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War[edit]

The details of the Order's early military activities in the Middle East are vague, though it appears their first battles were defeats, because the Seljuk Turks and other Muslim powers used different tactics than those in Europe at that time. The Order's mission expanded from protecting pilgrims to taking part military campaigns.[1] The chronicler William of Tyre claimed that the first recorded battle involving the Knights Templar was in the town of Teqoa, south of Jerusalem, in 1138. A force of Templars led by their Grand Master, Robert de Craon (who succeeded Hugues de Payens about a year earlier), was sent to retake the town after it was captured by Muslims. They were initially successful, but the Muslims regrouped outside the town and were able to take it back from the Templars.[2]

But before that, the Knights Templar were tasked with defending the northern frontier of the Principality of Antioch, and were given the castle of Bagras in the Amanus Mountains.[3] It may have been as early as 1131, and by 1137 at the latest, that the Templars were given the mountainous region that formed the border of Antioch and Cilician Armenia, and included the castles of Bagras, Darbsak, and Roche de Roissel. The Templars were there when Byzantine emperor John II Komnenos tried to make the Crusaders states of Antioch, Tripoli, and Edessa his vassals between 1137 and 1142. Templar knights accompanied Emperor John with troops from those states during his campaign against Muslim powers in Syria from 1137 to 1138, including at the sieges of Aleppo and Shaizar.[4] In 1143, the Templars also began taking part in the Reconquista in Iberia at the request of the count of Barcelona.[5]

In 1147 a force of French, Spanish, and English Templars[6] left France to join the Second Crusade, led by King Louis VII. At a meeting held in Paris on April 1147 they were given permission by Pope Eugenius III to wear the red cross on their uniforms. They were led by the Templar provincial master in France, Everard des Barres, who was later one of the ambassadors that King Louis sent to negotiate the passage of the Crusader army through the Byzantine Empire on its way to the Holy Land. During the dangerous journey of the Second Crusade through Anatolia, the Templars provided security to the rest of the army from Turkish raids.[7] After the Crusaders arrived in 1148, the kings Louis VII, Conrad III of Germany, and Baldwin III of Jerusalem made the decision to capture Damascus, but their siege in the summer of that year failed and ended with the defeat of the Christian army.[8][9] In the fall of 1148 some returning Templars took part in the successful siege of Tortosa in Spain, after which one-fifth of that city was given to the Order.[6]

Robert de Craon died in January 1149 and was succeeded as Grand Master by Everard des Barres, one of the few leaders at the siege of Damascus whose reputation was not damaged by the event.[8] After the Second Crusade, Zengid forces under Nur ad-Din of Aleppo attacked the Principality of Antioch, and in June 1149 his army defeated the Crusaders at the Battle of Inab, where Prince Raymond of Antioch was killed. King Baldwin III led reinforcements to the principality, which led Nur to accept a truce with Antioch and not advance any further.[10] The force with King Baldwin included 120 Templar knights and 1,000 sergeants and squires.[11]

In the winter of 1149 and 1150, King Baldwin III oversaw the reconstruction of the fortress at Gaza City, which had been left in ruins.[12][13] It was part of the ring of castles that were built along the southern border of the Kingdom of Jerusalem to protect it from raids by the Egyptian Fatimid Caliphate, and specifically from the Fatimid troops at the fortress of Ascalon, which by then was the last coastal city in Palestine still under Muslim control.[13][14] Gaza was given to the Knights Templar, becoming the first major Templar castle.[13] In 1152 Everard stepped down as the Grand Master of the Order for unknown reasons, and his successor was Bernard de Tremelay.[15] In January of the following year, Bernard led the Templars when King Baldwin III led a Crusader army to besiege Ascalon. Several months of fighting went by until the wall of the city was breached in August 1153, at which point Bernard led forty knights into Ascalon. But the rest of the army did not join them and all of the Templars were killed by the Muslim defenders. The city was captured by the rest of the army several days later.[16][17]

References[edit]

  1. ^ Burman 1990, pp. 53–54.
  2. ^ Howarth 1982, p. 97.
  3. ^ Forey 1995, p. 191.
  4. ^ Burman 1990, pp. 51–53.
  5. ^ Forey 1995, p. 187.
  6. ^ a b Philips & Hoch 2001, p. 145.
  7. ^ Barber 1994, pp. 66–67.
  8. ^ a b Barber 1994, pp. 68–70.
  9. ^ Howarth 1982, pp. 106–107.
  10. ^ Runciman 1951, pp. 325–328.
  11. ^ Barber 1994, p. 70.
  12. ^ Smail 1956, pp. 211–212.
  13. ^ a b c Barber 1994, p. 73.
  14. ^ Fulton 2022, p. 25.
  15. ^ Barber 1994, p. 71.
  16. ^ Barber 1994, pp. 73–74.
  17. ^ Nicholson 2001, pp. 74–75.
  • Baldwin, Marshal W.; Setton, Kenneth M., eds. (1969). A History of the Crusades, Volume I: The First Hundred Years. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0-299-04834-9.
  • Barber, Malcolm (1994). The New Knighthood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-60473-5.
  • Burgtorf, Jochen (2008). The Central Convent of Hospitallers and Templars: History, Organization, and Personnel (1099/1120-1310). Leiden: Brill Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-16660-8.
  • Fulton, Michael S. (2022). Contest for Egypt: The Collapse of the Fatimid Caliphate, the Ebb of Crusader Influence, and the Rise of Saladin. Leiden: Brill Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-51227-6.
  • Howarth, Stephen (1982). The Knights Templar. New York: Barnes and Noble. ISBN 0-88029-663-1.
  • Nicholson, Helen (2001). The Knights Templar: A New History. Stroud: Sutton Publishing. ISBN 0-7509-2517-5.
  • Philips, Jonathan; Hoch, Martin, eds. (2001). The Second Crusade: Scope and Consequences. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 0-7190-5710-8.
  • Forey, Alan (1995). "The Military Orders, 1120–1312". In Riley-Smith, Jonathan (ed.). The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-285428-5.
  • Riley-Smith, Jonathan (2012). The Knights Hospitaller in the Levant, c.1070–1309. Palgrave Macmillian. ISBN 978-0-230-29083-9.
  • Runciman, Steven (1951). A History of the Crusades, Volume II: The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Frankish East, 1100–1187. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-06162-8.
  • Smail, R. C. (1956). Crusading Warfare 1097–1193. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 1-56619-769-4.
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