(tense music)
- [Narrator] On the Eastern frontier of the Christian world,
faith, worship, and blood.
A new kind of conflict,
setting Muslim against Christian.
A holy land. A Holy War.
The Knights of Jerusalem's Temple, a new kind of soldier.
- The Templars were under discipline, like modern soldiers.
- [Narrator] Warriors for Christ.
- You would fight for God. God would be your law.
- [Narrator] They were masters of the battlefields
of the Middle East.
- The Knights Templar were very much seen
as the quintessential military order,
the classic military order.
- [Narrator] Their very appearance
made them icons of the Crusades.
- There are none more illustrious
or more renowned than them.
- [Narrator] They've become part of the myth
and romance of the Middle Ages.
But what's the real truth? Their untold story?
(intense music)
They would fight and gladly die in the service of their God.
The Order of the Knights Templar.
(music continues)
From the end of the 11th to the 15th century,
the Crusades raged across Europe and the Middle East.
Perhaps 200,000 people answered the call
of the Christian Pope, and left their homes behind.
They bore the sign of the cross.
They journeyed hundreds of miles
to besiege the very walls of Jerusalem.
And against all the odds, and all military logic,
they captured the holy city.
For the next two centuries,
the Crusader Kingdom thrived and survived,
as Christians held onto the ideal
that had been forged in their blood.
Elsewhere, the crusader zeal led them northward,
to the frontier with the pagan wilderness of the Baltic.
And southward, over the seas of the Mediterranean
and the Aegean, to the island fortresses of Greece
and the near East.
Long after the fall of Jerusalem,
and the rise of mighty Islamic empires,
Christians dreamed of the days, for good or bad,
of the holy city, and the ideals of the Crusaders.
The Knights Templar are among the most famous warriors
of the Middle Ages.
In the early 12th century,
the knight had become the symbol of the lower nobility.
The men who ran estates throughout kingdoms, and who,
mounted on horseback, were the most important figures
on the medieval battlefield.
But the Templars were more than just regular knights.
They had forsaken a secular life
for a devoutly Christian one.
The plain red cross on white.
To many, they're the archetype of the medieval knight.
St. George, the Christian warrior, the Crusader.
The Templar Order was born of such ideals,
and dominated not only the holy land and its battlefields.
It's also the domestic landscape of medieval Europe.
Yet the order ended in superstition and intrigue,
its members accused of heresy.
More than six centuries
since the Knights Templar were dissolved,
their story, more than ever,
fascinates many of the world's top medieval scholars.
- Well, I thought, I need to know more about these people.
Who are they, these great, remarkable, outstanding Templars?
The Templars are a medieval elite.
There's just no way around that.
They were the top dogs militarily.
- [Narrator] And in the popular imagination, too,
the allure of the Templars is just as strong.
So much so, that this can cause problems
for real historians.
- The Templars have given rise
to all sorts of myths and legends throughout history,
and it's astonishing today that there seems to be almost
a genre of Templar fiction with all sorts of ideas
and speculations associated with it.
- [Narrator] So who really were the Knights Templar,
and how did their order come about?
Given the layers of myth surrounding the order,
ranging from the unlikely to the purely fictional,
for even professional historians, sifting fact from legend
is less straightforward than it might appear.
- Researching the Templars is rather like
looking for needles in a haystack.
Because the records that they left us
don't tell us a great deal about the Templars personally.
- [Narrator] The order wrote little about itself.
Instead, what historians know about the Templars
comes from how they imprinted themselves
on the world around them.
The only way to discover hard facts
is through dedicated study of many contemporary sources,
in case they mention the Templar order,
even just in passing.
Dr. Helen Nicholson has spent years doing just this.
- We have the donation charters,
when outsiders gave them charitable gifts.
We have some correspondence with outside bodies,
particularly legal cases.
- [Narrator] Even from these fragmentary references,
it's clear the Templars were well known
in everyday life in the Middle Ages.
Ordinary people would've known who they were
and what they were about.
This is because the Knights Templar were the first
of a phenomenon that captured the imagination
of medieval Christians.
There were a new kind of order.
Religious dedicated Christians, but military.
Holy warriors who vowed to serve for life
as soldiers of God.
(Templars yelling)
To understand how the military orders came about,
we have to look into the crucible
from which they were formed:
The Crusades.
More than 300 years of conflict, destruction and misery.
Warfare between European Christians,
and people of other religions whom they regarded as pagan.
The First Crusade, from 1096 to 99,
saw several armies totaling thousands of people
from numerous countries across Europe
embark for the holy land.
But they were led not by any one king or general.
They followed the cross.
This was something entirely without precedent.
- There was nothing like the First Crusade.
It was a one-off.
It brought together a number of existing ideas.
It was a pilgrimage. It was an armed pilgrimage.
but it was unique in the sense of its scale,
its pan-European and its pan-Western Christianity aspect.
So it came as a shock to everybody at the time,
and it still is a bit of a mystery to us to this day.
- [Narrator] In the mid 1090s,
there'd been no one sudden outrage
that provoked Western Christendom.
The Christian Byzantine Empire
had suffered defeats to Islamic armies in recent years.
Pilgrims to Palestine had been attacked by bandits,
although this was nothing new,
and most of the holy places themselves
had actually been in Muslim hands for many years.
But somehow, when Pope Urban II called for a crusade
at the Council of Clermont in 1095,
it was the right time for the idea to catch.
- Pope Urban's preaching of the crusade
came at a quite extraordinary moment.
And historians to this day cannot fully comprehend
why it spread so quickly across a continent
which lacked all modern forms of communication.
Nevertheless, this message, this concept,
this inspired fanatical idea, spread like wildfire.
- [Narrator] The holy land was and still is
just a narrow strip of territory
in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Yet it contains important places
for two of the world's most widespread religions,
Islam, and Christianity, nowhere more so
than the Holy City itself, Jerusalem.
For Christians, it was the place
of Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection.
For Muslims, it was where Mohammed ascended to heaven.
(intense music)
Yet despite its great spiritual resonance
for these and other religions,
throughout history, it's rarely, for long,
been a peaceful place.
Least of all, when the First Crusade
arrived to attack these walls.
In July 1099, for four days,
the crusader army dashed itself against the defenses.
Then on the fifth day, they got in.
Among them, it's possible were some of the knights
who a few years later would form the first military orders.
The crusader army had captured Jerusalem,
or as they might have seen it, retaken it for Christianity.
Their first act saw the crusaders hunt down
every last defender or occupant that they could catch,
soldiers or otherwise.
(tense music)
- Many fled to the walled complex,
which enclosed the holiest Muslim places,
the Dome of the Rock, and Al-Aqsa Mosque.
In the hope that the crusaders' blood rage would abate.
It didn't work, and they were slaughtered.
Some it was said, threw themselves from the dome,
rather than wait for the blade.
- The morning after the liberation, inverted commas,
conquest of Jerusalem by the First Crusade,
what do they do?
I think a lot of them would've been completely at a loss.
They had achieved what they wanted to achieve.
A majority of those who actually had survived this
appear to have gone home.
In fact, I think that's reasonably certain.
Only a small number remained. So what are they gonna do?
- [Narrator] For those who stayed, there was work to do.
The kingdom of Jerusalem had to become a functioning state.
They needed trade. And they needed the pilgrim business.
But the borders were wide open to either Muslim raiders,
or common bandits.
Security was a major problem.
In those early days, but the new kingdom, the pilgrims,
and for their own souls,
few individual knights took the initiative.
- The idea came up amongst some of the knights
who were resident, who had decided to stay that, well,
we should just get together and we can protect the pilgrims.
This was a good thing to do.
They would earn spiritual value for doing this.
They had not died on crusade, so in a sense,
they had missed out on this free passport to heaven.
You've got to continue living a good Christian life
as fighting men.
- One of the fascinating things about the Crusades
is how what was originally a pilgrimage,
religiously and spiritually inspired,
becomes a military operation.
The groups of knights will ride out,
accompanying pilgrims who've come the long way from the west
and need to get to important sites,
and to protect against just bandit attacks.
- [Narrator] Pretty soon, the knights were indispensable.
They patrolled the frontiers
and kept the pilgrim routes open.
It was from one of these groups that the Knights Templar,
the first of the military orders, grew.
But we don't know exactly where.
- No one recorded the very beginning of the Templars
when it happened, because clearly it didn't strike anyone
as being particularly unusual.
So later on, 20 years after they first started,
some writers in the West recorded
that there had been a brotherhood of knights
who formed in the wake of the First Crusade,
but how much of the wake of the First Crusade,
they're not quite in agreement over,
- [Narrator] But historians can trace more or less
when the group received sanction as an approved order.
By that time, their fame had spread back
to the homelands in Europe.
- One date was fairly clear, which was the Council of Troyes
in Champagne in what's now Northeastern France.
January 1129, the Templars were given
official church approval.
At the time, the clark who recorded this
added that they, by that time had existed for nine years,
which means that the original group was approved in 1120,
which then might have been at the Church Council of Nablus,
which was in January, 1120.
So those dates would work quite nicely.
(epic music)
- [Narrator] The Templars made virtues of simplicity,
poverty and brotherhood.
Useful values for an efficient and tight-knit military unit,
operating in the saddle, a hostile frontier.
- Very quickly, the Templars attracted attention
in the kingdom of Jerusalem.
- [Narrator] Soon, they'd risen to such prominence
that they were granted a prestige headquarters
in the spiritual heart of the holy land.
- Originally, they were the poor Knights of Christ
in Jerusalem, but King Baldwin II gave them
one of his palaces.
The palace in question was the Aqsa mosque.
- [Narrator] By Jerusalem's southwest wall,
the Aqsa mosque was ideally placed for cavalry
to move out in force when they were needed.
It was around this time that the order got its famous name,
even though historians can't now be completely sure
how it happened.
- The name Templars is,
in its origins, at least, probably just a nickname.
- [Narrator] One of the seals of the order has survived.
And it shows the dome
of what might be described as a temple.
It was clearly important to them symbolically.
- The crusaders, when they have first arrived in Jerusalem,
have been trying to identify every site
with somewhere that they knew
from the Old Testament or the New Testament.
And the magnificent Dome of the Rock in their eyes
was clearly the Lord's Temple, as in the New Testament.
Of course it isn't.
- [Narrator] But which temple was it?
The smaller, former Muslim mosque, the Aqsa,
where they were courted?
Or was it the famous Christian Church of the Holy Sepulcher,
supposed shrine to Christ's tomb?
- When people in the West
thought about Jerusalem, they thought primarily
about the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
And then next door,
there was this other building with a dome,
and then there was the Church of the Holy Sepulcher
with a dome.
People in the West made just have felt
that they were all one building, all three buildings,
and they didn't really know which one they were.
But if they see a building with a dome,
it must be Jerusalem.
- [Narrator] They became known as the Templars.
Yet the building on their famous seal
is quite likely, in fact, not the fabled temple,
but the church of the Holy Sepulcher.
- That represents the Christian faith in the East.
That's what pilgrims go and see.
That's what the Templars are defending.
In fact, it may simply stand for Jerusalem.
We defend Jerusalem.
- [Narrator] The Templars became more powerful
across much of Europe.
But their heartland was always mainly in one region.
- The first Templars were based
in what's now northeastern France and the low countries,
that's where its earliest members come from,
for the most part.
There's at least one that comes from the south of France,
but French order generally.
- [Narrator] Little is known about the individuals
who were the early Templars.
- We don't know the names of all of the first members.
We just know that there's nine of them,
Presumably, they also had servants, squires, assistants.
- [Narrator] People joined from varied backgrounds,
for varied reasons, many of which had become viable
because of the new crusader ideal.
- Some of them, at least according
to Abbott Bernard of Clairvaux,
were people who had committed crimes in the West,
and who had gone to the East as penance.
So he wrote that the West is glad to get rid of them,
and the East welcomes them,
because they wanted their military skills.
- [Narrator] Recruits flock to the Templar banner.
But in the early days, the order could afford to be choosy.
- It was quite a process to join, to be allowed in.
You had to have no debts, no obligations on this earth,
or indeed anywhere else.
Also family considerations.
You were not really allowed to just ditch
your responsibilities and go off for a sojourn.
That was not how it worked.
It was a deep commitment by people
who were in a position to make that commitment.
- [Narrator] Whatever their reason for joining,
once accepted in, all Templar recruits,
regardless of background, had to swear a solemn vow.
This was a religious military order.
But did this make them monastic?
- There's been a great deal of debate
over how the Templars should be characterized.
Were they simply warrior monks, can we say that?
In a sense that's a rather awkward way of defining them.
It's safer, though a little less punchy
to describe them as professed religious.
In other words, they had taken a monastic vow,
poverty, chastity, and obedience,
and so therefore, they were rather like monks.
But unlike monks, they weren't located
solely in a monastery.
Their role took them all over the place,
and so their role was rather different in some respects.
- [Narrator] Nor did their vows make Templars church men.
They were subject to no such restrictions.
- They're laymen, they're not priests.
And this is what's revolutionary about the Templars.
That they take the three monastic vows.
But unlike monks, it's not a priestly order,
so they can shed blood.
- [Narrator] Christians were supposed
to turn the other cheek, even to love their enemy.
How then could war be justified in any way?
- If you can be a Christian knight,
you've solved the problem.
You would fight for God.
You've become a knight of God, leading you into battle.
You are in his service.
You did terrible things, killing and maiming,
and all the rest of it,
but you were morally justified in doing it.
And if you were killed, or even died of disease,
in this process, you again had this free pass to heaven.
- [Narrator] This was a dedicated life,
one for true believers.
- Many of them must have been pious men,
because there was a very strong chance
they were going to be killed in the East,
fighting for Christendom.
But the Templars never promoted individuals as saints.
So if you wanted individual honor and glory,
you wouldn't join the Templars.
- [Narrator] Members had to be prepared
to give themselves wholly to the order.
- Unlike many medieval knights who have a reputation
for charging off after plunder or glory,
the Knights Templar have voluntarily sacrificed
those kinds of ambitions,
and they did so when they joined the order.
They accepted that they would not be trying
to acquire wealth for their own right.
And glory belongs to the order, and indeed to God,
and from their perspective,
rather than to them individually.
So that gives them incredible unit discipline.
They're very controlled,
and that makes them extremely valuable
and powerful weapons in the battlefield.
- [Narrator] By the mid-1100s,
the Knights Templar had grown beyond their humble origins.
They'd become a vital component
of the military infrastructure of the kingdom of Jerusalem.
- The remarkably rapid expansion of the Templar movement
is I think, very, very simple to explain.
It's the fact is, they set out to do a job, and they did.
They did provide security.
They were extraordinarily successful as a military unit.
- [Narrator] The most important posting
for a Templar fighter was the holy land.
- If you were young and fit,
you may be sent off to actually fight in the Middle East.
If you are middle aged,
but you had experience running your own estates,
you might be sent off to look after
one of the Templar's estates.
- [Narrator] People at the end of their lives too,
declared themselves for the order,
including some of the leading knights
of countries like France and England.
Sir William Marshall was one of the most celebrated
fighting knights of the Middle Ages.
- It was famously William Marshall,
who'd been servant of Henry II, Richard the Lionheart,
and John, and then as an old man on his deathbed,
joins the Templars, as he said he'd promised to do
years before when he was in the holy land.
So a mixture of members,
of course not all of them were warriors,
because after the 1130s,
non warriors could also be full members.
So they take craftspeople.
Anybody who can assist the order in any way.
We want you and your money.
- [Narrator] From the holy land to Scotland,
castles and churches were donated to the Templars.
One of the acquisitions most valuable to them, though,
was land.
Agriculture was incredibly important to the order.
In Essex, in southeast England,
lay some of the most valuable arable land
in medieval Europe.
The Templars were granted land here,
and monuments to what they achieved can still be seen today.
(epic music)
Cressing is a farming estate
that dates back to Romano-British times,
perhaps even the neolithic.
In medieval times, it was gifted to the Knights Templar
in 1136 by Matilda of Boulogne,
wife of the English king, Stephen.
Templar bases were known as commanderies,
and Cressing was one of the first in England,
and it was certainly one of the richest.
- Cressing is a wonderful estate because it produces wheat.
High protein grain, very valuable.
That's what the Templars wanted.
- [Narrator] Evidence of the prestige and wealth
of the Templar complex here are the two great barns.
They're among the earliest known
timber frame buildings known anywhere.
- The quite sudden, and really rather dramatic expansion
of the power, the wealth, the influence of the Templars
is seen in buildings like this.
After all, agriculture is central
to the entire economic system, and it is fundamental
to the wealth of all of the military orders.
- [Narrator] The buildings had to be of such size
to be able to store the vast harvests
from Templar lands from miles around.
Structures like the Cressing barns
would've been some of the most impressive
in the medieval landscape.
Each one is almost 40 meters long and 15 meters wide,
and as spacious inside as a small cathedral.
The giant timber frames were made from hundreds of trees,
and they supported roofs
covered with tens of thousands of terracotta tiles.
- It would've had, the local churches would be of stone,
almost invariably.
The castle of the local lord
would be both strong and impressive.
And the other manmade features of the landscape
would be buildings like this,
which you could say are almost like temples of agriculture.
The fact that they are so magnificent
would've expressed the the wealth and power
of whoever owned it,
and in this case, the military orders.
- [Narrator] That Cressing's barns have survived
is due to a remarkable archeological rescue story.
The buildings might have been amended
or routinely repaired since medieval times.
Yet they'd stood in situ for more than 500 years,
and survived two world wars.
Until in 1987, the elements unleashed a fury.
In just one single night, storm force conditions
ravaged much of England and Northern Europe.
Winds gusting up to a hundred miles per hour
lashed the Essex countryside,
and left the roofs of Cressing's barns in tatters.
Back then, Barry Hillman-Crouch was a young
and newly qualified archeologist,
and it fell to him to begin picking up the pieces.
- We're standing in the barley barn,
which is the oldest timber frame building in the world,
dated to about 1205.
When I first came to work here, which was in 1986,
the great gale had just hit the site,
and all the roofs were off of both of these barns.
- [Narrator] The barley barn,
and its counterpart, the wheat barn, built in 1255,
were left in disarray by the powerful storm.
It might have been the end for both
had the site not just been purchased
and listed for protection by the county of Essex.
- One of my jobs here at Cressing Temple
was to record in detail both of these great barns.
I spent three months doing that,
making a 1 to 20 drawing of every timber in the barn.
I remember that there was 35 drawings for each building.
And I would've produced a section through each truss,
a section through the main section of the building,
in all directions.
And then I marked in every single feature.
So every nail, every knothole, every iron tie,
every pit prop mark that is in the building,
in order to be able to interpret it.
And I also marked up what was modern repair,
and what was obvious replacements.
- [Narrator] By the end of the 12th century,
the Templars had commanderies
in the finest agricultural lands
and the richest cities across Europe.
By now, they and the other military orders
were vital to the security of the Christian holy land.
Their forces were highly respected
by contemporary observers, even their Muslim enemies.
- The military orders include the Knights Templars,
they very rarely supplied armies in their own right.
They were normally a contingent
within the kingdom of Jerusalem's main army,
or indeed the other armies of the crusader states.
In those armies, they supplied a range of troops,
but they were most famous for their brother knights,
the heavy cavalry squadrons.
And certainly these were extremely disciplined,
extremely effective, and indeed, they were held up
by many commentators as being the role models
for elite cavalry men across the Near East.
(intense music)
When one Muslim commentator wants to compliment
a squadron of Muslim troops,
he actually described them as the Templars of Islam,
which again, demonstrates their role
as the benchmark of military excellence at this time.
- [Narrator] This is even more impressive
when considering the numbers that the Templars could field
at any one time.
We sometimes imagine that all medieval battles
were fought between vast armies,
but this was never the case in the holy land.
- Perhaps the largest field contingents
we know for the Knights Templar,
they rarely got above 300 brother knights.
So that's fairly small.
However, we should add to that a number of other contingents
that they also supplied.
Large numbers of infantry squadrons,
possibly four or five times the number
of Brother Knights, maybe more.
Even so, the Knights Templar's great strength
is not in their numbers, it's in their combat experience
and their military knowledge of the region,
and their ability to feed that back to other commanders,
and therefore enable other commanders
to be a great deal more effective on the battlefield.
(tense music)
- [Narrator] How had the Templars become so effective,
in just a few decades since their formation?
The answer begins with the primary figure
of the battlefields of the First Crusade, the knight.
From a 21st century point of view,
we have all sorts of preconceptions
about the medieval knight,
as a chivalrous, cultured archetype.
But in the 12th century, that was still years in the future.
These men, before anything else, were warriors.
(tense music)
- Yes, the 12th century knight
is not the knight in shining armor
rescuing damsels in distress,
Although he may have occasion to do that.
But his focus is primarily military,
and his skills are on the battlefield.
The prowess we're talking about here is military prowess,
skill with the spear and the lance.
- [Narrator] The mounted warrior knight
would dominate the battlefield for centuries to come.
Templar knights regarded themselves as chevaliers,
and a key component of that identity was the horse.
- The Templars limited how many horses a knight could have,
and you're supposed to look after your horse.
They took temporary members as well.
If someone like Fulk of Anjou joined for a short period,
they would either get their horse back,
or the value of their horse when they left the order again.
There's a recognition you might not have the same horse
that you left, because horses die.
Battle is even harder on horses than it is on knights.
- [Narrator] Templar recruits had to take
thorough care of their horses.
They were allowed several mounts for different tasks.
For knights and their squires,
this would be common practice, deeply ingrained in them
after virtually growing up in the saddle.
- The people who joined all the military orders
and certainly the early Templars, they were already knights.
They were already trained military men.
What was different was their coming together
under strict orders and an attitude
which would accept orders.
- [Narrator] The impact of the Crusades
ran deep in the Christian psyche,
and was a powerful motivator.
The importance of defending Jerusalem and the holy land
was obvious to everyone.
So the new breed of knights were receptive
to a new way of life in their military orders.
- As members of a military order,
the Templars were under discipline like modern soldiers.
Whereas the secular knights,
who were concerned with their own honor, their own glory,
might be more inspired to launch an attack.
The Templars were disciplined,
they just demonstrated on many occasions.
- [Narrator] The monastic orders,
such as the Benedictines or Franciscans,
traditionally lived in accordance with strict rules.
This was the inspiration for the way the new fighting orders
would live, too.
The Templars wrote theirs down, and remarkably, it survived.
It's called the Rule of the Templars.
The first version was laid down in 1128 in Latin.
But another was in vernacular French,
the language that most of the knights would've spoken.
It contains a wealth of unique detail
for medieval and military historians like Matthew Bennett.
- I think approaching the Templar rule as a historian,
and certainly as a military historian
who can compare with other periods,
what you see is a kind of pernickety attention to detail,
as the modern soldiers would say,
down to every piece of equipment
that should be kept and maintained,
and the behavior in peace time, on campaign, and in battle,
it's all laid out in a way
that you cannot see anywhere else.
The Templar rule describes a close-knit unit,
which consisted of the knight brother, a squire,
and a couple of other servants,
which in the later mid-ages would be known as a lance.
That is, the compact unit
of people who are used to working together.
- [Narrator] The basic operational element was 10 lances.
- It gives us our only insight, really,
into how a medieval cavalry unit functioned.
Building up from those blocks of 10,
with each one of those has a banner,
and then at the head of the force
is the standard bearer of the order,
with the banner of the order.
And the idea was that everybody looked to that.
- [Narrator] In later centuries,
cavalry were further grouped into troupes and squadrons,
say 200 to 300 strong.
But the Templars had to work with far fewer numbers.
- Of course, a modern, a 19th century calvary squadron,
would be the entire size of the Templar order in battle,
you know, only looking at about 300 men perhaps
who could be brought together to one place.
So yeah, the control has to be done at local level,
a group of 10 where a voice can still be heard,
the voice of command, but also because they would be used
to working with one another,
they would be looking right and left
in order to check that they're in the right alignment.
- [Narrator] The Templar rule was often
read out aloud at mealtimes,
so the brothers had a communal understanding
of what they should do in different situations.
- It allows the individual brother knight to refer back to
and understand what that behavior should be.
So for example, should they get themselves lost
in the melee, you know, the scrum of fighting,
they're told to go to their own banner, the banner of 10.
If they can't find that,
they would look for the banner of the order,
or if that, any Christian banner so that they can
recover their usefulness, their utility in fighting.
- [Narrator] Cavalry at this time
was usually a one shot weapon.
Once unleashed, the knights rarely regained their formation.
But the Templars and other military orders were different.
Steady discipline, collective faith and brotherhood
made them very dependable, and often devastating.
Military historians classify the Templars
as lance attack cavalry.
But this didn't mean
that they just galloped wildly at the enemy.
- There's a problem with Hollywood
and the way that people think about the way
that cavalry are used.
They're not used, as like a skein of geese
to ride across a big open plain,
because you actually lose all the impetus, then.
The reality, and it's the reality that continues
into the 19th century, when cavalry are used,
is to keep a very good order, slow,
boot to boot, as they would say,
in order to have the the maximum impetus
at the right moment.
- [Narrator] A cavalry charge was all about careful timing.
- What they do is they develop a system whereby
the cavalry and infantry work very closely together.
The cavalry would be at the center of the army,
with a hard shell of infantry around them,
each with big shields
to provide a protective screen for the cavalry.
And what the commander had to do
was to wait until the enemy formed a big enough bunch,
it grouped together enough for the cavalry to have a chance
of hitting that enemy group before it dispersed.
(ominous music)
And so sometimes commander waited for hours
for this to happen, but when the moment arose,
the infantry would then part their ranks,
the cavalry would charge through,
and that would be their chance of victory.
(knights yelling)
- A lance, which is just a big spear,
it's locked, kooshed, embedded under your arm.
You are one of the infantrymen in a Muslim army,
with these guys charging at you in a cloud of dust
shouting "Deus vult," close packed,
lances pointing straight at you.
It must have been absolutely terrifying.
(intense music)
(horses galloping)
(knights shouting)
- [Narrator] For much of the 12th century,
the Templar charge was the most respected weapon
on the battlefield.
But by 1187, even this couldn't stem the rising tide
of Saladin's Muslim reconquest of the holy land.
To the military orders, this must have seemed unthinkable,
but they stuck to their training and faith.
Surely that would see them win the day,
unless God had deserted them.
- It's a matter of confidence teetering into overconfidence
and the reasons for that.
- [Narrator] In the final months
of the kingdom of Jerusalem,
two desperate Templar cavalry attacks
ended in catastrophe for the order.
- One of the most important charges was a disaster,
a bit like the Charge of the Light Brigade.
At the battle of the springs of Cresson,
When the Templar commander acted very rashly.
In his defense,
it can be said that according to later manuals,
including the the manual that my old professor
was trained by, it does state very clearly
that cavalry should take any opportunity attack
if they think they have the initiative.
So he might have been attempting to do that.
But unfortunately, it's described in the Chronicles
as a very rash attempt to attack
a much larger body of Muslim enemy,
and in fact, they were overwhelmed.
- And certainly at the Battle of Hattin,
it was the Templar master who famously counseled
Guy of Lusignan to advance in the town of Tiberius,
which played its role in bringing about
the ultimate defeat of the kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187.
- [Narrator] The Crusaders never again regained Jerusalem.
The order fought on, until just over a hundred years later,
the rest of the holy land finally fell to the Muslims,
with the capture of Acre in 1291.
In Templar chapels across Europe,
whether they were masters, knights, sergeants or squires,
all of the fallen were commemorated.
- Everybody was remembered in afternoon prayers for the dead
and everybody got the same treatment when they died,
their body was laid out and their soul was prayed for
for so many days,
so that there were no favorites in the order.
- [Narrator] In the early 14th century,
the Templar Order was accused of heresy,
and many of its brothers arrested.
The charges were almost certainly false,
likely fabricated by the French monarchy.
Overall, fewer brothers than it's commonly thought
were actually executed.
But in France, more than 30 died under torture,
and dozens were burned alive with their master,
Jacques de Molay.
(choral music)
In England, as in many other countries,
Templar lands and estates were given to other orders.
The prestigious Templar commandery at Cressing in Essex
passed into the hands of the Hospitallers.
When Cressing was excavated,
a forgotten part of the medieval estate was rediscovered.
Every Templar site, at a small chapel or church,
for the many daily prayer meetings,
and where the brothers, and often their donors or associates
could be buried.
(choral music)
- You look forward, you can see a joint in the brick wall.
That's where the church was joined on.
And down here on the ground, there's a old floor tile.
We put that there In 1995
to mark the corner of the building.
- [Narrator] The early medieval chapel was demolished
during the later Tudor period.
The archeologists had no clue that they would find
what were the earliest Templar burials still here,
just underground.
- So we walk along the chapel and look down,
there's three rows of five graves,
starting with the Templars coming up to the Tudors,
and just here there were the seven most important graves,
which would've been in front of the altar.
We know that they were there
because when we did the excavation,
the Tudors had built a wall
right through the middle of all of them
when they squared the building off.
- [Narrator] The seven skeletons, all men,
dated to possibly the early 1130s.
Within living memory, perhaps,
of the earliest time of the Crusades.
The time the order was sanctioned by papal decree.
A time when the Knights Templar carried the banner
and the hopes of the medieval Christian world.
(somber music)
(epic music)
(music continues)