Gone Medieval - The Knights Templar

Episode Date: April 28, 2023

This is a special episode from a series we made in collaboration with Ubisoft, the makers of Assassin's Creed.In Assassins vs Templars, we're immersing ourselves in the real history that inspired the first game. As well as exploring rise and fall of The Knights Templar and the Assassins, we chat to leading experts and historians to analyse the historical backdrop of the first three crusades, reveal the real histories behind key characters in the game, and unearth the folklore around the mythical Holy Grail.In this episode, Matt Lewis is joined by Professor Helen Nicholson to discuss The Knights Templar, and how an order of crusading monks draped in white robes marked with a red cross perhaps don’t sound that daunting when you first hear of them, went on to become one of the most powerful organisations in the world during the crusades.From land ownership to banking to fighting on the frontlines with their faith as a weapon, the Knights Templar were worthy competition for the Assassins. But who were their contemporaries, how did the Knights Templar get so powerful, and how good were they on the battlefield?Produced by History Hit and Ubisoft, with Post Production done by Paradiso Media.To listen to the rest of Assassins vs Templars, make sure you're following Echoes of History wherever you get your podcasts! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hi everyone, thank you for downloading this episode of Gone Medieval. Today's is another taster of the exciting collaboration we've been working on with Ubisoft, the masterminds behind the Assassin's Creed games. Assassins versus Templars is a new series on the Echoes of History podcast about the real histories of the secretive orders that inspired the first game. As a huge fan of the game, it was incredibly exciting to get to work on it.

This episode is all about the Knights Templar. And if your appetite for crusading warfare has been whetted by the end, then make sure to follow the Echoes of History podcast to listen to the rest of the series. There's eight episodes altogether with fantastic guests sharing expert knowledge about the Crusades, the Holy Grail, and some of the game's key characters. Enjoy! Welcome to the inside of one of history's great. stories. I'm Matt Lewis and in this collaboration between Ubisoft and history hit, we're taking

you back to the very beginning. The story of Assassin's Creed is one of deadly rivalry between conflicting ideologies that asks whether peace is found through freedom or control. It began with assassins and Templars racing to gather the pieces of Eden in the fiery heat of the Near East amidst brutal religious upheaval. Now we're all Desmond Miles and we've even found our animus a team of the greatest historians working in their field today will help us unlock the memories of the past, lead us through the secrets and introduce us to some of the real people who inspired the game. It's time to break into the vaults of two of history's most infamous organisations as we pit the Assassin's Creed against the Templar Order. In this episode, I'm joined by Professor

Helen Nicholson, who is a professor of medieval history and former head of history at Cardiff University. She's a world-leading expert on the military religious orders and the crusades, which makes her the perfect guide to lead us through the mysteries of the Knights Templar. Thank you very much for joining us, Helen. It's wonderful to have you here. Thank you for having me. Assassins Creed pits the Assassins against the Templar order. When does the order of the Knights Templar emerge and become a military order? No one recorded exactly when they started, but it seems to be January 1120 at the Council of Nablos.

in the Holy Land. When the patriarch of Jerusalem and the King of Jerusalem were both present, they approved this idea by Hugh de Pant and his friends that they should form a military group for defending Christian pilgrims, also for defending Christian land. And there's a bit of a movement of military religious orders at this point. Where do the Templars sit in that? Are they the first? Templars were the first military religious order as such, although we could argue they were continuing the idea of the First Crusade, and some writers linked them back to the First Crusade and said that there were knights who'd been on the First Crusade and decided to stay in the Holy Land and that they saw the land needed protectors. Now, these are people writing slightly later,

so it's not clear that this is entirely accurate, but it gives us an idea of where the ideas came from. At the same time, you could see the idea of the Templars, a brotherhood in arms, serving God, could also come from the confraternities, a brotherhood sort of formed during the Crusade. and it wasn't a new idea for Christians to fight in defence of Christendom, but it's the Templars who became the first permanent and professional military religious force. And what do we know about Hugh De Pan, that man who is credited with starting the Templars? Why did he want to build this military order? There's a certain amount of information about Hugh DePan's life in Champagne.

Before he went out to the East, he'd been married, his wife's name was Elizabeth, and she died, they had a number of children, and he'd gone out to the East, with Hugh Count of Champagne on at least one expedition to the east. Exactly when he'd arrived in the east before he founded the Templars is not clear. And then there were a number of other people who were with him at the beginning of the order, at Godfrey of San Omar, for example, and we don't know exactly when they got there. All you could say is that they all seem to be together in about 1120. And in the game in Assassin's Creed, we see the Templars working in the Third Crew.

in the 1190s. Why are military orders springing up in the buildup to that period in the 12th century? What are they a reaction to? There's two things going on which we ought to take into account. One is big upheaval in the Catholic Church, the Catholic Church in Europe, that is. Not just the noble people who could afford to become monks, but now people not from the noble classes were joining the church and forming originally ad hoc groups of her. hermits living in caves in Italy or Spain, and these become acknowledged by the church as a good idea and become formal orders. We could see the temples as being an offshoot from this, lay people coming together and forming their own religious group. The church had become more

willing to acknowledge these individual small group ideas, a bit more bottom up than top down. The other aspect was the rise of ideas of knighthood, chivalry, as it becomes known, from the French chivalry which just means knighthood. And the Templars fit into these ideas of knights can serve God simply by being knights. There is a standard of behaviour that they should adhere to, protecting other people at the risk of their own lives, laying down their own lives in defence of others, particularly those that can't defend themselves.

So women, the elderly children, church people, who are only supposed to fight itself defence and are probably not trained to fight. So the Templars combine these ideas of new religious life, and idealised knighthood. But they're not quite like most secular knights because they concentrate on the austerity, which is characteristic of religious orders. And they're not operating as individuals.

As anyone who's read the stories of King Arthur will know, they're very much focused on individual knights, but Templars operate as a group, they're a community. So they have this communal lifestyle, communal mindset. So it sounds like they were a reaction to quite a few things that were going on at the time. is it fair to see them as a thoroughly modern movement at the time? Oh yes, cutting edge were the Templars when they were founded.

The very latest thing in religious ideology and secular movement, which is one reason they were so popular among ordinary people, anyone who could afford to give them something, deed, down to when I die, they can have my horse. And you mentioned that the primary purpose of the Templars was to protect Christian pilgrims on their way to the Holy Land. Were they successful in that? Yes.

On the whole, they were. And the hospitalers who became militarised a bit after the Templars, they signed off as a hospital and then they take up military activities for the same reason as the Templars. Pilgrims need protection. They commissioned ships and then they have their own ships to carry people from the West to the Holy Land. And the great advantage of traveling with the Templars or the hospitlers was you could be pretty sure you'd get there and you wouldn't get sold as a slave on the way. And then they would escort you along the pilgrim routes. It looks a little bit like a package tour. I was going to say it sounds a lot like buying a package tour with a tour rep coming with you, but I wondered whether I was being a bit naughty saying that.

Some scholars have made this comparison with a perfectly straight face, and others are saying that it's being flippant. But I like it because although these people don't go around photographic everywhere, they go around kissing all the sites instead. So you arrive at your holy site, you go in, you pray, you kiss any relics, you kiss the holy site. And some people obviously make written records of this, which they take home with them or they write it down when they get home.

so other people can read about their journey and can imagine that they're making this journey too and they're visiting the various holy sites so they can stop and pray while they're reading the description of the pilgrimage. So just as people also have vicarious holidays when they're watching other people's photographs or watch something on the television, you can have your vicarious pilgrimage.

And we associate the Templars today with a particular uniform with the white robes with the red cross on. They stand out in the Assassin's Creed game for wearing that. Where does that uniform originate from and how soon do they develop that? Originally, they didn't have any special clothing, but at the Council of Trois, very near where Hugh Dupon came from, in Champagne, in January 1129, the ecclesiastic who gathered there, the knights at any rate should wear a white mantle.

As a sign of purity, they had given away their old life, and they're now taken on this new lives. The Red Cross came later. Archbishop William II of Tyre, writing his history of the Crusader States from the mid-1160s to the mid-1180s, said that it was supposed to... Pope Eugenius III who gave him the Red Cross. He was Pope during the Second Crusade, so we can assume it was about that time. They were given the Red Cross. And the Red Cross represents the blood of Christ and the fact that Templars are supposed to shed their blood

for other Christians on the battlefield. It's a very visible marker of that duality of what they do, the White Rose of the Priest, but the Red Cross to represent blood and the martial elements of what they do too. Absolutely. Visually, very striking. Non-nights didn't have the white mantle. They had to wear a dark-coloured mantle, so they wouldn't have been quite so obvious. And how did the Templars balance their religious duties with the military aspects of what they do? I mean, traditionally, the church frowned on people who spilled blood. How did they manage to balance those two things? The church had always said, yes, that clergy shouldn't shed blood, but there are certain people in society who should be able to shed blood, if they might have to do penance for it

afterwards because they're defending other Christians. And some of Jesus' earliest followers were actually soldiers. Some of the early Christians mentioned in the Book of Acts of the New Testament are soldiers. So clearly you can be a soldier and serve Christ, but you're not supposed to go around murdering people. You're supposed to be serving Christ by protecting other Christians. So when the Templars take this up, it's not an entirely new idea, but the idea of ordinary knights being allowed by the church to do this to wipe out their sins was something that Canadaist church lawyers were still working on, it was part of the idea behind the First Crusade, but of course the First Crusade was only temporary. On the other hand, taking on this monastic

lifestyle suited this very well because monks already claim to be fighting God's battle, but in prayer. So the Templars are a militia of God, but now they're fighting physically. So that can be easily adapted to suit knights in the order of the temple. They have very strict discipline, as monks do. Monks are all supposed to obey their abbot, and this idea of command and control that you have a monastic order works very well for a military order as well. Everybody should obey the master. And then he has this hierarchy of officials under him. Each one knowing what their particular duties are, which again works very well for an army. And they have a very strong mission statement. Every army needs its mission statement,

whereas monks serve God in prayer and contemplation knights serve Christ as Christ's army and lay down their lives for Christians and in protection of Christians. territory. So it's not actually that difficult to reconcile the two. There are a few practical difficulties like what you do if it's time for Matins and you're all out in the field, well then rather than having a formal service, you might have to just recite a certain number of the Lord's Prayer, the Patanostas from the horseback. So certain things had to be adapted in the regulations of the Templars as they're developed over the years as they had to adapt to deal with current conditions as a comment that they might have to have their sins.

forward forgiven before they set off and a voyage, for example, because the chances of drowning at sea when you're on the way to Europe or coming back from Europe quite high. So you have to take precautions. But on the whole, they managed to balance their rule of life like monks would have with their military activities as an army would need to have. And as I say, the discipline aspect is there in both monks and in warriors. so the Templars were a very disciplined force and very much admired for their discipline. And I guess that mental gymnastics and that development of the rules is worth it for the church

to have such a potent force at its disposal. It really was necessary to have a permanent military force out of the Crusader states. It was clear that none of the secular nobles could provide something that was permanent and that could be relied on to turn up when needed. This was always a headache in the West. when the kings of Spain are organising their campaigns against the Muslims in Spain, their nobles don't always turn up when summoned. But the Templars will always turn up.

Always ready for a fight. It's one disadvantage, though, of the military orders being religious and only answerable in theory to the Pope, and they don't always answer to the Pope either. Because they know their Christ army, they often think they know best. So the King of Jerusalem might have one idea, the leader of the Crusade might have another idea, and the Templars have their own idea, and the hospitals have their own idea. and this will have been reinforced by prayer and discussion and their experiences in the Holy Land. And it's very difficult to talk them out of what they think.

They're not actually answerable to secular authority, so they don't have to pay attention to secular authority. And that must have caused problems if everyone agrees on the aim, but nobody agrees on the way to get there. Yes, it was definitely a problem during the Second Crusade and subsequently. You needed somebody with a very strong leadership skills, charismatic character like Richard the Lionheart and the Third Crusade to keep the military orders on side. How good were the Knights Templar? Do they deserve their incredible military reputation? I mean, in the game, they're seen as the natural foils to the assassins. We know that Al-Tayr in the game is forced to fight Robert de Sabley,

the Grand Master of the Templar Order. Are they worthy rivals? They were as good as their reputation. They were a team. They'd worked together, fought together. They knew each other's weaknesses and strengths, unlike other armours of the time. It was unusual in Europe at this time to have military forces that work together long term,

except perhaps some of the mercenary companies who would stay together for a long period. One of the reasons they get blamed for defeats is because they were seen as the elite military force in the battle. Therefore, if we lost it must be their fault. Because we didn't expect much of the others, but the Templars we expected more of. The fact that people continue to give them donations, join the Templars, right up to the end of 1307, is an indication of how successful they were seen and how highly they were regarded in the West. And the game in Assassin's Creed,

it pits the Templars against the assassins as the two pinnacles of different ideologies. Do you think it's fair to see the Templars as this real pinnacle of the Christian military presence in the Holy Land? Templars were certainly a pinnacle of one line of Christian ideology and the Holy Land. Of course, the various leaders of the Crusader states could never agree on what the best policy was.

So, for example, the Templars and the hospital has disagreed in the 30th centuries after the Third Crusade or whether they should be aligned with Egypt or Damascus. And either one could be argued, and scholars are still arguing over that one. And so likewise, during the Third Crusade, in fact, the military orders did agree that they shouldn't go and capture Jerusalem because they didn't think they could hold it. They should go and capture Egypt first. And Richard the Lionheart decided he would do that because he respected their views. but others said no we should have gone to Jerusalem. And again, scholars are still arguing over that.

So it's clearly not an easy decision to make. Over on the warfare podcast by history here, we bring you brand new military histories from around the world. Each week, twice a week, we release new episodes with world-leading historians, expert policymakers, and the veterans who served, from the greatest tanks of the Second World War. And so what are you actually trying to get out of your tank?

You're trying to get maneuverability and you're trying to get a really big gun. Your tiger and your pamph are there to dominate the battlefield, primarily on the east of front and in the North Africa and all that sort of stuff. But by the time they're actually coming in in decent numbers, that moment has already passed. Through to new histories that help us understand current conflicts. Any invader, any attacker, any adversary will exploit gaps within society. It was true then, it's true today.

But the Finns signaled that they were united, and I think that's what the Ukrainians should signal today too. Subscribe to Warfare from History Hit, wherever you get your podcast, and join us on the... front lines of military history. How did the influence of the Templars begin to spread beyond the Holy Land? Because they would reach all the way across Christian Europe over the decades and centuries that followed their establishment.

The Templars had property right across Latin, Christian Europe, except in Scandinavia. And they started to acquire that very, very quickly. In 1120, Count Fork the 5th of Anjou went to Jerusalem on pilgrimage, and he joined the Templars for a short period, and then you were allowed to join as a temporary member, and then he went back to the West and continued to give them donations. And according to Audric Fertalus, a monk from England, a fact from the English-Wolish border who was in a Norman monastery, he also encouraged other people to make donations to the Templars. So that's right from the very beginning of the Templars' existence, they had Foucavengeau agitating for them and encouraging

other people to join. And Hugh de Pau's lord, Count Hugh of Champagne, joined around 1125. then in the Iberian Peninsula, the king of Aragon, Alphonsea I had already been trying to found his own military religious order from the early 1120s. And he clearly found it was difficult to do this, just one kingdom without the resources that you need to keep it going on a long-term basis. So he ended up in 1131 when he made his will, donating his kingdom to the canons of the Holy Sepulchre. Those are the priests that run the Holy Sepulaheuvre in Jerusalem, the hospitalism and the Templars. So that's hardly more than a decade after the Templars had been founded. They were being given a third of a kingdom, which they did not in fact get. And the Queen of Portugal was giving them a valuable castle by 1128.

So the idea caught on very, very quickly in the West. People clearly thought, I can't go on pilgrimage myself, but I would like to help people in the Holy Land. I want to help protect the Crusader states. I'll make a donation to the Templars. And they will pray for me because they were religious order. and when they're out there fighting, I'll be praying for them, and it would be almost the same as if I was doing myself.

Well, obviously not quite. Yeah, I was going to say, is it a way of people who couldn't or wouldn't or didn't want to go on crusade, feeling like they were participating, they could support the Templars, which was supporting the effort in the Holy Land, and the effect of that is that they begin to acquire land all over the place in Europe? Absolutely. That's what people thought it would appear, because when they gave their donations, they referred to Jerusalem and the Templars who protect the Holy Subbook there.

And did the Templars, as they grow and they change and they become more powerful, do they lose sight of what they were originally founded to do? They were there to help pilgrims get to Jerusalem. But as you mentioned, Jerusalem is eventually lost. The Templars don't cease to exist because of that. Did they change? Do they alter their approach? They had the problem that as people gave them donations in the West,

they expected something back. So whereas the Templar's regulations indicate that they're supposed to be giving a third of the income, or at least the profit from each the properties they have in the West, to headquarters, be it in Jerusalem or later in Aker. In fact, they had their patrons saying, well, we've given you all this land, but we want, for example, grandmother wants someone to look after her in her old age, she wants to come and live as a hermit in your estate. And so then the Templars would have to support her.

She brings somebody with her, but it's a bit like going into a care home. After a certain point, your money's gone. And some people seem to have bought these care packages for their families, so clearly that is going to be a drain on resources. But the order itself, the brothers continue to talk about, we are defenders of the Holy Church, we are defenders of the Christians. They were still running boats out to the Holy Land, so they could take pilgrims as far as Ako into the Christian territories there.

They just couldn't necessarily get you to Jerusalem anymore. And of course, they were also fighting in the Arboriansiansians. in the frontier against the Muslims in Spain and Portugal. So they still had got a front in the West as well as continuing to attempt to recover territory in the East. The problem from their point of view would be, is it, can we recover Jerusalem and keep it? They did try and get it back. They did get it back briefly in the 1240s, and then it was captured off them again.

Is it better just to try and maintain a foothold here and negotiate with the Muslims and negotiate terms so that pilgrims can visit Jerusalem, be realistic about this, perhaps. We can see we aren't going to be able to hold Jerusalem permanently. So where do we go from here? Are we just trying to hold our line, maintain a presence knowing we can't actually recover land and hold onto it? And they get criticised for that in the West, people who think they ought to be able to recover Jerusalem. These, of course, are the armchair critics that every general has always had to compete with. It seems to be, if that was their driving force, I mean, Richard the first goes to the Holy Land and almost gets to Jerusalem, and he seems determined not to make an attempt

on Jerusalem. Do you think he's being pushed by people like the Templars who desperately do want to recover Jerusalem? Because that's so core to what they exist for. Yes, Richard the Lionheart had to balance the different advice he was getting. So the Templinus and Hospital has, in fact, advised him not to go and attack Jerusalem at this point, because they wanted more support from the West before they made an attempt on Jerusalem, they were afraid that if Richard Cot captured Jerusalem, everybody would then go home as they had after the first crusade. And they wouldn't have the manpower left to hold it. So they wanted to keep the crusade going a bit longer while they made other key conquests

around, such as Egypt and securing supply lines from Egypt, Beirut in the North, so they had that, get that valuable port back. And then they make an attempt on Jerusalem. because what they didn't know at that point that they didn't actually have that much time because Richard was going to be recalled to the West. On the other hand, if they had hug around a bit longer and Richard hadn't gone back,

Saladin died in 1193 and they might then have been able to make an attempt on the city. So there's a lot of criticism for not making that attempt. There is one account which says, if only we'd know, and in fact, we could have captured Jerusalem at that point because Saladin's troops were in confusion and Saladin wasn't able to hold on to his troops

and they were all wanting to disperse their various homes and we could have captured Jerusalem and held it. But, you know, hindsight is a wonderful thing. Yeah. And as the Crusader kind of grip on the Holy Land slips further and further away from Jerusalem, what does the Knight Templar Order look like? I mean, I imagine if they're acquiring all of this land

and money in Europe, it becomes a big administrative machine to run that in Europe. In Europe, they are not only running their estates. They've also got houses in many towns and cities which they're letting out, so they now become landlords, evil landlords charging rent to innocent young people, as we have so many problems with that now. They move money across Europe because they wanted to get money to the holy land, of course, so they effectively set up a banking system. They're not quite like modern banks, the French historian Alan Demageau has argued, because they don't lend money.

out to other places and collect interest on that, as modern banks do, except that there are occasionally indications that they might have been doing that. So they're quite like a modern bank, and they would do money transfers for you, but then that's another layer of administration. They have to keep money records, so not only for their own money, but for everybody else's. And then because they were very trusted as knights and monks, regardless of people of great integrity, they get dragged into administration for lords and kings and the Pope as well. all these things, and yet they want to recapture Jerusalem. So they were still insisting that that was their purpose,

that they wanted to do that, and that was why people were joining the order, although there do seem to be a few people that joined, because they thought it could be a very good career in the Royal Service, and the best way of getting into Royal Service was to join the Templars, and then you could get into Royal Service about the back door, as it were. And just how, at their height, just how powerful were the Templars? Well, they had the Pope's ear, whether or not they listened to what the Pope's told them, because A. Templar was the Pope's cubicularis. It's one of the officials of his bedchamber,

and the hospitalist had one too, so they could always get the popes here. Then they have roles for monarchs. So in England and in Aragon, they helped to run the treasury. They have a backup deposit system where the king leaves some of his valuables. And in France, I actually ran the royal treasury for a long time. So, yes, the king can't do without them. They also act as the ambassadors, not just for kings, but also for lords because they're very trusted. And because they are also military people, they're regarded as being the sort of people that doesn't get attacked and thrown off their horses and have all their letters stolen from them. And because they're religious, they may be exempt from some of the problems that other secular ambassadors had. Their members are

always travelling around Europe collecting money. So some people accused them of carrying secret messages for monarchs. So in all these respects, they're extremely influential. They seem to be quite popular landlords, in fact, despite my comments of earlier, because they have so many exemptions, not only from the Pope, but also from bishops and kings and landlords, but they don't have to pay taxes on this, and they don't have to do this due or that due, because all the money is going to the Holy Land. If you're their tenant, you may also be able to claim these exemptions. Now, technically, you shouldn't be able to, but the temple has sort of blurred this. Although there are tenants so they count as our brotherhood so they can have some of the benefits of the brotherhood.

And likewise, the Templars were allowed to exonerate their own members from excommunication and they again appear to have pushed this on a little bit further than it was supposed to go and start exonerating their servants and their tenants as well. So quite nice landlords. And their tenants used to put Templars crosses on their houses to show up. We're at Templars. The bishop comes on his visitation and says, do you all you all? not and take that cross down and they don't. But those are incredible powers to be acquiring. The ability to quash someone's excommunication was meant to rest kind of just really with the Pope. Yes, but they are Christ's army and they will tell you that although they answer to the Pope,

but sometimes the Pope doesn't know his own mind. We know Christ's mind because we pray every day and we shed our blood on the battlefield. And you warriors all know that warriors are much closer to God than monks are because monks just sit in their monasteries and all they do is pray. They don't know what it's like out there on the battlefield. The Templars are the best of both. worlds. To what extent do you think the Templars became victims of their own success, both in the sense that we know they will fall eventually, but also they don't ever recover Jerusalem, which is their stated aim? Is that because they get distracted and sidetracked and they become victims of their own success at the point where they're too busy to do what they were originally founded to

do? They were victims of their own success and that people expect so much of them. They think they should just be able to walk across the Mameloks who are actually the greatest warriors on the planet at this point and walk straight in Jerusalem. That is not going to happen. But it was not the Templar's fault that the Mamluk seized control in Egypt during the 1250s and finally by 1260. And this is a very well-led, well-organized, professional military force. And the Templars, the hospitalers and the leaders of the Crusader states don't really have an answer to the Mamlok's powerful military machine. So in fact, Bostom Amloks had united most of what had been the Crusader states and the various

disparate Muslim states in the Middle East under their banner. It was not going to be easy for anyone to dislodge them. The Mongols tried. The Mongol Ilhanids invaded the area, and they did make conquests, but they don't stay. So at the time in the Crusader states were reducing just Cyprus after 1291, the Christians on Cyprus can make bridgeheads. The Templars held Arrood Island, otherwise known as Ruud Island, off Tortoza for a few years, but they can't hold it permanently. The Mamluk come up with their navy from Egypt because the Mamluk have an effective navy. There hadn't been an effective navy since Saladin a century earlier, and they just wiped the Templars off Ruudan.

In that respect, no matter how powerful the Templars had been, they couldn't stand against the Mamlux. I think the whole Christian Europe wasn't in a position to be able to hold on to territory in the Holy Land, apart for the fact that the ruler's Christian Europe all had other things on their minds. So, although the people still wanted Jerusalem, etc., kings had other battles to fight. Can we think of the Templars then as being too inflexible? Did they just not find a way to adapt to the new challenges that the Crusades were bringing? We could argue that they were too inflexible. They would tell us that actually they were still trying to do what they could, that they were supporting the Pope's attempts to ban trade with the Muslims, for example,

and stop people selling the latest and great weaponry to the Muslims. It was a very good trade in that in the Eastern Mediterranean. So there was an expedition. The commander of the Auverne, Imburt Blanc, was involved in organising an expedition around Eastern Mediterranean in the summer of 1306 to try and stop these traders. And it would appear that he was going to organise another one, which didn't happen for the reasons of the trial.

they were still trying to organise a crusade but there was different opinions over what the crusade should be because they were up against the Mamluks as one of the people at the second house of Leon said the early 1270s it's like a little dog barking at a big one we're never going to get anywhere against the Mamluks and the Mongols so the Templars were attempting to organise a big expedition

but it wasn't getting anywhere what could they have done they could have done like the hospitalists and just paced themselves on one island roads and used that as a bridgehead not that the hospital has ever got back to the mainland. They could have gone and fought somewhere else entirely. The Teutonic order had gone to northeastern Europe, the Baltic, and they were fighting the Lithuanians,

who were still pagans, so that perhaps they should have done that in the Iberian Peninsula. And there's a hint in a writer in Austria in about 1316, who suggests that they might have been going to do that. This is 30 years after they lost acre, so he might be making it up either. What else could they have done? they could have done that.

I think to myself that more likely is they would continue to try and regain territory in the Eastern Mediterranean and find that they weren't getting anywhere. And they might have ended up like some of the other orders and eventually just being amalgamated into government service and becoming a military branch of the King of England's government, King of France's government, the King of Aragon, Portugal and Castigal's government, rather than being an independent force. It's fascinating. I mean, it sounds to me a lot like the makers of Assassin's Creed

picked a really good foil for the assassins, an incredibly powerful movement. We can see talk of them being involved in secrets and secret activity, which is exactly what the game plays on. It sounds like the Templars were the perfect pick for Assassin's Creed. And one of the advantages of the Templars is that they were abolished, therefore you're not fredding on anybody's toes. Or at least supposedly.

Next time on Assassins v. Temple. It's the Grand Master of the Evil Templars, Robert de Sable, as Dan Snow is joined by the expert on the man himself, Peter Edbury. Make sure you're following the Echoes of History podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast from, so you don't miss a single episode, and you can listen to the rest of the series there too. This series is a special collaboration between Ubisoft and History Hit, with post-production undertaken by Paradiso Media. Hi guys, Dan here from Dan Snow's History Hit. We're teaming up with Ubisoft's Echoes of History podcast to bring you Assassins versus Templars, an entire season dedicated to exploring the dark histories that inspired the Assassin's Creed video games. We'll be charging headfirst into the history of the Crusades.

Crusades are a particular species of war, a holy war. No other event in medieval history attracted such attention and such fame and glory. uncovering the secrets of the mythical Holy Grail. Quite frankly, in the course of my research, I've come across at least eight objects that claim to be the Holy Grail. Exploring the rise of the assassins and the origins of the Knights Templar. The Templars were the first military religious order as such, although it wasn't a new idea for Christians to fight in defence of Christendom,

but it's the Templars who became the first permanent professional military religious force. Check out the whole season of Assassins. versus Templars by following echoes of history wherever you get your podcasts.