God's Battalions (21 page)

CRUSADER COLONIES?

Colonialism
refers to the exploitation of one society by another, by which the stronger society forces the weaker society into an unfair economic arrangement and thus enriches itself at the expense of the weaker society. The stronger nation achieves this by exerting direct political control over its colony; hence colonialism involves a resident ruling class of persons from the colonizing society (the colonials).
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This is the definition of
colonialism
assumed by many modern writers who identify the crusader kingdoms as Western colonies.

However, many historians of the Crusades who routinely refer to the crusader kingdoms as “colonies” and the Christians who remained in the Holy Land as “colonists” seem unaware of the negative, political implications of these words. In their usage these terms seem synonymous with
settlements
and
settlers.
In fact, although Joshua Prawer (1917–1990) is regarded as the major proponent of the crusader colonialism thesis, he nowhere suggests that these were colonies as that term is defined here and as it is used in modern economic and political discourse.
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All Prawer seems to have meant by
colonialism
is that the crusader kingdoms were ruled by people having a culture different from that of the previous rulers and many of the residents—that the rulers were westerners whereas most residents were easterners or Muslims. If that suffices to define a colony, then all conquests are colonies, and the crusaders merely seized a colony from the Turks (since they, too, were a ruling minority).

In any event, to identify the crusader kingdoms as colonies in the usual sense is absurd, as Prawer clearly understood. In terms of political control, the kingdoms were fully independent of any European state. In terms of economic exploitation, it would be more apt to identify Europe as a colony of the Holy Land, since the very substantial flow of wealth and resources was from the West to the East!

THE MILITARY ORDERS

Given the many unsuppressed Muslim strongholds, the kingdom remained a dangerous place, especially the roads over which pilgrims had to pass in order to reach Jerusalem. According to a Norse pilgrim, the road from the port of Jaffa to Jerusalem was “very dangerous. For the Saracens, always laying snares for Christians, lie hidden in the hollow places of the mountains, and the caves and rocks, watching day and night, and always on the look out for those whom they can attack on account of the fewness of their party, or those who have lagged behind…On that road not only the poor and the weak, but even the rich and the strong are in danger.”
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The prior of a Russian monastery agreed that along this road “the Saracens issue and massacre the pilgrims on their way.”
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Hence, the chronic problem: an acute shortage of military manpower. It was this situation of “endemic insecurity”
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that prompted the rise of a new kind of monastic order: military monks.

KNIGHTS TEMPLARS

At Easter 1119, a group of pilgrims was set upon by Muslims from Tyre. Three hundred were murdered, and sixty were taken into slavery.
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Perhaps in direct response to this massacre, two veterans of the First Crusade, the Frankish knights Hugues de Payens and his relative Godfrey de Saint-Omer, proposed the creation of a monastic order for the protection of pilgrims. That may be how the Knights Templars began. But another account has it that “Hou[g] de Payn” led thirty knights to Jerusalem at the start of the reign of Baldwin II, having sworn to fight for the kingdom for three years and then to take holy orders. He and his knights proved to be such superb fighters that, after the Easter disaster, Baldwin talked them out of taking holy orders and into helping defend the pilgrim routes. Baldwin gave them a wing of his palace known as the House of Solomon (sited where Solomon’s Temple was believed to have stood) for their residence and the taxes of some villages for their support.

What is certain is that Hugues de Payens and his knights—numbering from nine to thirty, depending on the account—did enter Baldwin’s service around 1119 and were not yet a religious order, military or otherwise. Apparently, it was not long before Hugues de Payens and his knights began to consider themselves an order and to refer to their domicile as the Temple. But they had no Rule and no official standing, although they already had begun to acquire funding: in 1121 Count Fulk V of Anjou seems to have given them “an annual subsidy of 30 Angevin livres.”
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References to other substantial gifts and subsidies made at this time also are known. Then in 1126, Hugues de Payens left Jerusalem and went back to Europe to seek new recruits and, more urgently, to seek official standing for an order embracing the seemingly contradictory concepts of the warrior monk.

Fortunately for him, he was able to secure the support of the most powerful man in Europe: Bernard of Clairvaux,
²⁹
head of the rapidly growing Cistercian order, the most respected theologian of the day, and so highly revered that he was able to publicly rebuke archbishops, popes, and kings without any fear of reprisal. In fact, he wrote a long treatise to specify the duties of the pope.
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Bernard was born into the nobility and raised to be a knight, but at age twenty he entered the Church. His knightly background was clearly reflected in the military structure he created for the Cistercians. Bernard also was an early and compelling advocate of chivalry, and many have suggested that he served as the model for the legendary Sir Galahad.
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Perhaps no one in Europe would have responded more favorably to the proposal to create an order of knightly monks, and he quickly did the two things that needed to be done. First, he wrote a Rule for the order. It consisted of seventy-two articles (or paragraphs), and, as with the rule for most orders, it was quite detailed. Not only did it prescribe the schedule for prayers and worship and commit the members to chastity, but it prohibited “reminiscences about past sexual conquests.”
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It also dealt with menus (meat could be served three times a week), with dress (the knights would wear white robes; the red cross on the robes came later), and with modesty (there could be no gold or silver decorations on their armor), and it even limited each knight to three horses and a squire. In addition to writing the Rule, Bernard arranged in 1128 for a Church council to be convened at Troyes were the Rule was accepted and official Church recognition was given to the Order of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon—soon to be known as the Knights Templars.

Unlike the conventional religious orders, the Templars did not permit young recruits; only mature, qualified knights need apply.
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They did, however, accept many lacking noble birth and knightly training to serve in many subsidiary roles. First among these were the
sergeants,
some of whom also were mounted, but most of whom served as infantry. Sergeants could not wear the white robes of the knights and were not expected to fight with the same degree of bravery.
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In addition were the
squires,
who were the personal servants of the knights, each knight having a squire to care for his horses and his armor. Squires sometimes served as infantry in battles. Beyond sergeants and squires were the
serving brothers,
a huge array of servants and support staff, from blacksmiths to cooks. Consequently, those who qualified as knights made up a very small proportion of any Templar garrison. By the middle of the twelfth century, the largest Templar garrisons in the kingdom “consisted of perhaps 50–60 knights, with as many as 400–500 other members.”
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The Templar garrison at Le Chastellet in 1178, when it was destroyed by Saladin, consisted of 80 knights and 750 sergeants.
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In fact, some castles were entirely manned by sergeants and servants.

In addition to members of the order, the Templars’ military forces often were augmented by temporary volunteers and by mercenaries. Apparently, serving with the Templars struck many European fighting men as very appealing, and it also brought them prestige upon their return, so a steady flow of men “volunteered for temporary membership.”
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In addition, the Templars often hired troops to expand their ranks. Not only were a large number of their crossbowmen mercenaries; they also hired knights and sergeants as well. Even so, the number of fighting men available to the Templars in the Holy Land was relatively modest; there were seldom more than three hundred knights and several thousand sergeants, scattered in many small garrisons.
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The reason their numbers remained small was the need to retain large numbers of members in Europe to staff the huge establishment that soon developed there.

In the immediate aftermath of the Council of Troyes, the order “underwent a rapid expansion throughout Europe,”
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some of these recruits having been motivated by Bernard’s eloquent treatise
In Praise of the New Chivalry
(1128), which stressed that anyone who served in “Christ’s Knighthood” was certain to be saved; hence: “Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s…Rejoice, brave fighter, if you live and conquer in the Lord; but rather exult and glory, if you die and are joined to the Lord.”
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That was directed to fighting men, but the “glamour” of the order was sufficient to also attract large numbers of lay brothers as well. The total enrollment of the order at its height is unknown, but it is quite credibly estimated that during their two centuries of existence almost twenty thousand Templars (knights and sergeants) died in combat.
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A huge wave of contributions also began at this time, some of it in precious metals, but most of it in land, forests, and estates: by 1150 the Templars owned more than forty castles and preceptories in Europe.
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It is estimated that eventually the Templars possessed nine thousand estates in England and France.
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Thus did the Templars quickly become immensely rich, but at the cost of needing to station large numbers of their members in Europe in order to manage these huge holdings. And because they sent large amounts of their income east to the kingdom of Jerusalem, they became experts in storing and moving wealth. In addition, they soon found that they could greatly add to their incomes by lending money, especially to nobility and other religious orders, at interest rates varying from 33 to 50 percent a year, although they often used a variety of means for disguising interest lest they be accused of usury. And so the Templars became, if not the central financial institution of Europe, at least a serious competitor to the international Italian banks.
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Consider but a few examples of their wealth and influence.

The Templar house in London has been characterized as the “medieval precursor of the Bank of England”
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and began holding the royal treasure in about 1185. In 1204, King John placed the crown jewels in the vault of the London Templars. Many others in England also placed large deposits of precious metals and jewels with the Templars, confident that there they would be safe from robbers, if not from the king: in 1263 King Edward confiscated the huge sum of ten thousand livres that had been deposited with the Templars by barons who had revolted against him.

The Templars also often served as middlemen in affairs of state: In 1158 the king of England arranged a marriage of his son to the daughter of the king of France. To ensure there was no cheating on paying the promised dowry, “some castles were given to the Templars”
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by the king of France, and in return the Templars paid the king of England the dowry after the marriage had taken place.

Because of their immense wealth, the Templars soon were “amongst the greatest money-lenders of Christendom.”
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Not only did the Templars lend to kings and nobles; they also undertook to manage their financial affairs. This management function rapidly expanded to such an extent that the Templars began to collect the nobility’s rents and taxes for them and either place the receipts on deposit or accept them as payment against previous loans. Indeed, the Templars became financially “indispensible to the French throne…the Paris Temple was literally the centre of financial administration in France. It offered a complete financial service, administering finances and collecting taxes, transmitting money, controlling debts, and paying pensions.”
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As Eleanor Ferris summed up: “In the unwarlike atmosphere of the counting-room, the soldiers of the Temple, for over a century, handled much of the capital of western Europe, becoming expert accountants, judicious administrators, and pioneers in that development of credit and its instruments, which was destined to revolutionize the methods of commerce and finance.”
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Not surprisingly, the Templars soon were extremely influential in political life: Grand Masters were routinely consulted on pending decisions of state, both in Europe (especially in England and France) and in the Holy Land.

What seems most remarkable is that, despite their many duties and financial functions, the Templars remained focused on their basic mission to defend the Holy Land, financially and with their arms. Consider the immense outlays involved in building and sustaining castles in Palestine. When they rebuilt the castle at Safad in the 1240s, even when the income from the nearby villages is subtracted, the cost ran to 1.1 million Saracen besants. A knight could be hired as a mercenary (furnishing his own horses and squire) for 120 besants a year; thus the initial cost of refurbishing this castle would have paid about 9,100 knights for a year. The best estimate is that it would have cost another 40,000 besants a year to maintain the castle, or 333 knights’ salaries. At this time the Templars had seven castles in Palestine, and the Hospitallers had three.50 Castles served as secure strongholds from which an area could be controlled. The military orders needed exceptionally strong castles that could be defended by very small garrisons because they always were so short of men.