A new section on my Blog. My long pending history series is finally about to take off. My resident consultant Ms. Deepti Potnis, (you can find her blog here ) suggested that I start with The Knights Templar. I don’t get blog consultants with a pin, so I took her advice (usually good) and am starting my history section with the first bunch of warrior monks.

Formation and Early Beginnings:

In the beginning, there was this pious lad called Hugues de Payens who decided that he should defend the holy land from the evil Saracens. So he gathered a bunch of his relatives, and conned them into a “holy mission”. The mission, defend pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land (Jerusalem to the uninitiated). All this happened in 1119, and the lands were in the control of Baldwin II (a Christian king). The king got some free policemen, so was pretty glad to give them permission to run around waving swords and allotted them the Al Aqsa Mosque as their base of operations. Pretty handy of him, eh? Not only did he get free policemen, he gets them to do their own dirty work of evicting some unfriendly tenants. The area is holy to all three religions, Christians, Jews and Muslims, and is still one of the many places where religion is rather an excuse for bloodshed than anything that unites people. The model of the Al Aqsa mosque became a template for a lot of the Templar Churches though, which shows you that there is some mingling allowed. As long as it is only in architecture and not doctrine.

For the next nine years or so, surprisingly little is heard about this merry band of do-gooders. But in 1130, they got their moment in the sun. The Council of Troyes, (in France) gave them official sanction. Its a bit like an ISO9001 Certification for the time. So they could now advertise and have promotional programmes too! So what was the deal? It was this. You, noble sir can give up all your worldly pleasures, your goods, your children (if any) and so on. In other words, give every material thing you have away (preferably to the Knights themselves). In return, we guarantee you salvation, and a hard stone bed. Oh…and if you are lucky you get a trained war horse too! What a deal! Strangely enough, lots of people took it. And because you also got a sword free with the deal, they also became the first religious order that was armed with cutting edges. Until then, if you were a monk, you were forbidden to shed blood. Break Bones, yes. Cut people up; No way!

So now the movement had begun, and martial monks were a good thing, so they began to grow.

They grow– Strategies and Crazies

Mind you, if you thought it was all fun and games, think again. They had rather crazy rules. Such as, “Retreat from battle only if you are outnumbered 3:1. And even then, you must first find a commander and get him to order a retreat. Else you will fight to the death.” They were an elite fighting force. They had to be. Anyone who survived a few months with them would be quite a fighter. However, they had a good reputation as smart thinkers. As you might imagine, with most career advancing options having the reward points collectible only after you die…most of the knights opted to die on the battlefield rather than stick around one more night on the hard stone bed. So they were never that numerous as an army. They could win by skill and tactics.

The pinnacle of their glory was reached when they managed to defeat Saladin, the great Saracen general himself. Of course, most of them died in the battle…but hey, the retirement package sux….you try mucking stables in your old age and you will know what I am talking about.

Growth Phase–Banking for success

One of the conditions for an aspiring templar was to give up all worldly goods. Most of them gave it up to the parent organization. While maintaining a horse and a knight was expensive work, the knights had quite a pile of surplus cash.

So they decided to lend it out. If you were a traveller, you could convert your goods at a temple, they give you a note showing this, and ta da, you have your very own ATM card, redeemable at dozens of locations in the holy land!

Of course, the church at the time followed the dictum, “Neither a borrower, nor a lender be”, but such was the power of the knights Templar that they got away with it. Of course, they called it Rent rather than interest, but heck, today Islamic banks do the same thing! Why change a successful strategy?

With their free pass from the pope, allowing them complete freedom to traipse through foreign lands, and a banking network that was all over Europe, The knights Templer could have been the first MNC.

All Good things come to an end

However, like all good things, failure of the knights was in built in their own successes. Their reputation for strategy began to deteriorate, Saladin got over his early shocks and inflicted a crushing defeat on the knights; taking their grandmaster prisoner, and ransoming him for the territory of Gaza. Soon, the holy land was again in the hands of the Saracens, and the knights were now an army without a battlefield!

They wandered back to Cyprus, contenting themselves with money lending and politics. But again here, ruin awaited them. King Philip IV of France, who owed a huge sum of cash to the knights decided that he would become the largest NPA of the 12th Century, and tried to weasel out of his debts. The knights were no longer the darlings of the church.

The Church: Why did it not help Them?

The templars were no longer favoured sons because of complicated church politics. In the late 1200’s and early 1300’s the Roman Church was now increasingly balanced by the power of the French Cardinals. Pope Clement V was raised in 1305 as a compromise candidate (He was not Italian, but neither was he French…or even a cardinal). But what the voters ignored was that he was in Prince Philip’s pocket. Soon after proclaiming that the order of the knights Templar was dissolved he moved his court down to Avignon in France, rather than risk the wrath of the Italians who were growing steadily less willing to listen to the Church.

Clement V is known as a weak willed pope, from whom the decay of the Catholic Church could have begun. And certainly, the Popes from 1309-1377 were practically prisoners in Avignon, and had neither the ability, nor the willingness to return to Rome.

Templars Continues…

Philip rounded up the Templars in France, and tortured as many as he could get till they “confessed” to being heretics and evildoers. Of course, this meant burning at the stake for a huge majority of the candidates. But we really cannot be sure who were the guilty parties in this lot. It is clear that the Templars were amongst the most powerful independent armies in Europe, and like the Teutonic knights who carved out Prussia for themselves, there were plans to carve out a Templar nation in Cyprus, and poor Philip was based out of Champagne, which was the headquarters of the Templar order. By ordering a pre-emptive strike, perhaps he was merely defending himself! And burning at the stake is merely “shock and awe” of a rather terminal sort.

Conclusion

Well, that was that for the knights Templar. From 1119 to 1309, they almost lasted 200 years. While later popes tried to undo the harm Clement V inflicted upon them, there was not much left of what was once the largest and richest of the martial orders. Rumours abound of a lost templar hoard of riches, but like most rumours, the actual facts seem rather hard to find.

Were the templars honest warriors betrayed by the machinations of a cruel king who wanted to get away from his debts? Half right. Philip IV was certainly cruel and avaricious. But I am not certain the Knights were clean as driven snow. The mystery of the missing knights never went away though. For every knight who burned at the stake, there were 10 who were never heard of. Where these knights went, no one quite knows, which is the source for most of the rumours. One suspects that the truth is a bit more prosaic. Like most people who don’t like getting burned, the other knights vanished in the night, reappearing as landholders, mercenery soldiers, or Swiss farmers (who suddenly did develop a startling military acumen that ensured their independence for the next 700 years!).