The British Templars were not just bankers, diplomats and estate managers – many were swept up in the disastrous events unfolding in the Holy Land in 1187.
By 1185 the military situation in the Holy Land looked unremittingly grim. Saladin and his armies were invading the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem on an almost annual basis. In desperation, the patriarch of Jerusalem, Eraclius, led the most important crusading diplomatic mission of the twelfth century, to speak to King Henry II and his court.
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The mission started well but the lobbying eventually stalled. Eraclius did everything he could to move Henry to action but made little progress. Frustrated, angry and desperately aware of the consequences of failure, the patriarch overplayed his hand. He became openly critical of the English king.
Templars depicted by Matthew Paris
This was not a strategy calculated to achieve success. By the time Eraclius set off on his way back to the East, he had completely thrown diplomatic niceties to the wind. What could have been a productive final discussion between Henry and the patriarch at Dover ended up as a late-night shouting match, with insults and anger ending the mission to England.
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The British Templars did everything they could to salvage something of value from Eraclius’s disappointing diplomatic mission to the West. They helped ensure that he at least brought money and some men back with him. The retired British Templar master, Richard of Hastings, left England with his retinue to accompany the patriarch on his return journey to the crusader states.
Richard’s Templar comrades in the Latin East were trying in vain to defend the eastern frontiers. In the spring of 1187, the precarious truce collapsed. Saladin launched yet another series of coordinated assaults on the crusader states.
One of his armies carried out a massive cavalry foray deep into the heart of the kingdom of Jerusalem, ‘to plunder and destroy’ the villages around Acre. This detachment was chased by a Frankish column, some 110–140 cavalrymen in total, mostly Templars, who had set off in pursuit of the Turkic raiders earlier in the day. The tiny crusader force eventually intercepted them near the Spring of the Cresson.
The Battle of Cresson, miniature by Jean Colombe, in Passages d’outremer ca. 1474
Having found them, however, the Templars realised the enormity of the situation – the ‘raiding party’ they were chasing was in fact a group of some 6,000–7,000 cavalry. The numbers involved were huge, dwarfing their Frankish opponents. Despite its size, a force like this did not even qualify as an ‘army’ in the Muslim sources. One Muslim commentator merely described it as ‘a good-sized detachment’. But it was a profound example of just how outnumbered the Christian defenders were. Saladin’s cavalry ‘detachment’ was significantly bigger than the mounted arm of all three crusader states combined.
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Gerard of Ridefort, the Templar master, was in command. He insisted that his men try to charge their way through rather than go back to wait for reinforcements. The outcome was predictable. The knights fought as best they could but the end came with shocking speed. Within minutes the entire crusader forces, with the ironic exception of Gerard of Ridefort himself and a couple of other knights, were either dead or taken prisoner, awaiting death or captivity. Many of the Templar knights were killed or wounded in the charge. The survivors were bound and forced to kneel, before being beheaded by their captors.
The catastrophe at Cresson was just a foretaste of what was to come, however. A few weeks later, Saladin managed to goad the entire Christian army into a similarly foolhardy manoeuvre. As a provocation, he put the Christian castle of Tiberias under siege. The weak and vacillating King Guy of Lusignan was persuaded to take his troops to the rescue.
On 4 July 1187, the army continued to trudge eastwards, dehydrated to the point of incapacity. When it had almost arrived at the approaches to the hills known as the ‘Horns of Hattin’, it was brought to a standstill. Rather than stay on the defensive, the ever-aggressive Templars launched a desperate charge to buy some time and to relieve the mounting pressure on the army. Their attack had some initial success. But eventually, heavily outnumbered, the Templar cavalry were badly cut up and repulsed.
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The Templar rearguard was increasingly pushed back as the weight of numbers began to tell. A series of increasingly forlorn charges took place by the Franks towards the end of the battle, but the survivors were finally forced to surrender. The Templar prisoners were gathered together by Saladin. They were then hacked to death in an amateur but triumphalist way by his religious scholars and Sufis.
The Frankish army that was fought to a standstill and destroyed at the Battle of Hattin in 1187 was in large part the creation of Henry II and the British Templars. Together, they had arranged for large sums of money to be sent east and stored in Jerusalem. The master of the Templars, Gerard of Ridefort, had advised Guy of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem, to announce that all those who would join them would be well paid, as he would release the money deposited with the Temple by Henry. This treasure allowed Guy to assemble a formidable army of his own, which he, a weak man in an even weaker position, then proceeded to squander.
But the exact fate of the British Templars in those doomed ranks remains largely unknown. The old British Templar master, Richard of Hastings, for instance, had left England in 1185 with his men to accompany the patriarch of Jerusalem on his journey home. It would be good to hope that Richard died quickly in the forlorn but heroic charge at the Spring of the Cresson. Or perhaps that he was brought down by archery in the last moments of the desperate fighting at Hattin. Like many of his fellow brothers, however, it is all too likely that he was executed alongside the other prisoners from the military orders.
The Templars were amongst the first to send the appalling news of the Frankish collapse to the West. Most of the brothers in the Holy Land were dead. But, just a few days after the battle, Brother Terricus, now the most senior surviving Templar in the East, wrote back to his comrades in England and the other provinces of Europe. His letter, preserved by the chronicler Roger of Howden, begged for urgent help.
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The Templar order, according to Terricus, had been ‘almost annihilated’. There were a few stunned survivors, but the Templars in the East had ceased to exist as a fighting force. Terricus’s hurried letter ended with a poignant, desperate plea for his fellow brothers in the western preceptories ‘to come with all haste to our aid and that of eastern Christendom which is, at present, totally lost’. He was not exaggerating.
A few months later, in January 1188, Terricus had recovered sufficiently to write a more measured assessment of the situation, this time to Henry II. He gave the king an update on military progress in the East and reminded him that some Christian garrisons, including the Templars at Safad, were, against all logic, still holding out against Saladin’s armies. More optimistically, and doubtless to emphasise that the Latin East could still be saved if aid arrived in time, he informed Henry that the Templars and their Hospitaller comrades had helped to get aid to the Frankish holdouts in the coastal city of Tyre and had inflicted a naval reverse on Saladin’s fleet.
The damage had been severe. The Latin East had been almost swept away. But with help from the kings of England, the British Templars and others, all might not be lost.
Dr Steve Tibble is a graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge and London University. He is an Honorary Research Associate at Royal Holloway College, University of London. Steve is a leading authority on warfare and violence in the crusading era.
He is a contributor to ‘The Cambridge History of the Crusades’ and ‘The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades’, both forthcoming in 2023. You can learn more about Steve on his personal website, or follow him on Twitter or Instagram.
Further Reading:
Barber, M., The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple, Cambridge, 1994
Barber, M., and K. Bate, tr., Letters from the East: Crusaders, Pilgrims and Settlers in the 12th–13th Centuries, Farnham, 2010
Tibble, S., Templars – The Knights Who Made Britain, London, 2023
Top Image: Battle of Hattin depicted by Matthew Paris – Wikimedia Commons
By Steve Tibble
The British Templars were not just bankers, diplomats and estate managers – many were swept up in the disastrous events unfolding in the Holy Land in 1187.
By 1185 the military situation in the Holy Land looked unremittingly grim. Saladin and his armies were invading the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem on an almost annual basis. In desperation, the patriarch of Jerusalem, Eraclius, led the most important crusading diplomatic mission of the twelfth century, to speak to King Henry II and his court.
The mission started well but the lobbying eventually stalled. Eraclius did everything he could to move Henry to action but made little progress. Frustrated, angry and desperately aware of the consequences of failure, the patriarch overplayed his hand. He became openly critical of the English king.
This was not a strategy calculated to achieve success. By the time Eraclius set off on his way back to the East, he had completely thrown diplomatic niceties to the wind. What could have been a productive final discussion between Henry and the patriarch at Dover ended up as a late-night shouting match, with insults and anger ending the mission to England.
The British Templars did everything they could to salvage something of value from Eraclius’s disappointing diplomatic mission to the West. They helped ensure that he at least brought money and some men back with him. The retired British Templar master, Richard of Hastings, left England with his retinue to accompany the patriarch on his return journey to the crusader states.
Richard’s Templar comrades in the Latin East were trying in vain to defend the eastern frontiers. In the spring of 1187, the precarious truce collapsed. Saladin launched yet another series of coordinated assaults on the crusader states.
One of his armies carried out a massive cavalry foray deep into the heart of the kingdom of Jerusalem, ‘to plunder and destroy’ the villages around Acre. This detachment was chased by a Frankish column, some 110–140 cavalrymen in total, mostly Templars, who had set off in pursuit of the Turkic raiders earlier in the day. The tiny crusader force eventually intercepted them near the Spring of the Cresson.
Having found them, however, the Templars realised the enormity of the situation – the ‘raiding party’ they were chasing was in fact a group of some 6,000–7,000 cavalry. The numbers involved were huge, dwarfing their Frankish opponents. Despite its size, a force like this did not even qualify as an ‘army’ in the Muslim sources. One Muslim commentator merely described it as ‘a good-sized detachment’. But it was a profound example of just how outnumbered the Christian defenders were. Saladin’s cavalry ‘detachment’ was significantly bigger than the mounted arm of all three crusader states combined.
Gerard of Ridefort, the Templar master, was in command. He insisted that his men try to charge their way through rather than go back to wait for reinforcements. The outcome was predictable. The knights fought as best they could but the end came with shocking speed. Within minutes the entire crusader forces, with the ironic exception of Gerard of Ridefort himself and a couple of other knights, were either dead or taken prisoner, awaiting death or captivity. Many of the Templar knights were killed or wounded in the charge. The survivors were bound and forced to kneel, before being beheaded by their captors.
The catastrophe at Cresson was just a foretaste of what was to come, however. A few weeks later, Saladin managed to goad the entire Christian army into a similarly foolhardy manoeuvre. As a provocation, he put the Christian castle of Tiberias under siege. The weak and vacillating King Guy of Lusignan was persuaded to take his troops to the rescue.
On 4 July 1187, the army continued to trudge eastwards, dehydrated to the point of incapacity. When it had almost arrived at the approaches to the hills known as the ‘Horns of Hattin’, it was brought to a standstill. Rather than stay on the defensive, the ever-aggressive Templars launched a desperate charge to buy some time and to relieve the mounting pressure on the army. Their attack had some initial success. But eventually, heavily outnumbered, the Templar cavalry were badly cut up and repulsed.
The Templar rearguard was increasingly pushed back as the weight of numbers began to tell. A series of increasingly forlorn charges took place by the Franks towards the end of the battle, but the survivors were finally forced to surrender. The Templar prisoners were gathered together by Saladin. They were then hacked to death in an amateur but triumphalist way by his religious scholars and Sufis.
The Frankish army that was fought to a standstill and destroyed at the Battle of Hattin in 1187 was in large part the creation of Henry II and the British Templars. Together, they had arranged for large sums of money to be sent east and stored in Jerusalem. The master of the Templars, Gerard of Ridefort, had advised Guy of Lusignan, king of Jerusalem, to announce that all those who would join them would be well paid, as he would release the money deposited with the Temple by Henry. This treasure allowed Guy to assemble a formidable army of his own, which he, a weak man in an even weaker position, then proceeded to squander.
But the exact fate of the British Templars in those doomed ranks remains largely unknown. The old British Templar master, Richard of Hastings, for instance, had left England in 1185 with his men to accompany the patriarch of Jerusalem on his journey home. It would be good to hope that Richard died quickly in the forlorn but heroic charge at the Spring of the Cresson. Or perhaps that he was brought down by archery in the last moments of the desperate fighting at Hattin. Like many of his fellow brothers, however, it is all too likely that he was executed alongside the other prisoners from the military orders.
The Templars were amongst the first to send the appalling news of the Frankish collapse to the West. Most of the brothers in the Holy Land were dead. But, just a few days after the battle, Brother Terricus, now the most senior surviving Templar in the East, wrote back to his comrades in England and the other provinces of Europe. His letter, preserved by the chronicler Roger of Howden, begged for urgent help.
The Templar order, according to Terricus, had been ‘almost annihilated’. There were a few stunned survivors, but the Templars in the East had ceased to exist as a fighting force. Terricus’s hurried letter ended with a poignant, desperate plea for his fellow brothers in the western preceptories ‘to come with all haste to our aid and that of eastern Christendom which is, at present, totally lost’. He was not exaggerating.
A few months later, in January 1188, Terricus had recovered sufficiently to write a more measured assessment of the situation, this time to Henry II. He gave the king an update on military progress in the East and reminded him that some Christian garrisons, including the Templars at Safad, were, against all logic, still holding out against Saladin’s armies. More optimistically, and doubtless to emphasise that the Latin East could still be saved if aid arrived in time, he informed Henry that the Templars and their Hospitaller comrades had helped to get aid to the Frankish holdouts in the coastal city of Tyre and had inflicted a naval reverse on Saladin’s fleet.
The damage had been severe. The Latin East had been almost swept away. But with help from the kings of England, the British Templars and others, all might not be lost.
See also: The Templars in Britain: A Difficult and Ominous Beginning
You can buy Templars: The Knights Who Made Britain from
Amazon.com | Amazon.ca | Amazon.co.uk
Yale University Press
Dr Steve Tibble is a graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge and London University. He is an Honorary Research Associate at Royal Holloway College, University of London. Steve is a leading authority on warfare and violence in the crusading era.
His Templars: The Knights Who Made Britain (Yale) is due out in September 2023, and his two most recent books (‘The Crusader Armies’, Yale 2018, and ‘The Crusader Strategy’, Yale 2020) were received to critical acclaim. The latter was short-listed for the Duke of Wellington’s military history award, 2021.
He is a contributor to ‘The Cambridge History of the Crusades’ and ‘The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades’, both forthcoming in 2023. You can learn more about Steve on his personal website, or follow him on Twitter or Instagram.
Further Reading:
Barber, M., The New Knighthood: A History of the Order of the Temple, Cambridge, 1994
Barber, M., and K. Bate, tr., Letters from the East: Crusaders, Pilgrims and Settlers in the 12th–13th Centuries, Farnham, 2010
Tibble, S., Templars – The Knights Who Made Britain, London, 2023
Top Image: Battle of Hattin depicted by Matthew Paris – Wikimedia Commons
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