Templar Origins & Rise - The Crusaders - S01 EP01 - History Documentary

of those blocks of 10 uh with each of those has a banner and then in front of the force is the standard bearer of the order with the banner of the order and the idea was that everyone would look at that in later centuries Cavalry were grouped together in addition in troops and squadrons, say 200 to 300 troops, but the Templars had to work with much fewer numbers, of course, a modern 19th century cavalry squadron would have the total size of the Templar order in battle, you know , only about 300 men are considered. maybe you could gather who in one place, so yes, the control should be done at a local level, a group of 10 people where one voice can still be heard, the voice of command, but also because they would be used to working with each other . uh they would be looking left and right to check that they are in the correct alignment.

The Templar rule was often read aloud during meals so that the brothers had a communal understanding of what they should do in different situations, it allows individual brother Knights to refer to and understand what that behavior should be, e.g. , if they get lost in the melee, you know, in the fight, they are told to go to their own banner, the banner of 10 if they don't find that they would look for the banner of the order or if that some Christian banner so that they can recover their Utility Its usefulness in fighting the Cavalry at this time was generally a one-shot weapon once the knights were unleashed.

They rarely recovered their formation, but the Templars and other military orders were different. The constant discipline. The collective faith and Brotherhood made them very reliable and often devastating. Military historians classify the Templars as Spear Attack Cavalry, but this does not mean that they simply galloped wildly towards the enemy. a problem with Hollywood and the way people think about the way the Cavalry is used, that they are not used and like a flock of geese traveling through a big open plane, uh, because you actually lose all the momentum , so, uh, reality. and it is the reality that continues in the 19th century, when what was used was to maintain a very good order, slow start, as they would say uh, to have the maximum momentum at the right moment, a cavalry charge was about carefully synchronizing what What they do is develop a system whereby Cavalry and infantry work very closely together;

The Cavalry would be in the center of the army with a hard shell of infantry around them, each with large shields to provide a protective screen for the Cavalry and what the commander had to do was wait until the enemy formed a group. large enough that the Cavalry would have a chance to attack that enemy group before it dispersed, so sometimes commanders would wait for hours for this to happen when it came time for the Infantry to then divide their ranks, The Cavalry would charge and that would be their opportunity to achieve Victory. Spear, which is just a big spear, is locked embedded under your arm, you are one of the foot soldiers in a Muslim army with these guys charging at you in a cloud of dust shouting deos Vault clenched spears pointing straight at you there must be been absolutely terrifying for much of the 12th century the Templar charge was the most respected weapon on the battlefield but in 1187 not even this could stem the rising tide of Salah Adin's Muslim reconquest of the Holy Land under military orders It must have seemed unthinkable but they stuck to their training and their faith, surely that would see them win the day unless God had abandoned them, it's a matter of um confidence teetering towards overconfidence and the reasons.

Well, in the last months of the kingdom of Jerusalem two desperate attacks by the Templar Cavalry ended in a 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 Crestle Springs uh when the Templar commander acted very hastily in his defense, it can be said that according to later manuals, including the manual in which he trained my former professor, it is very clearly stated that the cavalry must take advantage of any opportunity to attack if they believe they have the opportunity. initiative. so, he might have been trying to do that, but unfortunately it is described in the Chronicles as a very reckless attempt to attack a much larger body of Muslim enemies and, in fact, they were overwhelmed and certainly at the Battle of Hatin, that was the Templar master who advised Gu de Lucor to advance towards the city of Tiberias, which played its role in bringing about the final defeat of the kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187.

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never recovered Jerusalem. The order continued to fight until just over 100 years later, the rest of the Holy Land. In 1291 in Templar chapels throughout Europe, whether masters, knights, sergeants or squires, all the fallen were commemorated, all were remembered in evening prayers for the dead and They all received the same treatment when they died. His body was laid out and his soul was prayed for for so many days that there were no favorites in the order. At the beginning of the 14th century, the Templar Order was accused of heresy and many of its brothers were arrested.

The charges were almost certainly false, probably fabricated by Overall, the French monarchy executed fewer brothers than commonly thought, but in France more than 30 died under torture and dozens were burned alive with their master Jac deole. In England, as in many other countries, Templar lands and estates were handed over to other orders, the prestigious The Templar command at Cring in Essex passed into the hands of the hospitals when Cring was excavated, a forgotten part of the medieval estate was rediscovered. Each Templar site was a small chapel or church for the numerous daily prayer meetings and where the brothers and often their donors or associates could be buried, look ahead you can see a joint in the brick wall where they joined the church and down here on the ground there is an old slab that we put there in 1995 to mark the corner of the building at the beginning of The medieval chapel was demolished during the later Chuda period, the archaeologists had no idea that they would find the first burials Templars still here, just underground.

As we walk through the chapel and look down, there are three rows of five tombs starting with the Templars going all the way to the guardians and right here were the seven most important tombs that would have been in front of the altar. uh, we know they were there because when we did the excavation the tuders had built a wall right in the middle of all of them when they squared the building with the seven skeletons that all the men dated possibly to the early 1130s, according to living memory. , perhaps from the earliest time of the Crusades, when the order was sanctioned by papal decree, a time when the Knights Templar carried the banner and the hopes of the medievals. christian world