The Templars

by Dan Jones

  That western Europe’s two foremost kings should decide to go on crusade was a mighty commitment of royal power. This more than answered Pope Eugene’s call to arms, issued in December 1145 (and reissued in March 1146) in the form of a bull known as Quantum Praedecessores (‘How much [our] predecessors’). In this missive, written for mass popular consumption, Eugene had called for the ‘greater men and nobles’ to prepare for war and ‘strive so to oppose the multitude of the infidels, who rejoice at the time in a victory gained over us, and so to defend the oriental church’. His orders had been enthusiastically transmitted by Bernard of Clairvaux. Growing old, painfully thin and frequently ill due to his insistence on fasting to the point of starvation, Bernard had nonetheless travelled ceaselessly throughout the kingdoms of the west, haranguing their leaders to support the new war effort. It had taken nearly three years, but in the weeks following Easter 1147, the mission to revenge Edessa’s fall was finally ready to depart.

  The Templars who had celebrated Easter in Paris most likely left with the rest of Louis’ army on 11 June, following a dramatic ceremony in the Gothic abbey church of Saint-Denis: the king approached the pope before the gold-plated high altar, knelt to kiss a silver reliquary containing the remains of the abbey’s patron saint, and received his pilgrim’s purse, along with a blessing from the holy father. Tears were shed and prayers recited by the crowd who had come to see the king leave, and with good reason. Not for fifty years had there been such crusading fervour in the west.

  Large armies with great lords at their head were, however, no guarantee of success, particularly on a testing land journey over several thousand miles. Little by little, as Louis’ forces made their way east, it became clear that what was billed as an army was in fact little more than a very large, pious but undisciplined rabble. Were it not for the knights of the Temple, it is likely they would never have made it within sight of Syria at all.

  *

  Pope Eugene’s crusading bull Quantum Praedecessores, which had been preached throughout 1146 and 1147 to ecstatic crowds far and wide across western Christendom, and which justified attacks on non-Christians in the Near East, Iberia and (in a new addition to the movement) pagan areas around the Baltic Sea, bore a few striking similarities to the texts of both the Templar Rule and Bernard of Clairvaux’s De Laude. Formally addressed to Louis VII, it made direct reference to the First Crusade, assuring its audience that ‘it will be seen as a great token of nobility and uprightness if those things acquired by the efforts of your fathers are vigorously defended’. But Eugene also pointed out that those who took up the cross and went to ‘fight for the Lord’ should ‘not care for precious clothes or elegant appearance or dogs or hawks or other things that are signs of lasciviousness’. Furthermore, ‘those who decide to begin so holy a work ought to pay no attention to multi-coloured clothes or minivers [an expensive fur] or gilded or silvered arms’.15 Zealous Christians had been whipped into a frenzy of adventure for more than eighteen months, but it would not do to be too showy about it. They were to advance on the kingdom of Jerusalem as poor pilgrims, pride vanquished from their hearts and decoration stripped from their bridles.

  Given Eugene’s background as a Cistercian monk, his attitude in this regard was fairly predictable. Nevertheless, he could not have known or imagined just how much like the Templars his Christian soldiers of the Second Crusade would have to become.

  Although the armies of the faithful set out confidently and cheerfully, their experience on the road quickly soured their spirits. Both Louis VII and Conrad III chose to march to Edessa overland, along the route followed by the first crusaders: a march through Bulgaria and across Greek lands, stopping at Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire, regarded by its inhabitants and many others besides as the greatest city in the world. From there they planned to cross hostile Seljuq territory in Asia Minor, before finally making their way either by ship or foot to the crusader principality of Antioch. Others – including nobles from Flanders and England – preferred to reach the Levant by ship, stopping by the ports of the western Mediterranean and engaging the Muslims of al-Andalus on their way (this contingent took part in the Portuguese king Afonso Henriques’ conquest of Lisbon in 1147). Both romantic and practical considerations influenced the French and German kings’ decision to take the land route: there was a wish to walk in the footsteps of the first crusaders, and ships were expensive. But ultimately it proved calamitous.

  To avoid tensions between parties, the two kings staggered their departures. Conrad left Nuremberg at the end of May, heading initially for Constantinople. Perhaps inevitably, since Conrad was effectively leading a mass migration consisting of some 35,000 fighting men and a very large number of non-combatant pilgrims, trouble dogged him.16 Feeding so many mouths was extremely challenging; maintaining order as the Germans encountered foreigners who were not thrilled at their presence was even harder. As Conrad’s crusaders made their way through Greek territory, violent skirmishes broke out in towns, marketplaces and even around monasteries. In September, while the army camped at Choiribacchoi, to the west of Constantinople, they were hit by flash floods, which seriously depleted their numbers. Once they arrived outside the walls of Constantinople itself, it became plain that the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Comnenus was an unwilling host.

  Fifty years previously the armies of the First Crusade had arrived in response to a plea for help from Manuel’s grandfather, Alexios I Comnenus, who had begged the Latin West to help him in his war against the Seljuqs. There had been no such request on this occasion. Indeed, the Byzantine emperor was positively irked by the thought of the Latin crusaders making further gains in Syria, not least around Antioch, which he though was rightfully part of his own empire. His main desire seems to have been to see the king of the Germans and his unruly followers over the Bosphorus and into Asia Minor as soon as decency permitted, and to be done with them.

  He was rewarded in the first part of this wish, but not the second. The Germans crossed the Bosphorus, divided their men between troops and pilgrims and in mid-October struck out south-east by two diverging routes towards Antioch. By November they had all retreated to Constantinople and its environs: hungry, sick and bloodied. Attempting to cross the high, arid plains around Dorylaeum, where Byzantine territory gave way to hostile Seljuq country, the crusaders had been set upon by fast, lightly armed and lethal horsemen-archers loosing arrows from the saddle. William of Tyre described the lightning raids in which these hellish enemies specialized:

  The Turks... charged en masse; while still at a distance they let fly countless showers of arrows which fell like hail upon the horses and their riders and brought death and wounds from afar. When the Christians tried to pursue them, the Turks turned and fled upon the horses and thus escaped the swords of their foe.17

  King Conrad was badly hurt in one of these assaults. His army limped back to Christian territory to meet up with Louis VII and his army.

  The second, French wave of the crusade arrived in Constantinople just days after the Germans had left, on 4 October 1147. The French received a slightly warmer welcome than the Germans, thanks in part to the efforts of Everard of Barres, master of the Temple in France, who had been sent ahead on a diplomatic mission. The gates of Constantinople swung open to afford King Louis and his more respectable retainers a ceremonial welcome. In the words of one chronicler, ‘all its nobles and wealthy men, clerics as well as lay people, trooped out to meet the king and received him with due honour’.18 Behind the pageantry, however, lurked mutual suspicion. The Greeks were disgusted by the rude barbarians from the west; the Franks despised the spineless obsequiousness of their hosts. Odo of Deuil, chronicling the French crusade in colourful detail, considered that ‘when [the Greeks] are afraid, they become despicable in their excessive debasement and when they have the upper hand they are arrogant in their severe violence to those subjected to them’. Later he went further: ‘Constantinople is arrogant in her wealth, treacherous in her practice
s, corrupt in her faith.’ 19

  Louis VII had done his best to instil some basic discipline in the tens of thousands of his followers who lacked the Templars’ military training. Sadly, like Conrad, he found the task beyond him. Outside his realm, his ability to issue commands was much reduced; outside his own personal guard at the core of his much larger army, Louis was able to exercise leadership only by advising, instructing and attempting to influence a council of nobles.20 Petty crime and scrapping was almost impossible to prevent. ‘The king frequently punished offenders by cutting off their ears, hands and feet, but he could not check the folly of the whole group,’ lamented Odo of Deuil. Outside Constantinople Louis’ men quarrelled with the locals, burning valuable olive trees ‘either for want of wood or by reason of arrogance and the drunkenness of fools’.21

  It was in the interests of both sides that the French crusaders should continue on towards Edessa. But once they began their journey through Asia Minor towards Seljuq territory, their indiscipline had even more awful consequences. Having followed the coast road on the first stage of their journey between Nicomedia and Ephesus, in early January 1148 they turned inland and headed for Adalia on the south coast. The road took them through wild and inhospitable country, littered with the corpses of German soldiers who had fallen the previous autumn and lay still unburied. After several days, on 8 January it brought them to the difficult upland terrain of Mount Cadmus: ‘an accursed mountain’, wrote Odo of Deuil, ‘steep and rocky’, which demanded that the long train of animals, wagons, foot soldiers and horsemen traverse ‘a ridge so lofty that its summit seemed to touch heaven and the stream in the hollow valley below to descend into hell’.22 Rocks fell from above. When weak and hungry packhorses lost their footing they fell hundreds of feet to be dashed to pieces, dragging to their deaths anyone they hit on the way. Worse still, Turkish outriders had been spotted ahead.

  Trying to guide an army over a mountain range was a task quite beyond Louis VII’s capabilities as a commander. Disastrously, he allowed his army to separate and cross the peak of Mount Cadmus in three staggered groups; it was a gift to his enemies. Louis’ rearguard remained in camp at the foot of the mountain, while the vanguard set off ahead. Their orders were to make an ascent before stopping to spend the night near the top, but their vanguard’s captains ignored commands, crested the summit and descended the other side to pitch their tents on lower ground. Out of sight and poorly defended, the large baggage train containing food, tents and other essentials, accompanied by pilgrims, servants and attendants, was left to make the mountain crossing entirely on its own.

  A baggage train was slow-moving and vulnerable at the best of times, and this was the opening awaited by the Turks who had been shadowing the French: they fell on the convoy and butchered its unarmed minders. Odo of Deuil later recorded the panic he felt as the Turks ‘thrust and slashed, and the defenceless crowd fled or fell like sheep. Thence rose a cry that pierced even to heaven’.

  The screams of terror carried down the mountain, and Louis and a relief force from the rearguard dashed to rescue their companions. The battle that ensued was a desperate affair, in which Louis himself was nearly killed: he only escaped a rush by Turkish attackers by scrambling up a rock covered in tree roots and battering back his assailants with his sword until they tired of the pursuit and rode away. He rejoined his men once night had fallen, having come to them ‘in the silence of midnight, without a guide’.23 The French fatalities were considerable and the injury to their pride greater still; after a week skirting enemy territory, they had fared nearly as badly as the Germans. Ibn Al-Qalanisi, writing in Damascus, recorded that in Syria ‘fresh reports of [Frankish] losses and of the destruction of their numbers were constantly arriving until the end of the year 542’ – in the Christian calendar this was the late spring of 1148.24 Something would have to change, or annihilation beckoned.

  The Templars marching with Louis, far better trained for the reality of combat in the east than their comrades, came through the debacle on Mount Cadmus in remarkably good shape. While most of Louis’ troops and horses were starving in the absence of their plundered baggage train and its vital provisions, the Templars had conserved their possessions. While the main body of troops were prone to disobedience and panic, they had spent the march helping those around them to survive the Turkish assault. Perhaps most importantly, the Templar contingent was led by the French master Everard of Barres, whom Louis trusted.

  Now Everard’s influence with the king and the manifest superiority of his men to the rest of the army transformed the entire expedition. King Louis did something quite astonishing: he signed over effective command of the entire mission to the Templar knights, allowing them to reorganize the military structure, take control of training and tactics and – most extraordinarily of all – to enlist temporarily into the order every person in the vast royal following, from the meanest pilgrim to the mightiest knight. Suddenly the Templars were no longer a small but competent unit within the larger French army of the Second Crusade: they were effectively its leaders, and every man who followed them was, for a few weeks at least, a brother.

  Odo of Deuil recorded that the king admired the Templars‘ example and ability, and wished for their spirit to fill the rest of his army so that ‘even if hunger should weaken them, unity of spirit would also strengthen them’. He got far more than the spread of good cheer. Odo records in detail the steps the Templars took to drag the crusaders out of the desolation in which the massacre on Mount Cadmus had left them:

  By common consent, it was decided that during this dangerous period all should establish fraternity with the Templars, rich and poor taking oath that they would not flee the field and that they would obey in every respect the officers assigned them by the Templars.25

  A Templar by the name of Gilbert was given overall field command. The ordinary French knights were formed into divisions of fifty, each one commanded by a single Templar who reported to Gilbert. And straight away the new command began drilling the troops in the art of fighting the Turks.

  One of the most important duties for any Templar knight or sergeant, spelled out explicitly in the Rule, was obedience. ‘As soon as something is commanded by the Master or by him to whom the Master has given the authority, it should be done without delay as through Christ himself had commanded it,’ stated the Rule. ‘No brother should fight or rest according to his own will, but according to the orders of the Master, to whom all should submit.’26 Holding formation was – and always has been – a first principle of competent military conduct, but in the panic on Mount Cadmus, such orders as had been given were simply ignored, soldiers either fleeing or fighting as they saw fit. That had to change. In taking an oath of fraternity to the Templars, each of Louis’ pilgrim warriors now accepted that it was his sworn duty to obey Gilbert and his deputies: to stand firm or take cover as they were told. This was more authority than Louis VII had ever been able to exert over his army and its effects were immediately felt.

  The crusaders were also given a crash course in Turkish tactics, and how to counter them. Mounted archers were deadly but predictable: their methods had been refined with great success over thousands of years, and they relied on the swift ambush raids that Odo of Deuil had seen at first hand and recorded in awestruck detail. Round-helmeted riders with quivers of feathered arrows slung at their waists would appear suddenly before the enemy and charge.27 At the last minute they would tug their horses’ reins, wheel and retreat. As they left, they would loose volleys of arrows, leaving the enemy shocked, bleeding and confused. These attacks would come in waves, with riders disappearing behind a shower of lethal shafts, changing horses and returning to mount a fresh assault. The horsemen were astonishingly skilled, capable of controlling with one or no hands beautifully trained steeds weighing 350–400 kilos (770–880 lbs), stringing and drawing a heavy bow at a gallop and shooting with mortal accuracy from over and around their horse’s neck, head and flanks.28 They worked in small, mobile g
roups, arriving one after the other and maintaining constant pressure. When they needed to fight at close quarters, the riders slung their bows across their backs and swung swords or jabbed spears, although this was risky when fighting the western Franks, who tended to favour heavier armour than the Turks and were generally more at home with conventional hand-to-hand combat.

  These were, without doubt, fierce and daunting enemies, who thrived on creating terror and panic. But they were not invincible, as Gilbert the Templar and his captains taught their newly enlisted companions. The key was to maintain discipline in the face of ambush for long enough to organize a counter-attack. Odo of Deuil recalled the Templars’ strategy:

  Our men were commanded to endure the attacks of the enemies, until they received an order; and to withdraw immediately when recalled... When they had learned this, they were also taught the order of the march, so that a person in front would not rush to the rear and the guards on the flanks would not fall into disorder... Those whom nature or fortune had made foot soldiers... were drawn up at the very rear in order to oppose the enemies’ arrows with their bows.29

  This was no great tactical innovation. Indeed, the fact that basic troop positioning and adherence to officers’ orders had to be taught to Louis’ followers as though they were green youths being instructed in the first principles of combat illustrates just how woefully unprepared the crusaders had been to begin with.30 All the same, with a little structure and the firm direction of their new commanders the crusader army descended from the mountains and rejoiced at reaching lower ground.