Reginald de Vichier.
A. D. 1252.
The Grand Master, William de Sonnac, was succeeded by the Marshall of the Temple, Brother Reginald de Vichier.[292] King Louis, after his release from captivity, proceeded to Palestine, where he remained two years. He repaired the fortifications of Jaffa and Cæsarea, and assisted the Templars in putting the country into a defensible state. The Lord de Joinville remained with him the whole time, and relates some curious events that took place during his stay. It appears that the scheik of the assassins still continued to pay tribute to the Templars; and during the king’s residence at Acre, the chief sent ambassadors to him to obtain a remission of the tribute. He gave them an audience, and declared that he would consider of their proposal. “When they came again before the king,” says Joinville, “it was about vespers, and they found the Master of the Temple on one side of him, and the Master of the Hospital on the other. The ambassadors refused to repeat what they had said in the morning, but the Masters of the Temple and the Hospital commanded them so to do. Then the Masters of the Temple and Hospital told them that their lord had very foolishly and impudently sent such a message to the king of France, and had they not been invested with the character of ambassadors, they would have thrown them into the filthy sea of Acre, and have drowned them in despite of their master. ‘And we command you,’ continued the masters, ‘to return to your lord, and to come back within fifteen days with such letters from your prince, that the king shall be contented with him and with you.’”
The ambassadors accordingly did as they were bid, and brought back from their scheik a shirt, the symbol of friendship, and a great variety of rich presents, “crystal elephants, pieces of amber, with borders of pure gold,” &c. &c.[293] “You must know that when the ambassadors opened the case containing all these fine things, the whole apartment was instantly embalmed with the odour of their sweet perfumes.”
The Lord de Joinville accompanied the Templars in several marches and expeditions against the infidel tribes on the frontiers of Palestine, and was present at the storming of the famous castle of Panias, situate near the source of the Jordan.
A. D. 1254.
A. D. 1255.
At the period of the return of the king of France to Europe, (A. D. 1254,) Henry the Third, king of England, was in Gascony with Brother Robert de Sanford, Master of the Temple at London, who had been previously sent by the English monarch into that province to appease the troubles which had there broken out.[294] King Henry proceeded to the French capital, and was magnificently entertained by the Knights Templars at the Temple in Paris, which Matthew Paris tells us was of such immense extent that it could contain within its precincts a numerous army. The day after his arrival, king Henry ordered an innumerable quantity of poor people to be regaled at the Temple with meat, fish, bread, and wine; and at a later hour the king of France and all his nobles came to dine with the English monarch. “Never,” says Matthew Paris, “was there at any period in bygone times so noble and so celebrated an entertainment. They feasted in the great hall of the Temple, where hang the shields on every side, as many as they can place along the four walls, according to the custom of the order beyond sea....”[295] The Knights Templars in this country likewise exercised a magnificent hospitality, and constantly entertained kings, princes, nobles, prelates, and foreign ambassadors, at the Temple. Immediately after the return of king Henry to England, some illustrious ambassadors from Castile came on a visit to the Temple at London; and as the king “greatly delighted to honour them,” he commanded three pipes of wine to be placed in the cellars of the Temple for their use,[296] and ten fat bucks to be brought them at the same place from the royal forest in Essex.[297] He, moreover, commanded the mayor and sheriffs of London, and the commonalty of the same city, to take with them a respectable assemblage of the citizens, and to go forth and meet the said ambassadors without the city, and courteously receive them, and honour them, and conduct them to the Temple.[298]
Thomas Berard.
A. D. 1256.
The Grand Master, Reginald de Vichier, was succeeded by Brother Thomas Berard,[299] who wrote several letters to the king of England, displaying the miserable condition of the Holy Land, and earnestly imploring succour and assistance.[300] The English monarch, however, was too poor to assist him, being obliged to borrow money upon his crown jewels, which he sent to the Temple at Paris. The queen of France, in a letter “to her very dear brother Henry, the illustrious king of England,” gives a long list of golden wands, golden combs, diamond buckles, chaplets, and circlets, golden crowns, imperial beavers, rich girdles, golden peacocks, and rings innumerable, adorned with sapphires, rubies, emeralds, topazes, and carbuncles, which she says she had inspected in the presence of the treasurer of the Temple at Paris, and that the same were safely deposited in the coffers of the Templars.[301]
A. D. 1261.
The military power of the orders of the Temple and the Hospital in Palestine was at last completely broken by Bibars, or Benocdar, the fourth Mamlook sultan of Egypt, who, from the humble station of a Tartar slave, had raised himself to the sovereignty of that country, and through his valour and military talents had acquired the title of “the Conqueror.” He invaded Palestine (A. D. 1262) at the head of thirty thousand cavalry, and defeated the Templars and Hospitallers with immense slaughter.[302] After several years of continuous warfare, during which the most horrible excesses were committed by both parties, all the strongholds of the Christians, with the solitary exception of the Pilgrim’s Castle and the city of Acre, fell into the hands of the infidels.