child. Although the Templars, along with the other military orders and the Patriarch of Jerusalem, refused to open their own treasuries, they did release what remained of Henry II of England’s war chest, 30,000 dinars being drawn from public funds to buy the freedom of 7,000 of the cities poorest Christians.

On 2^nd October 1187, the anniversary of Mohammed’s visit to Heaven from Temple Mount, Saladin entered Jerusalem in triumph. The ‘Temple of The Lord’ was cleansed with rosewater and a pulpit installed that had been commissioned for this event by the old sultan, Nur ed-Din. Becoming once more the ‘al-Aqsa Mosque’, the cross that had adorned it’s roof was torn down and dragged around the city for two days, being beaten with clubs by exultant Muslims. After 88 years as the centre of a Christian kingdom, Jerusalem was once more in the hands of the forces of Islam. It would never be recovered.

With the exception of the final years, this was the Order’s darkest hour. Gerard de Rideford had led both the Temple and the Kingdom into ruin. The forces of the Order had been decimated at Hattin, they had been evicted from their headquarters on Temple Mount and their Master was the captive and pawn of the Muslim Sultan of Cairo. After his release, Gerard seemed at least to try and redeem himself. After having been refused entry into the Christian held city of Tyre, King Guy had led a force of other ransomed and released knights against the city of Acre. Accompanied by the Templar Master and whatever forces he could assemble, this action led to the only example in medieval Middle-Eastern warfare where a besieging army successfully carried out a siege while also under attack from outside forces. Gerard de Rideford, tenth Master of the Temple, finally died fighting near the city of Acre on 4^th October 1189. It would be almost two years before a new Master would be elected.