hen the Templars arrived in Holy Land, the
military situation was a very tangled mess. Modern political quarrels appear
ridiculously small when compared to the politico-military systems in the
Holy Land. First of all, there never was a single Crusader state, but four
distinct ones, constantly at odds with each other. Just take a look at the
figure below.
he four Crusader states were the Kingdom
of Jerusalem, the County of Tripoli, the Principality of Antioch, and the
County of Edessa. The oldest of these was the Principality, who had its own
Patriarch under the Byzantine Church. The Kingdom of Jerusalem was the largest,
but also the most troubled of the states. The County of Edessa was a short-lived
(47 years) attempt at a state, and the County of Tripoli was in the middle
of it all, harried from every direction.
he end of Edessa came in 1144, when
Zengi took it after a four-week siege. He entered the town on Christmas eve,
and immediately set about to kill all Franks in the town. After this, Muslims
controlled all the area between Mosul and Aleppo, with no Christian wedge
in between. Thus the Turks of Iran and the Turks of Anatolia were united,
and it was against this situation that the Second Crusade was initiated in
1146.
he states quarreled over every possible
matter, and there was no sign of Christianity uniting for the cause of the
Faith in Palestine. Due to the discord, the Crusader states were for example
never able to stop Muslim armies from passing through their land from Aleppo
to Damascus, but resorted to uneasy truces with the Muslims to keep their
areas intact.
t is interesting to note that even
the first recorder military action of the Templars was an offensive with
Emperor John of Constantinople against the interests of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.
The Templars had to do some bending of their Rule
to be able to participate in such action, but the true strength of the Order
was just this: being able to shift between warring factions and serving as
many as possible without appearing as traitors to others. To do this they
had to be militarily very capable and cunning, and their valour served them
well in the battles they fought.
