How come the knight templars were so easily defeated by france?
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Answer:
Explanation:As has been pointed out by the others, they did not “disappear,” they were brutally repressed in one of the most scandalous kangaroo trials in history.
King Philip IV of France, whose coffers were empty (again), decided to confiscate the Templar “treasure” – meaning their entire property. To justify this move, Philip accused the Templars of various crimes, including devil worship, blasphemy, corruption, and sodomy. Without warning, on the night of Friday, October 13, 1307, officers of the French crown simultaneously broke into Templar commanderies across France and seized all the Templars and their property. While most of the men arrested were lay brothers and sergeants (since most knights who had survived the fall of Acre were on Cyprus), Philip IV made sure he would also seize the senior officers of the Temple by inviting them to Paris “for consultations” in advance of his strike. All those arrested, including the very men King Philip had treated as friends and advisors only days before, were subjected to brutal torture until they confessed to the catalog of crimes the French King had concocted.
There is no evidence whatsoever that the Templars were in any way heretical in their beliefs. Furthermore, although Philip persuaded the Pope to order a general investigation of the Templars, in countries where torture was not extensively employed (such as England, Spain, Portugal, Germany, and Cyprus), the Templars were found innocent.
Meanwhile, in France, Templars who retracted the confessions torn from them under torture were burned at the stake as “relapsed heretics.” Tragically, the Pope at the time lived in terror of King Philip IV, who had deposed his predecessor with accusations almost identical to those leveled against the Templars. He preferred to sacrifice the Templars rather than risk confrontation with King Philip. Thus, although the evidence against the Order was clearly fabricated and the Pope could not find sufficient grounds to condemn the Order, he disbanded it in 1312.
Individual members of the disbanded order were required to join “stricter” religious orders. Fighting men, whether knights or sergeants, probably preferred to join one of the other “militant” orders such as the Hospitallers, Teutonic Knights, or the various military orders in Spain and Portugal. Although we cannot rule out the possibility of individual former Templars refusing to join another religious institution and, say, fighting with Robert the Bruce, in doing so they were then in clear violation of their own oaths and acting as renegades. They did not constitute a continuation of the Order.
The last Master and Marshal of the Knights Templar, Jacques de Molay and Geoffrey de Charney respectively, were burned at the stake in the presence of King Philip for retracting their confessions on March 18, 1314. Not until 2007 did the Vatican officially declare the Templars’ innocent based on the evidence still in the Papal archives.
