Chapter VI (3)

After the fall of Acre, the head-quarters of the Templars were established at Limisso in the island of Cyprus, and urgent letters were sent to Europe for succour. The armies of sultan Kelaoun in the mean time assaulted and carried Tyre, Sidon, Tortosa, Caiphas, and the Pilgrim’s Castle. The last three places belonged to the Templars, and were stoutly defended, but they were attacked by the Egyptian fleet by sea, and by countless armies of infidels by land, and were at last involved in the common destruction. The Grand Master, Gaudini, overwhelmed with sorrow and vexation at the loss of the Holy Land, and the miserable situation of his order, stripped of all its possessions on the Asiatic continent, died at Limisso, after a short illness, and was succeeded (A. D. 1295) by Brother JAMES DE MOLAY, of the family of the lords of Longvic and Raon in Burgundy. This illustrious nobleman was at the head of the English province of the order at the period of his election to the dignity of Grand Master. He was first appointed Visitor-General, then Grand Preceptor of England, and was afterwards placed at the head of the entire fraternity. During his residence in Britain he held several chapters or assemblies of the brethren at the Temple at London, and at the different preceptories, where he framed and enforced various rules and regulations for the government of the fraternity in England.[141] Shortly after his appointment to the office of Grand Master, he crossed the sea to France, and had the honour of holding the infant son of Philip le Bel at the baptismal font. He then proceeded to Cyprus, carrying out with him a numerous body of English and French Knights Templars, and a considerable amount of treasure. Soon after his arrival he entered into an alliance with the famous Casan Cham, emperor of the Mogul Tartars, king of Persia, and the descendant or successor of Genghis Khan, and landed in Syria with his knights and a body of forces, to join the standard of that powerful monarch. Casan had married the daughter of Leon, king of Armenia, a christian princess of extraordinary beauty, to whom he was greatly attached, and who was permitted the enjoyment and public exercise of the christian worship. The Tartar emperor naturally became favourably disposed towards the Christians, and he invited the Grand Master of the Temple to join him in an expedition against the sultan of Egypt.

In the spring of the year 1299, the Templars landed at Suadia, and made a junction with the Tartar forces which were encamped amid the ruins of Antioch. An army of thirty thousand men was placed by the Mogul emperor under the command of the Grand Master, and the combined forces moved up the valley of the Orontes towards Damascus. In a great battle fought at Hems, the troops of the sultans of Damascus and Egypt were entirely defeated, and pursued with great slaughter until nightfall. Aleppo, Hems, Damascus, and all the principal cities, surrendered to the victorious arms of the Moguls, and the Templars once again entered Jerusalem in triumph, visited the Holy Sepulchre, and celebrated Easter on Mount Zion. Casan sent ambassadors to the pope, and to the sovereigns of Europe, announcing the victorious progress of his arms, soliciting their alliance, and offering them in return the possession of Palestine. But the Christian nations heeded not the call, and none thought seriously of an expedition to the east excepting the ladies of Genoa, who, frightened by an interdict which had been laid upon their town, assumed the cross as the best means of averting the divine indignation. The Grand Master of the Temple advanced as far as Gaza, and drove the Saracens into the sandy deserts of Egypt; but a Saracen chief, who had been appointed by the Tartars governor of Damascus, instigated the Mussulman population of Syria to revolt, and the Grand Master was obliged to retreat to Jerusalem. He was there joined by the Tartar general, Cotulosse, who had been sent across the Euphrates by Casan to support him. The combined armies were once more preparing to march upon Damascus, when the sudden illness of Casan, who was given over by his physicians, disconcerted all their arrangements, and deprived the Grand Master of his Tartar forces. The Templars were then compelled to retreat to the sea-coast and embark their forces on board their galleys. The Grand Master sailed to Limisso, stationing a strong detachment of his soldiers on the island of Aradus, near Tortosa, which they fortified; but they were speedily attacked in that position by a fleet of twenty vessels, and an army of ten thousand men, and after a gallant defence they were compelled to abandon their fortifications, and were all killed or taken prisoners.[142]

Thus ended the dominion of the Templars in Palestine, and thus closed the long and furious struggle between the CRESCENT and the CROSS! The few remaining Christians in the Holy Land were chased from ruin to ruin, and exterminated. The churches, the houses, and the fortifications along the sea-coast, were demolished, and everything that could afford shelter and security, or invite the approach of the crusaders from the west, was carefully destroyed. The houses were all set on fire, the trees were cut down and burnt, the land was everywhere laid waste, and all the maritime country, from Laodicea to Ascalon, was made desert. “Every trace of the Franks,” says the Arabian chronicler, Ibn Ferat, “was removed, and thus it shall remain, please God, till the day of judgment!”[143]

Near six centuries have swept over Palestine since the termination of the wars of the cross, and the land still continues _desolate_. The proud memorials of past magnificence are painfully contrasted with present ruin and decay, and the remains of the rich and populous cities of antiquity are surrounded by uncultivated deserts. God hath said, “I will smite the land with a _curse_. I will bring the worst of the heathen and they shall possess it.” “Thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof, and the defenced city shall be left desolate, and the habitation forsaken, and left like a wilderness.”

“The fig-tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be on the vine; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stall.” But brighter and happier times are yet to come, for the Lord God hath also said, “To the mountains of Israel, to the hills, and to the rivers, to the valleys, and the desolate wastes, and the cities that are forsaken, which became a prey and a derision to the heathen. Behold I am for you, I will turn unto you, and ye shall be tilled and sown, and I will multiply men upon you, and they shall build up the old waste cities, the desolation of many generations!”

“In the land of Benjamin, and in the places about Jerusalem, and in the cities of Judah, _shall the flocks pass again under the hand of him that telleth them, saith_ THE LORD!”