That midsummer battle of Bannockburn undid all the work of Edward I., and made Scotland an independent kingdom for three hundred years longer. Ill-government, a discontented nobility, and a feeble King, had brought England so low, that the troops could not shake off their dejection, and a hundred would flee before two or three Scottish soldiers. Bruce ravaged the northern counties every summer, leaving famine and pestilence behind him; but Edward II. had neither spirit nor resolution to make war or peace. The mediation of the Pope and King of France was ineffectual, and years of warfare passed on, impressing habits of perpetual license and robbery upon the borderers of either nation.
CAMEO XXXIX. THE KNIGHTS OF THE TEMPLE. (1292-1316.)
Kings of England.
1272. Edward I.
1307. Edward II.
King of Scotland.
1306. Robert I.
Kings of France.
1285. Philippe IV.
1314. Louis X.
Emperors of Germany.
1292. Adolph.
1296. Albert I.
1308. Henry VII.
1314. Louis V.
Popes.
1296. Boniface VIII.
1303. Benedict XI.
1305. Clement V.
Crusades were over. The dream of Edward I. had been but a dream, and self-interest and ambition directed the swords of Christian princes against each other rather than against the common foe. The Western Church was lapsing into a state of decay and corruption, from which she was only partially to recover at the cost of disruption and disunion, and the power which the mighty Popes of the twelfth century had gathered into a head became, for that very cause, the tool of an unscrupulous monarch.
The colony of Latins left in Palestine had proved a most unsuccessful experiment; the climate enervated their constitutions; the poulains, as those were called who were born in the East, had all the bad qualities of degenerate races, and were the scorn, and derision of Arabs and Europeans alike; nor could the defence have been kept up at all, had it not been for the constant recruits from cooler climates. Adventurous young men tried their swords in the East, banished men there sought to recover their fame, the excommunicate strove to win pardon by his sword, or the forgiven to expiate his past crime; and, besides these irregular aids, the two military and monastic orders of Templars and Hospitallers were constantly fed by supplies of young nobles trained to arms and discipline in the numerous commanderies and preceptories scattered throughout the West.
Admirable as warriors, desperate in battle, offering no ransom but their scarf, these knightly monks were the bulwark of Christendom, and would have been doubly effective save for the bitter jealousies of the two orders against each other, and of both against all other Crusaders. Not a disaster happened in the Holy Land but the treachery of one order or the other was said to have occasioned it; and, on the whole, the greater degree of obloquy seems usually, whether justly or not, to have lighted on the Knights of the Temple. They were the richer and the prouder of the two orders; and as the duties of the hospital were not included in their vows, they neither had the same claims to gratitude, nor the softening influence of the exercise of charity, and were simply stern, hated, dreaded soldiers.
After a desperate siege, Acre fell, in 1292, and the last remnant of the Latin possessions in the East was lost. The Templars and Hospitallers fought with the utmost valor, forgot their feuds in the common danger, and made such a defence that the Mussulmans fancied that, when one Christian died, another came out of his mouth and renewed the conflict; but at last they were overpowered by force of numbers, and were finally buried under the ruins of the Castle of the Templars. The remains of the two orders met in the Island of Cyprus, which belonged to Henry de Lusignan, claimant of the crown of Jerusalem. There they mustered their forces, in the hope of a fresh Crusade; but as time dragged on, and their welcome wore out, they found themselves obliged to seek new quarters. The Knights of the Hospital, true to their vows, won sword in hand the Isle of Rhodes from the Infidel, and prolonged their existence for five centuries longer as a great maritime power, the guardians of the Mediterranean and the terror of the African corsairs. The Knights Templars, in an evil hour for themselves, resolved to spend their time of expectation in their numerous rich commanderies in Europe, where they had no employment but to collect their revenues and keep their swords bright; and it cannot but be supposed that they would thus be tempted into vicious and overbearing habits, while the sight of so formidable a band of warriors, owning no obedience but to their Grand Master and the Pope, must have been alarming to the sovereign of the country. Still there are no tokens of their having disturbed the peace during the twenty-two years that their exile lasted, and it was the violence of a king and the truckling of a pope that effected their ruin.
Philippe IV., the pest of France, had used his power over the French clergy to misuse and persecute the fierce old pontiff, Boniface VIII., and it was no fault of Philippe that the murder of Becket was not parodied at Anagni. Fortunately for the malevolent designs of the King, his messengers quailed, and contented themselves with terrifying the old man into a frenzied suicide, instead of themselves slaying him. The next Pope lived so few days after his election, that it was believed that poison had removed him; and the cardinals remained shut up for nine months at Perugia, trying in vain to come to a fresh choice. Finally, Philippe fixed their choice on a wretched Gascon, who took the name of Clement V., first, however, making him swear to fulfil six conditions, the last and most dreadful of which was to remain a secret until the time when the fulfilment should be required of him.
Lest his unfortunate tool should escape from his grasp, or gain the protection of any other sovereign, Philippe transplanted the whole papal court to Avignon, which, though it used to belong to the Roman empire, had, in the break-up after the fall of the Swabian house, become in effect part of the French dominions.