o it is small wonder the Templars
and the Hospitallers were a welcome addition to the fighting stock of any
lord in Palestine. Their drilled knights and supporting fighters were indeed
valuable reinforcements to all possible campaigns, and indeed they were part
of each and every campaign after the latter half of the twelfth century.
The only problem was that the Orders were fiercely independent and, when
on a campaign, they demanded to have all military command on the field. After
all, they were not subject to any secular ruler, and just barely subject
to even the Pope. They only worked with the rulers as independent allies,
never as vassals. The Orders were fully able to enter truces with Muslims
against the will of a prince, who had to comply, but as universal affirmatives
are only partially convertible, the Order could resist a truce and consider
not to be bound by it. This surely was a major source of aggravation to the
princes. Yet another point was that the Orders did not share plunder; what
they considered was won by them, it was all kept by them, and no dividends
went to the princes. Apparently quality had a price even then.
his was of course detrimental not
only to the princes and lords, but to the Orders themselves in the long run.
It all worked into the fatal weakness of the Latin kingdom in Palestine:
dispersed military power, twisted chains of command, and conflicting interests.
These are very visible in, for example, the Templar Grand Master Gerard de
Ridefort's ridiculous charge against superior enemy in
Nazareth. He just thought to have a go at some
Muslims, without thinking of the bigger picture. In total, the problem of
the rulers was a mediaeval Catch-22: to survive, Franks needed both a field
army and garrisoned outposts. The garrisons were mostly run by the Templars
and the Hospitallers. But at times of warm they needed a well-trained field
army, which also was supplied by the Orders, who by entering the army had
to abandon the outposts. Lack of funds and means prevented the Franks from
having both. Then, if the field army took a licking such as at
Hattin 1187, outposts were also lost for a great
deal. In fact, some only had two or three knights left behind when the rest
marched off to a campaign.
ith such problems, it is not hard
to see that the Latin Kingdom, however nice an idea it was, needed more than
it had to survive. War of attrition chipped away at the meager resources
the Franks had, and despite the heroic and often unbelievable military action
the Orders put up, they had a losing hand from the start.