Templars and Hospitallers as Professed Religious in the Holy Land

3: GOVERNANCE

Chapter Three GOVERNANCE Paying the Bills In a letter written in 1260 Grand Master Thomas Berard of the Temple exclaimed: “there is not a prince in this world who could conveniently hold seven castles at the same time . . . and add [to this] the costs involved in the defence of such a great city as Acre, a major part of which falls on us.”1 Eight years later his opposite number in the Hospital , Hugh Revel, made much the same point when he was stressing his order’s desperate need of funding.2 Drawing on resources from Europe in a way denied to many of the institutions in the Latin East, the orders were better placed than others to make up for losses in attritional warfare, but there was a limit to what they could do, and the strain often showed. The Templars had lost many of their castles in the kingdom of Jerusalem in the aftermath of the battle of Hattin,3 but for a few years after 1229 they may have moved back into Chastel Hernault, at the entrance to a corridor linking Jerusalem to the coast,4 and by the time Thomas Berard was writing they had acquired Chastel Pèlerin5 and had reoccupied Saphet.6 They were soon to buy the city and lordship of Sidon and the castle of Beaufort in a deal financed by a special levy raised on their European houses.7 In the county of Tripoli they had held on to the fortresses of Chastel Blanc,8 Aryma9 and Tortosa,10 and 43 in the principality of Antioch they had reestablished their conventgarrisons —Gaston,11 Trapessac,12 Port Bonnel,13 Roche Roussel14 and Roche Guillaume15 —along the line of the Amanus mountain chain, which closed Syria from Cilicia.16 Gaston, astride the pass known as the Syrian Gates, was the most important of these until it was abandoned, together with Port Bonnel and Roche Roussel, in the wake of the fall of the city of Antioch in 1268,17 but the order maintained a garrison in Roche Guillaume and a presence in the neighbouring port of Calamella until 1298.18 The Hospitallers had hung on to Crac des Chevaliers in the county of Tripoli19 and Margat in the principality of Antioch.20 They had been established for a time at Camardesium above Seleucia in the kingdom of Cilician Armenia.21 But they had never recovered their southern castles of Bethgibelin,22 Belmont,23 and Belvoir,24 although these, like Saphet, were in districts ceded back to the Christians in 1229 and in 1241. Perhaps they could not afford to reoccupy them. Warfare in an age of rapid technological development was very costly, quite apart from the time and effort needed when building large, and especially concentric, castles. The Templars were still at work on Vadum Jacob, the construction of which had been begun by the king of Jerusalem in October 1178, when it fell to Saladin in August 1179.25 When Saphet was rebuilt in the mid thirteenth century the cost was estimated by the Templars to be 1,100,000 saracen besants.26 Since mercenary knights were serving in Palestine for 120 besants a year,27 this was the equivalent of paying a year’s wages to over 9,000 knights. Castles needed garrisons, and the cost of mercenaries was a very heavy charge. In 1275 the troops the new grand master of the Temple, William of Beaujeu, had brought with him from Europe rioted in Acre and threatened to go over to the Muslims if their wages were not settled.28 In addition, there were the expenses of upkeep and provisioning . In 1212 the traveller Willbrand of Oldenburg reported that the policy at Margat was to store five years’ worth of provisions for its garrison of 1,000 men.29 The annual bill for the maintenance of Saphet came to 40,000 saracen besants,30 the equivalent of bearing a permanent establishment of 333 knights. Resupplying arrangements broke 44 Templars and Hospitallers down badly in 1268, when Gaston had to be abandoned by the Templars because it was short of men and provisions.31 The Hospitallers were uncomfortable with the fact that their military role in the south was now confined to occupying two estate fortlets32 and helping to defend Acre. They announced their intention to fortify and garrison Mt Tabor in 125633 and they took over...