Chapter VI · (continued 2)

At sunrise on the following morning the air resounded with the deafening noise of drums and trumpets, and the breach was carried and recovered several times, the military friars at last closing up the passage with their bodies, and presenting a wall of steel to the advance of the enemy. Loud appeals to God, and to Mahomet, to Jesus Christ, to the Virgin Mary, to heaven and the saints, were to be heard on all sides; and after an obstinate engagement from sunrise to sunset, darkness put an end to the slaughter. The miners continued incessantly to advance their operations; another wide breach was opened in the walls, and on the third day (the 18th) the infidels made the final assault on the side next the gate of St. Anthony. The army of the Mamlooks was accompanied by a troop of sectaries called Chagis, a set of religious fanatics, whose devotion consisted in suffering all sorts of privations, and in sacrificing themselves in behalf of Islam. The advance of the Mamlook cavalry to the assault was impeded by the deep ditch, which had been imperfectly filled by the fallen ruins and by the efforts of the soldiers, and these religious madmen precipitated themselves headlong into the abyss and formed a bridge with their bodies, over which the Mamlooks passed to reach the foot of the wall. Nothing could withstand the fierce onslaught of the Moslems. In vain were the first ranks of their cavalry laid prostrate with the dust, and both horses and riders hurled headlong over the ruined walls and battlements into the moat below; their fall only facilitated the progress of those behind them, who pressed on sword in hand over the lifeless bodies of men and horses, to attack the faint and weary warriors guarding the breach.

The Grand Masters of the Temple and Hospital fought side by side at the head of their knights, and for a time successfully resisted all the efforts of the enemy. But as each knight fell beneath the keen scimitars of the Moslems, there were none in reserve to supply his place, whilst the vast hordes of the infidels pressed on with untiring energy and perseverance. Brother Matthew de Clermont, Marshal of the Hospital, after performing prodigies of valour, fell covered with wounds, and William de Beaujeu, as a last resort, requested the Grand Master of that order to sally out of an adjoining gateway at the head of five hundred horse, and attack the enemy’s rear. Immediately after the Grand Master of the Temple had given these orders, he was himself struck down by the darts and the arrows of the enemy; the panic-stricken garrison fled to the port, and the infidels rushed on with tremendous shouts of Allah acbar! Allah acbar! “God is victorious!” Thousands of panic-stricken Christians now rushed to the sea-side, and sought with frantic violence to gain possession of the ships and boats that rode at anchor in the port, but a frightful storm of wind, and rain, and lightning, hung over the dark and agitated waters of the sea; the elements themselves warred against the poor Christians, and the loud-pealing thunder became mingled with the din and uproar of the assault and the clash of arms. The boats and vessels were swamped by the surging waves; and the bitter cries of the perishing fugitives ascended alike from the sea and shore. Thousands fled to the churches for refuge, but found none; they prostrated themselves before the altars, and embraced the images of the saints, but these evidences of idolatry only stimulated the merciless fanaticism of the Moslems, and the Christians and their temples, their images and their saints, were all consumed in the raging flames kindled by the inexorable sons of Islam. The churches were set on fire, and the timid virgin and the hardened voluptuary, the nun and the monk, the priest and the bishop, all perished miserably before the altars and the shrines which they had approached in the hour of need, but which many of them had neglected in days of prosperity and peace. The holy nuns of St. Clare, following the example and exhortations of their abbess, mangled and disfigured their faces and persons in a most dreadful manner, to preserve their chastity from violation by the barbarous conquerors, and were gloriously rewarded with the crown of martyrdom, by the astonished and disgusted infidels, who slaughtered without mercy the whole sisterhood!

Three hundred Templars, the sole survivors of their order in Acre, had kept together and successfully withstood the victorious Mamlooks. In a close and compact column they fought their way, accompanied by several hundred christian fugitives, to the convent of the Temple at Acre, and shut the gates. They then assembled together in solemn chapter, and appointed the Knight Templar, Brother Gaudini, Grand Master. The Temple at Acre was surrounded by walls and towers, and was a place of great strength, and of immense extent. It was divided into three quarters, the first and principal of which contained the palace of the Grand Master, the church, and the habitation of the knights; the second, called the Bourg of the Temple, contained the cells of the serving brethren; and the third, called the Cattle Market, was devoted to the officers charged with the duty of procuring the necessary supplies for the order and its forces. The following morning very favourable terms were offered to the Templars by the victorious sultan, and they agreed to evacuate the Temple on condition that a galley should be placed at their disposal, and that they should be allowed to retire in safety with the christian fugitives under their protection, and to carry away as much of their effects as each person could load himself with. The Mussulman conqueror pledged himself to the fulfilment of these conditions, and sent a standard to the Templars, which was mounted on one of the towers of the Temple. A guard of three hundred Moslem soldiers, charged to see the articles of capitulation properly carried into effect, was afterwards admitted within the walls of the convent. Some Christian ladies and women of Acre were amongst the fugitives, and the Moslem soldiers, attracted by their beauty, broke through all restraint, and violated the terms of the surrender. The enraged Templars closed and barricaded the gates of the Temple; they set upon the treacherous infidels, and put every one of them, “from the greatest to the smallest,” to death. Immediately after this massacre, the Moslem trumpets sounded to the assault, but the Templars successfully defended themselves until the next day (the 20th). The Marshal of the order and several of the brethren were then deputed by Gaudini with a flag of truce to the sultan, to explain the cause of the massacre of his guard. The enraged monarch, however, had no sooner got them into his power, than he ordered every one of them to be decapitated, and pressed the siege with renewed vigour.

In the night, Gaudini, with a chosen band of his companions, collected together the treasure of the order, and the ornaments of the church, and sallying out of a secret postern of the Temple which communicated with the harbour, they got on board a small vessel, and escaped in safety to the island of Cyprus. The residue of the Templars retired into the large tower of the Temple, called “The Tower of the Master,” which they defended with desperate energy. The bravest of the Mamlooks were driven back in repeated assaults, and the little fortress was everywhere surrounded with heaps of the slain. The sultan, at last, despairing of taking the place by assault, ordered it to be undermined. As the workmen advanced, they propped the foundations with beams of wood, and when the excavation was completed, these wooden supports were consumed by fire; the huge tower then fell with a tremendous crash, and buried the brave Templars in its ruins. The sultan set fire to the town in four places; the walls, the towers, and the ramparts were demolished, and the last stronghold of the christian power in Palestine was speedily reduced to a smoking solitude.[140]

A few years back, the ruins of the christian city of Acre were well worthy of the attention of the curious. You might still trace the remains of thirty churches; and the quarter occupied by the Knights Templars continued to present many interesting memorials of that proud and powerful order. “The carcass,” says Sandys, “shows that the body hath been strong, doubly immured; fortified with bulwarks and towers, to each wall a ditch lined with stone, and under those, divers secret posterns. You would think, by the ruins, that the city consisted of divers conjoining castles, which witness a notable defence, and an unequal assault; and that the rage of the conquerors extended beyond conquest; the huge walls and arches turned topsy-turvy, and lying like rocks upon the foundation.” At the period of Dr. Clarke’s visit to Acre, the ruins, with the exception of the cathedral, the arsenal, the convent of the knights, and the palace of the Grand Master, were so intermingled with modern buildings, and in such a state of utter subversion, that it was difficult to afford any satisfactory description of them. “Many superb remains were observed by us,” says he, “in the pasha’s palace, in the khan, the mosque, the public bath, the fountains, and other parts of the town, consisting of fragments of antique marble, the shafts and capitals of granite and marble pillars, masses of the verd antique breccia, of the ancient serpentine, and of the syenite and trap of Egypt. In the garden of Djezzar’s palace, leading to his summer apartment, we saw some pillars of variegated marble of extraordinary beauty.”

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!”