To Gerard de Riderfort succeeded the Knight Templar, Brother Walter.[217] Never did the flame of enthusiasm burn with fiercer or more destructive power than at this famous siege of Acre. Nine pitched battles were fought, with various fortune, in the neighbourhood of Mount Carmel, and during the first year of the siege a hundred thousand Christians are computed to have perished. The tents of the dead, however, were replenished by new comers from Europe; the fleets of Saladin succoured the town, the christian ships brought continual aid to the besiegers, and the contest seemed interminable.[218] Saladin’s exertions in the cause of the prophet were incessant. The Arab authors compare him to a mother wandering with desperation in search of her lost child, to a lioness who has lost its young. “I saw him,” says his secretary Bohadin, “in the fields of Acre afflicted with a most cruel disease, with boils from the middle of his body to his knees, so that he could not sit down, but only recline on his side when he entered into his tent, yet he went about to the stations nearest to the enemy, arranged his troops for battle, and rode about from dawn till eve, now to the right wing, then to the left, and then to the centre, patiently enduring the severity of his pain.”... “O God,” says his enthusiastic biographer, “thou knowest that he put forth and lavishly expended all his energies and strength towards the protection and the triumph of thy religion; do thou therefore, O Lord, have mercy upon him.”[219]
At this famous siege died the Patriarch Heraclius.[220]
CHAPTER VII.
Richard Cœur de Lion joins the Templars before Acre—The city surrenders, and the Templars establish the chief house of their order within it—Cœur de Lion takes up his abode with them—He sells to them the island of Cyprus—The Templars form the van of his army—Their foraging expeditions and great exploits—Cœur de Lion quits the Holy Land in the disguise of a Knight Templar—The Templars build the Pilgrim’s Castle in Palestine—The state of the order in England—King John resides in the Temple at London—The barons come to him at that place, and demand Magna Charta—The exploits of the Templars in Egypt—The letters of the Grand Master to the Master of the Temple at London—The Templars reconquer Jerusalem.
| “Therefore, friends, As far as to the sepulchre of Christ (Whose soldier now under whose blessed cross We are impressed and engag’d to fight,) Forthwith a power of English shall we levy, Whose arms were moulded in their mother’s womb, To chase these pagans, in those holy fields, Over whose acres walked those blessed feet, Which, fourteen hundred years ago, were nail’d, For our advantage, on the bitter cross.” |
Walter.
A. D. 1191.
Robert de Sablé.
A. D. 1191.
In the mean time a third crusade had been preached in Europe. William, archbishop of Tyre, had proceeded to the courts of France and England, and had represented in glowing colours the miserable condition of Palestine, and the horrors and abominations which had been committed by the infidels in the holy city of Jerusalem. The English and French monarchs laid aside their private animosities, and agreed to fight under the same banner against the infidels, and towards the close of the month of May, in the second year of the siege of Acre, the royal fleets of Philip Augustus and Richard Cœur de Lion floated in triumph in the bay of Acre. At the period of the arrival of king Richard the Templars had again lost their Grand Master, and Brother Robert de Sablé, or Sabloil, a valiant knight of the order, who had commanded a division of the English fleet on the voyage out, was placed at the head of the fraternity.[221] The proudest of the nobility, and the most valiant of the chivalry of Europe, on their arrival in Palestine, manifested an eager desire to fight under the banner of the Temple. Many secular knights were permitted by the Grand Master to take their station by the side of the military friars, and even to wear the red cross on their breasts whilst fighting in the ranks.
The Templars performed prodigies of valour; “The name of their reputation, and the fame of their sanctity,” says James of Vitry, bishop of Acre, “like a chamber of perfume sending forth a sweet odour, was diffused throughout the entire world, and all the congregation of the saints will recount their battles and glorious triumph over the enemies of Christ, knights indeed from all parts of the earth, dukes, and princes, after their example, casting off the shackles of the world, and renouncing the pomps and vanities of this life and all the lusts of the flesh for Christ’s sake, hastened to join them, and to participate in their holy profession and religion.”[222]