The Templars and the Crusades (overview part 3)

The feud between the papacy and the Emperor would drag on destructively in Europe. Meanwhile thanks to the much-maligned Frederick, Jerusalem lay again fully accessible to Christian pilgrims. Though without unified leadership, the kingdom seemed to be recovering. However the situation was not to last. The Templars under Armand de Perigord seem to have encouraged a switch in policy to ally with Damascus against Egypt. Panicked by the Franks' new alignment, Cairo called on wild mercenaries from the East, the Khoresmians, who took and ravaged Jerusalem in 1244, then joined up with the Egyptians to deliver a crushing blow to the Christians at the battle of La Forbie. It was a disaster on the scale of Hattin. Few Templars escaped and Armand presently died in captivity.

The last major crusade, the Seventh, eventually got under way under the flawed leadership of Louis IX of France. It attacked down the Nile, following the path of the Fifth Crusade. This time Damietta fell quickly, abandoned by its garrison, and their commander Fakhr Ed-Din in the night (much to the anger of the ailing sultan as-Silah Ayyub. The resurgent Templars were in the vanguard as the crusaders again marched south. They swept all before them after fording the river, and captured the enemy camp, killing Fakhr Ed-Din However for Louis' brother Robert, Count of Artois this victory was not enough. He goaded the Templars into accompanying him in a disastrous charge into the town of Mansourah, without waiting for the main bulk of the army to catch up. There they were trapped and slaughtered in the narrow by the Mameluks. The Grand Master, William of Sonnac, lost an eye in the fighting, escaping only to lose his other and then his life in battle soon after. The Order's survivors fought bravely in subsequent engagements, but again the expedition had hit the rocks. The Muslims cut the crusaders' supply lines, after which hunger, disease and attrition took their toll. Louis clung on, camped outside Mansourah, until the hopelessness of the situation became obvious even to him. He ordered a retreat but his men were all captured, either on land or on the water, before they could reach Damietta.

The Mamelukes were the bodyguard to the Ayyubid Sultans, circasian slaves trained as elite Muslim soldiers. The Arab chronicler Ibn Wasil termed them 'Islam's Templars', (showing the formidable reputation the Templars had earned among their enemies). These Mameluks initiated a coup, murdering the last Ayyubid Sultan of Egypt, Turan Shah, even as Louis and his companions languished in captivity. Louis was obliged to promise the Mameluks a great ransom for his release, and to apply pressure on Templar financiers for the funds. A participant of the Seventh Crusade, Jean de Joinville almost had to resort to force when boarding the Templars' ship off Damietta for the funds, until his friend the Marshal of the order (soon to become Grand Master) Reynald de Vichiers smoothed things over. Louis kept his side of the deal and quit Damietta, for the Holy Land, but his force was too diminished for him to do much good, and at length he returned to France having wasted much time, money and life. Before long the Mameluks under their sultan Baybars and his successors, swept out of Egypt and, after defeating the Mongols who had also appeared on the scene, began the inexorable annihilation of the vestigial Crusader states in Syria/Palestine.

Meanwhile Europe's Crusading enthusiasm had first imploded and then waned. The Templars were on occasion driven to expressing dismay to the Pope, and to accuse him of hurting the Latin East and the Crusading Ideal by preaching false crusades against political enemies in the West. In 1291, when no western armies came to reinforce them, the Templars in the Holy Land perished defending the last major Crusader city, Acre. The Grand Master William of Beaujeu demonstrated great courage, and died of wounds. The Templars fought on gallantly until the walls tumbled around them. However after Acre's loss the remainder of the Order seemed demoralized, evacuating from Tyre and abandoning their great castle of Atlit without a fight, though it had resisted mighty sieges in the past. They endeavoured to retain a foothold on the island of Arwad off Tortosa, but were obliged to relocate their command base to Cyprus (a Latin state itself since the Third Crusade).