The Templar Plan for Total Victory in the Crusades

Hey guys, Jay Stephen here from Real Crusades History, and this is going to be a podcast in which we discuss something I find very interesting, and that is a plan that the Knights Templar developed toward the end of the 13th century for total victory in the Crusades in the Holy Land. So that is to say, an operation that would completely destroy Mamluk power in Egypt and Syria and that general region, and basically allow for the total Christian occupation, conquest and occupation of the Holy Land and Egypt and all of that sort of Eastern Mediterranean region. So, this is interesting for a number of reasons. Alright, as we get into the late 13th century, the Popes are looking at, they're kind of starting to assess the most recent Crusades, and as we know, the Crusades that took place at the end of the 13th century, they were very unsuccessful. Now I think the main thing we're looking at here is the Crusades of King Louis IX, in particular the 7th Crusade. The 7th Crusade was kind of the big operation at the middle of the 13th century designed to eliminate Muslim power in the Eastern Mediterranean and set the stage for Christian dominance of the Holy Land and that entire region, and it did not work out. It was a total failure. So the question was, what went wrong and what could be done in the future for success, to achieve success? Of course, by the time we get to the end of the 13th century, the Mamluks are on the rise, they are on the war path, they are able to take down a lot of Christian Outremer. And so, again, we've had several major expeditions already that have happened. Of course, the famous 8th Crusade that Louis conducted, of course, that went to Tunis, that didn't even go to the Holy Land, and it failed for a number of reasons. The 7th Crusade was very unsuccessful. The 6th Crusade had been kind of an oddball Crusade, but it had managed to gain Jerusalem by treaty, of course, not without the lasting reconquest or reoccupying of Jerusalem. The 5th Crusade had been unsuccessful in taking Egypt, and of course, the 4th Crusade had gone off the rails and attacked Constantinople. So we get to the Council of Lyon, which happens in 1272. Now, of course, that's right as the 9th Crusade is ending. Edward I of England's crusade, which was able to achieve some things. It was able to achieve, for example, the evacuation of Tripoli and the lifting of a siege of Tripoli conducted by the Mamluks and a 10-year truce with the Mamluks, which was quite valuable in buying the Christians time in staving off the Mamluk conquests, and also, this was also a period of time when a lot of Christians were able to get out of Outremer, so a lot of people could see the writing on the wall, and they knew it was coming. But the popes, in conjunction with the military orders, were looking at trying to figure out what should be done in the future, what plans should be put into action. Council of Lyon happens in 1272. Now, this is a major council put on by Pope Gregory X, and the idea is to get the Christian magnates of Europe together to talk about plans for a major crusade. Now interestingly, the only king, the only European king who attends is James I of Aragon. He was very enthusiastic about crusading. He'd actually spent his life crusading in his native Spain. He had expanded his kingdom of Aragon dramatically, was a very successful crusader. He launched three enormously successful crusades that inflicted severe defeats on the Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula. And after all that, he was interested in crusading in the Holy Land. No other major European kings attended this council. That right there kind of tells us something. They sent representatives, but they themselves didn't show up. So the kings of Europe, they had other things they were thinking about aside from crusading in the Levant in the east. One of the ideas that was discussed at the Council of Lyon was this idea of the Passagium Particulare, and what this is is the idea of sending ahead an advanced force to establish a bridgehead at the Holy Land before a general crusading force would arrive. After the loss of the Holy Land completely in 1291 with the fall of Acre, Pope Clement V was very keen to talk about how this was going to be turned around. What are we going to do to regain the Holy Land? How can we actually launch a successful crusade? And so he consulted with the Grand Master of the Templars, Jacques de Molay, the famous last Grand Master of the Templars, to ask him what he thought about plans for a crusade. Now, Molay had a lot of experience. He had been fighting in the Holy Land since around the 1270s, and he'd eventually become Grand Master of the Templars. This was somebody who knew his stuff. He knew what was going on in the Holy Land, and he had some good ideas about what could be done to eliminate Mamluk power. So Jacques de Molay, he dismissed the idea of the Passagium Particulare. He thought this was a recipe for disaster. He thought if you send a small force ahead to kind of set the stage and get a bridgehead, it will be destroyed. And he had some experience with this because the Templars had kind of tried something similar to that with the landing on the island of Ruad, in which they attempted to kind of deploy some Templars to organize a bridgehead, but this deployment was destroyed by the Mamluks. Molay thought that what was needed was a major and large-scale force that would hit fast and hit hard. Another idea that the popes were kicking around was the idea of an expedition based in Cilicia, Armenia. So, of course, the Christian kingdom, the Armenian kingdom of Cilicia, Armenia, in roughly what is today parts of southeastern Turkey and kind of toward the northwest of Syria. So kind of in that area, in some of that mountainous region, the Armenians had a pretty resilient kingdom that had been a major ally to the Crusader states. There was some idea of kind of launching a major crusade from there. Jacques disagreed with that. He thought that, for one thing, the terrain was too dangerous. This is a very mountainous region. Of course, we know that passage through that area had proved very difficult for the first crusade. They had managed it. And, of course, as we know, Frederick Barbarossa's famous crusade, in which he pretty much defeated the Byzantines and defeated the Seljuk Turks in these pretty impressive victories, but then kind of got bogged down in that mountain passage into Syria. So yeah, dangerous terrain. And also an interesting thing was that Jacques thought that the climate there was unhealthy for Europeans. And he thought that a lot of soldiers would die if they had to pass through there. And as we know, the German expedition during the Third Crusade, Frederick Barbarossa's army did suffer heavy losses during their passage through that region. And a lot of that was due to disease. So what was Millai's plan? Well, he thought you would need at least 12,000 to 15,000 cavalry to actually make a forced attack on Jerusalem and occupy it. And he also thought you would need 50,000 archers. So this was just to take Jerusalem. This didn't address the conquest of Egypt. To achieve these sorts of numbers, Millai thought that you needed a full-on pan-European expedition. So he explained to the Pope that we would need to get the kings of France, England, Germany, Sicily, the various kingdoms of Spain, the Italian city-states, and all the smaller principalities on board for a full-on operation to basically eliminate Mamluk power in the eastern Mediterranean. He thought that you would transport these large cavalries via the sea by large carriers. So these were carriers that could launch horsemen onto the beach. These would be carriers that would transport horses. This was done during the Fourth Crusade, remember. He thought that the Genoese and the Pisans and the Venetians could all take care of this. He did not think that there was a need for a lot of galleys, that is, warships, because the Mamluk navies were very poor. And so there wasn't going to be need for extensive naval operations. Just the normal Christian naval power would be able to handle the Mamluk navy. And again, Malai knew this through experience. The Templars had been successfully raiding the Mamluks with their navy throughout the 1290s. So while the Templars weren't able to launch large-scale operations on land against the Mamluks, they were able to successfully raid them, and the Mamluks couldn't really do much against that in terms of the naval aid. So the Templars could launch these successful naval raids on the Mamluks. Malai thought that the main force would need to be about 15,000 knights, supported by at least 5,000 infantry. And of course, this was going to be bolstered by other forces as well, because, you know, we're talking about the full combined powers of Europe. So there's going to be kind of a main operation. There's going to be other forces that will mop up things in the region. Malai wanted Cyprus to be the assembly point, which, that does make sense. If you're going to have a pan-European expedition and you're going to, you know, transport these armies by sea, then Cyprus would be a good stopping-off point. Cyprus is resource-rich. There was a lot of wealth there. It was very secure. The Mamluks had been totally powerless to dislodge the Christian powers from Cyprus. So Cyprus would be ideal for the Christian powers of Europe to combine their forces there, to sort of regroup, get ready for the main operation against the Mamluks. Now crucially, Malai thought that the ultimate targets would need to be kept secret. Even, you know, from the general army. So everybody was going to meet at Cyprus and it wouldn't be until there was an actual attack underway that anyone would know where they were going. And of course, this was crucial to keeping the Mamluks from being able to prepare. It would force the Mamluks to stretch their resources thin as they tried to anticipate where this great Christian crusade would strike. And interestingly, in his proposal that Malai sent to the Pope, he did not include any information about these intended targets. And he offered to furnish the Pope with a highly secret list, a highly classified list of targets once operations were underway. Now interestingly, Malai wanted a navy of 10 galleys provided immediately to stop illegal trading with the Egyptians. At this time, there was a ban on Christian powers trading with Egypt, but the Italian powers didn't always keep with that, or, you know, various merchants from the Italian city-states would try to engage in trade with the Egyptians. It was lucrative for them. But the Egyptians, the Mamluks themselves, gained a lot of wealth by trading with the Christians. So if, in preparations for this large-scale crusade, the Templars could completely cut off any Christian powers from trading with Egypt, this would greatly cripple, or at least harm, Mamluk power. So just to kind of give us some perspective, Malai's idea of having 15,000 horsemen. Louis IX's entire expedition during the Seventh Crusade was about 15,000 men. In terms of the number of knights he had, he had about 2,500 horsemen. So we can see how large a force this was going to be in Malai's plan. And I think there's reason to believe that a force like that, especially backed up by further support from the totally united kings of Europe, we could see how this would set the stage for the ability to completely break Mamluk power and destroy their power base of Egypt. If we look at past crusades, especially the crusades in the mid-to-late 13th century, we can see that the real issue has always been numbers. Louis IX's expedition during the Seventh Crusade was possibly the best equipped and best organized crusader force ever deployed in the Holy Land. And the problem, of course, was he really didn't have enough men to effectively attack and occupy interior Egypt, the interior of Egypt. Now, Louis IX was able to execute naval operations and execute operations on the coast successfully. Louis IX was able to capture Damietta, for example, and occupy it. And the Muslims weren't really able to resist him in that effectively. But the problem, of course, was once he marched inland and tried to attack Cairo, at that point, things sort of reverse in the favor of the Muslims. Once the Christians left the coast, suddenly Christian naval power is no longer a factor, and the numbers, the immense numbers that the Muslims were able to deploy start to count. So Louis IX, he's got an army with 2,500 cavalry. Well, the Muslims were able to deploy four times that number or more. And so it's just not feasible, really, to effectively occupy inland Egypt. And we look at the Fifth Crusade, it's the same issue. The Fifth Crusade has some fairly substantial numbers. Their naval power is very considerable. The Muslims can't really challenge it effectively. Or they can challenge it, but they're not able to stand up against it. And ultimately, the Fifth Crusade, they take Damietta, they take some coastal portions of Egypt, and they're able to do that. But again, it's once they go inland, that's the problem. Richard the Lionheart's enormous success during the Third Crusade. The Third Crusade was a very successful expedition. Well, a lot of that is because Richard had naval superiority, and he keeps his campaign coastal, or he makes it a point of reconquering the coastal plain around Jaffa. He reconquers Acre, he reconquers Arsuf, Caesarea, Jaffa, and he reconquers some fortresses, too, that are more inland, but they are still able to be supported from the coast. He doesn't attempt to capture Jerusalem. And I think when we look at the campaigns of the Fifth Crusade and the Seventh Crusade, we can kind of see why. I mean, we can see what might have happened if he tried to. He understood what he could do with the forces he had. So the issue was always numbers. These various crusades, the Third Crusade, Fourth Crusade, Fifth Crusade, Seventh Crusade, these were not pan-European expeditions. You might have had, like, for example, in the Third Crusade, you had the French and the English both involved. The French pull out early, or at least the French king does. The Fifth Crusade, you have kind of a revolving variety of European powers getting involved. The Fifth Crusade, the French aren't involved on a large scale, certainly not the king of France. The king of England's not involved. But you do have the king of Hungary gets involved early on. He kind of pulls out early. You have some German powers, but the German emperor himself never gets involved during the actual Fifth Crusade. So we can see how, you know, and again, we get into the Seventh Crusade. That's a French expedition. That's a royal French expedition. The king of France is doing this. The king of England's not involved. The German emperor's not involved. So I think Molay was onto something when he pointed out that the way to break Mamluk power, you know, not just have some coastal successes, but then not be able to really do anything inland, the way to stomp out and annihilate the Mamluks was to get the whole of Europe involved, to get the combined powers of Europe involved in a coordinated and united crusade to destroy the Eastern Mediterranean Muslim powers. So, of course, Molay discussed this with the Pope, but that's a tall order, isn't it? To get all of Christian Europe behind this one project. In theory, it was something that the European, the kings of Europe were interested in. But again, it's coordinating the thing. It was very difficult to get all of Europe involved in one single project. Christopher Tireman talked about how the crusade to the Holy Land was always the next thing to take care of. Like the king of France, he's interested in it, but he's got some other stuff he's got to do right now. The king of England, same story. The German emperor, a similar story. So getting everybody to kind of decide that now is the time all at once. Well, ultimately, of course, it proved to be impossible. It never happened. But I think we can imagine if Jacques de Molay's plan had been ever achieved, I think it would have been successful. I think that there would have been nothing that the Muslim powers of Egypt and Syria could have done to resist it. And I think ultimately, yeah, that would have been it for the Mamluks. But fortunately for the Mamluks, that was something that never was put into practice. And in terms of the numbers that Jacques came up with, the way he came up with his numbers was one, by looking at the Templar records of the Seventh Crusade, by looking at what happened during the Seventh Crusade. But also, it was based on intelligence he had from his spy networks in place in the Mamluk empire. So apparently, Babars and various other Mamluk rulers had been looking at and assessing what sort of Christian force would really be able to fully harm them. And they had actually come up with some numbers themselves as part of their efforts to thwart potential future crusades. And the Templars apparently had been able to gain some access to those discussions and those numbers. And they kind of knew what the Mamluks thought based on their own assessments. So yeah, interesting stuff. I hope everybody's having an excellent week. I'm going to continue with some more podcasts like this, talking about the Templars. I'm going to do one next, I think, about how a man became a Templar. I also have a podcast in the works where I'm going to look at five lesser-known great battles of the Crusades in the Holy Land. So a lot of stuff coming up. If you haven't already, click on the link below to support Real Crusades History on Patreon. Our Patreon supporters get some bonuses and some good stuff that's not available to the public. Also, it helps keep us in operation. So do please support us there. And don't forget to check out my novel, Why Does the Heathen Rage?, a novel of the Crusades set during the reign of King Baldwin II of Jerusalem. There's a link to that below as well. I'll talk to everyone soon. Take care.