Original subtitles

NARRATOR: The Knights Templar defended the holy land.

Their tools were bloodshed and prayer.

Founded in the 12th century, these Christian warrior monks

were an unbeatable force for nearly 200 years,

then they suffered a spectacular fall from grace.

Tried for heresy, they were accused

of practicing strange rituals.

Accusers said they spat on the cross,

worshiped a severed human head, and engaged

in perverse sexual acts.

They were disbanded.

Their grand master was burned at the stake.

Ever since, their name has carried

an air of mystery and romance.

Today, books like "The Da Vinci Code"

embellish the myth of the Templars.

Claims persist that they guarded the most sacred object

in Christendom the Holy Grail.

Behind the legend, we explore the real world

of the Knights Templar, a world built from stone.

800 years ago, they constructed some of the finest

fortifications ever known.

PAUL CRAWFORD: Oh my, look at this.

This is fantastic.

NARRATOR: Today, much of what they built

is crumbling into the landscape.

Now, a team of experts is journeying back to their world.

I don't think this has been used for centuries.

NARRATOR: Using state of the art computer animation,

they will reveal, for the first time eight centuries,

the lost world of the Knights Templar.

[theme music]

In a hidden corner of the Middle East

is the long-forgotten world of the Knights Templar.

Tortosa in modern Syria was once a Templar city.

Their splendid military headquarters was at its heart.

Those who passed through the city in the 13th century

tell of an enormous chapel and great hall,

an impregnable castle, and fine walls with towers,

as if crowned with precious jewels.

Now all that stands intact is a cathedral.

At the time of the Templars, this was an important place

of pilgrimage.

The rest of the city is decaying, just

fragments of ruins embedded in the modern city.

Today, local people seem unaware they are living within what

was once a great city of a secretive international

organization.

Our experts will piece together clues found at Tortosa.

They will reconstruct the long-lost world

of the Templars.

The Knights Templar was formed in the 12th century.

Its purpose was to protect Christian pilgrims on their way

to Jerusalem.

Professor Paul Crawford is traveling along the old route

to the ancient city.

PAUL CRAWFORD: It was so dangerous,

that one pilgrim wrote back home after having gone

along the pilgrim route and said that he saw heaps of bones

littering the sides of the roads where people had died

and rotted.

If your friends are killed, don't stop to bury them

because if you dig them a grave, that grave will turn out

to be your own grave.

Someone will come along and kill you, and put you in it.

NARRATOR: The Knights took vows of poverty, chastity,

and obedience.

They offered their lives to safeguard the routes

that the pilgrims took.

They were now warrior monks.

Soon, the role of the Templars expanded

to defend the Christian territories in the holy land

from local Muslim warlords.

PAUL CRAWFORD: The Templars represented a new concept.

They represented a fusion of the medieval calling of warrior

on the one hand with the medieval calling of religious

on the other hand.

Fuse them together, and you get fighting religious.

NARRATOR: This concept of holy war was new and shocking.

Tortosa was handed to the Knights Templar in 1152.

In return, they would protect the city and the surrounding

land from Muslims who wanted the Christian settlers to leave

the holy land.

The hub of the city was the Templars' castle manned

by the warrior monks.

David Nicolle is attempting to find the castle

walls to understand how they engineered their defenses.

DAVID NICOLLE: Well, here we have the inner wall.

It's quite short sections of wall,

and then these protruding towers.

They look like sort of zigzags, actually, in the wall,

but they are individual towers.

NARRATOR: As David passes between the fortifications,

it becomes clear that there is a remarkable amount still

standing.

DAVID NICOLLE: It does seem that this little street that we're

on just hugs the wall.

It's not possible to follow the wall anymore in this direction,

for the wall, made of these really large pieces of masonry,

disappears into these houses.

NARRATOR: Linking together the remains,

the scale of the castle can be revealed,

double concentric walls surrounded on three sides.

Protecting the seaward flank are two strong towers.

These walls were designed to withstand even the most

ruthless attacker.

Records from the time tell us of enemy armies attempting

to tunnel underneath the defenses to take the castle.

The first step was to get right up

against the base of the wall.

The normal system of doing that was,

at least in medieval French, would be called a chat, a cat.

NARRATOR: The cat was a heavy framed, sturdy wooden structure

that could creep up to the walls, withstanding the arrows

and rocks that the defenders would rain down from above.

It would be inched forward slowly, slowly, slowly

until it gets right there.

NARRATOR: Then the attackers dig, destabilizing the wall.

Pit props support the tunnel until a section is undermined.

You put inflammable material around there, straw, and oil,

and olive oil, and fat, and anything that's

going to make a good old blaze.

And then you light it and get out quick.

NARRATOR: The pit props burn away, and under its own weight,

the wall begins to collapse.

You crack the shell.

NARRATOR: The Tortosa castle walls were designed

to resist the enemy tunnelers.

The distance between the towers seems

to be the range of a crossbow.

The spacing enabled arches to cover the area between.

You've got a relatively low outer wall, a probably slightly

higher inner wall so the archers and what have you

up there can shoot down over the outer wall.

NARRATOR: But there was a problem in shooting down

from the towers at Tortosa.

Most crossbows of the time were designed to shoot horizontally.

And here, the Templars would have to aim downwards.

You're clearly going to have a problem rather like that,

giving your arrows to the enemy, but not quite

in the way that you intended.

NARRATOR: So an ingenious device was added.

It has here a clip which, although it doesn't hold

the bolt very strongly, it does hold it in place,

and you can very clearly shoot at any angle you wish.

You don't lose the thing.

NARRATOR: But bows and arrows were

useless against this, the ultimate medieval war machine.

It's called a trebuchet.

This enormous catapult, at nearly 60-feet tall,

is the biggest like this in the world.

Six oak trees were used to build it.

For the Templars inside Tortosa, the sight

of a machine like this would have been terrifying.

Soon, 50-pound stone balls would be raining down

on the fortification.

It would be devastating.

With a range of up to a quarter of a mile,

trebuchets have the power to break through stonework.

David Nicolle has pieced together clues

to rebuild the towers and walls, engineered to withstand

both trebuchets and tunnelers.

If the enemy breached the outer wall by tunneling,

there is still an inner wall to break through.

And at 20-feet thick, they were almost impregnable.

Tortosa was the gateway to a string

of equally-imposing fortifications protecting

territory across the holy land.

At the heart of the Christian kingdom was Jerusalem,

and here, the Templars adapted the world's most important

religious site to suit their own purposes.

In the First Crusade of 1099, Christians seized Jerusalem

from Muslim rule.

On Temple Mount, stood the magnificent Al-Aqsa Mosque,

built in the seventh century.

In Christian Jerusalem, this was to serve as the headquarters

of the Knights Templar.

It meant the Templars were now linked with one of the most

important sites in Christendom.

HELEN NICHOLSON: There were all the stories from the Bible

associated with that area.

That's where Jesus was supposed to have walked,

where he was supposed to have done his miracle.

The Templars were associated with all these events

in the Bible.

NARRATOR: The former mosque was adapted to become

an administrative center.

Beneath it in subterranean vaults,

the warrior monks stabled their horses,

ready to go into battle to defend Jerusalem's holy places.

The magnificent arches of the stables

were 30-feet high and covered an area of some 60,000

square feet.

JONATHAN PHILLIPS: In it, they can have maybe 1,000 horses.

One western visitor says that if you fired a crossbow bolt,

the bolt wouldn't have even reached the end of the room.

It was that big.

This is the perfect place for the Templars

to set themselves up.

NARRATOR: This militarization of the holiest of sites embodied

the spiritual and military roles of the Knights Templar.

The defense of the Christian East cost many lives.

At the furthest reach of their network

was a church where new recruits were inducted.

But here, the strange rituals of the Templars

were shrouded in mystery.

In the heart of the city of London

stands the English headquarters of the Knights Templar.

Temple Church was consecrated in 1185.

Its structure echoes the most important church

in the Christian world, the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.

The Holy Sepulcher is built on the site where many Christians

believe Jesus was crucified, buried, and rose from the dead.

As with the Holy Sepulcher, the nave of Temple Church

is circular.

Within these walls, a mysterious ritual

took place to induct new members into the brotherhood.

Across Europe, knights were received into the Templars

at a phenomenal rate.

They replaced men lost in battle defending

the kingdom of Jerusalem.

JONATHAN PHILLIPS: There are times the Templars suffered

terrible casualties in battle.

There's one battle in 1244, 348 Templars

went in, 312 were killed.

NARRATOR: New recruits would enter the temple

by the west door, which was then locked shut.

This was a secret ceremony.

So many took place at dawn just as the sun was rising,

as if they were going into a new life.

NARRATOR: The initiates pass through the circular nave

and between the ghostly statues, then began a solemn ritual.

The new recruits would take monastic vows of poverty,

chastity, and obedience.

You're not to kiss women, not even your mother

or your sister.

NARRATOR: As Knights, these men would suffer all for God

and be servants to the Templars forever.

The secrecy of the ceremony provoked rumors

from those outside the brotherhood.

We hear strange things that were going on.

One Knight says that he had to actually kiss

the white, scabby belly of one of the masters.

He recoiled from this terrible sight.

There is, nonetheless, a strong suspicion

their initiation rites are rather suspect.

NARRATOR: The secret rituals going on inside Temple Church

contrasted with its highly-visible presence

from the outside.

The church was built as an advertisement for their cause,

the kingdom of Jerusalem.

Soon, the great and the good were bequeathing their money

and estates to the Templars.

These strange statues on the floor of the nave

represent the most generous donors to the Templar cause.

HELEN NICHOLSON: All these people

would be very rich landowners in England.

So these represent the cream of English chivalry of the period.

NARRATOR: By bestowing vast sums of money to the Templars,

the donors were assured of glory in the eyes of God.

The Knights Templar became, by today's standards,

a multi-billion dollar, multi-national organization.

With the wealth and the lands they

acquired, the Templars became institutionally fantastically

rich.

They had offices, if you like, with their representatives

all over Christendom.

They were also trusted.

Men going away on crusade would give them their wealth

to look after.

NARRATOR: The Templars operated an international banking

system.

Pilgrims could deposit money in Europe

and withdraw funds once they reached the holy land.

It reduced the risk of robbery on the road.

The Templars are the first international banking

organization.

NARRATOR: The city of Tortosa was not only

an important Templar headquarters,

its coastal location provided a vital shipping

link with the west.

David Nicolle has located the port by the castle walls where

the Templar ships would dock.

Men and goods, horses, food and supplies, practically

everything is brought in by sea.

And then communications, messengers, reports going back

to the Templar headquarters keep everybody informed of what's

going on in this part of the world.

NARRATOR: Now, we can recreate how the port at Tortosa

would have been at the time of the Templars.

800 years ago, the sea would have lapped against the castle

walls, allowing men and goods to be offloaded into the city.

These walls enclosed an area now packed with modern homes.

They mask what were once magnificent medieval buildings.

Contemporary sources tell us the wealthy Templars built

an impressive great hall here, and it's here that battle plans

and tactics would have been drawn up

as the Templars defended the surrounding territory.

Paul Crawford is searching for remains of the Templar building

cannibalized in this row of houses.

It would be really nice to see what's in there.

Behind somebody's house now.

[knocking]

MAN: [non-english]

May I come in?

May I come in?

[non-english]

I'm in here.

Let's see if we can go up.

They've built their houses out of bits of the great hall

itself.

Oh my, look at this.

This is fantastic.

People are living up against the walls of the great hall here.

NARRATOR: Up in the vaults is evidence of the Gothic style

of architecture that the Templars favored.

The Templars built the vaulted arches of the great hall

from wedge-shaped stones.

A keystone at the center was held in place by the pressure

of neighboring pieces.

The keystone is the supporting element

for a structure like this.

Without it, the arch would collapse.

The weight is directed to strong, springing points

at the base of the arches.

If we follow the lines of this vault down,

we should be able to find the springing point somewhere.

And it should be, let's see, right about in here.

Hm, let's give this a try.

A little washroom in--

ah, look at that.

Look there.

Decorated-- oh, that's ornamental.

That's beautiful.

Look at that.

Imagine yourself below that, maybe 18 feet, looking up

at it.

That's amazing.

NARRATOR: We can now reveal the magnificence of the great hall.

Eight centuries ago, it would have been bustling

with activity as the Templars plotted

against the great Muslim leader Saladin.

On the floor, perhaps long tables,

Knights sitting along them, planning, doing strategy.

Imagine in 1188, they're sitting there talking,

and a scout comes in saying, Saladin is on the way.

Saladin is on the way.

And they all jump up and run to their stations.

NARRATOR: The warrior monks would seize their weapons

and fight to the death to defend Tortosa from the enemy.

But to the Templars, just as important as fighting

was prayer.

So buried somewhere within the castle walls,

there must be the remains of a chapel.

Paul Crawford is hoping to find them.

PAUL CRAWFORD: Ah, we've got it.

Look up there.

It's amazing to walk into this thing,

discover it tucked away in a little corner of Tartus,

nobody having used it for hundreds of years.

It's an amazing thing.

It's wonderful.

NARRATOR: Remarkably, the Templar chapel

is still being used as a home.

PAUL CRAWFORD: People with their houses built into it,

but they've all been just added in sort of like wasps nests

inside an abandoned barn.

NARRATOR: These buildings mask the scale of the chapel,

and centuries of debris have raised the floor level

by 15 feet, as the position of these windows shows.

We can now reveal the once magnificent Templar chapel.

The space would have been massive, 80-feet long,

30-feet wide, and 50-feet tall.

The scale and splendor of the building

is an indication of the crucial importance of prayer

to the Knights Templar.

At the nucleus of the castle was the keep.

This strong stone tower would have been the military nerve

center of the castle.

It dominated the entire city.

Today, the keep has been obscured by over 800 years

of conflict and change.

Military historian David Nicolle believes he has located remains

of the tower.

But what lies inside has remained hidden for centuries.

He is about to investigate.

This is the actual center of the old tower.

This is quite difficult to get through.

It has not been cleared at all, and I don't think this has been

used for centuries.

Ah, there's a door.

NARRATOR: David has stumbled upon the inner sanctum of the

keep.

If the city was attacked, this would be the final stronghold

the Templars could retreat to.

Here may be clues as to how they survive during a siege.

Judging by the sound of it, it's

full of water, which is a bit scary.

It echoes, and the steps leading down into the water.

This is creepy.

NARRATOR: This is a stunning find, a cistern still stocked

with water centuries after the Templars left.

How deep is that water?

[splash]

Deep enough.

I don't want to go in there.

NARRATOR: During a siege, the Knights

could have been trapped within the keep for weeks.

The cistern would be an essential supply of water.

Next door is another chamber.

Even in the depths of the keep, the quality of the construction

is outstanding.

Beautifully made.

I mean, look at that window.

I think you'd have been proud to find that in your local parish

church.

NARRATOR: This was the weapons store.

At the top of the vault, there is a small access hole,

a secret trap door would have provided the Templars

with a supply of swords, shields, and crossbows.

The cistern and the weapons store

contained in the 60-foot square keep represented the last line

of defense for the Templars.

In 1188, their great enemy Saladin attacked Tortosa.

The city and walls fell.

But the keep, with its 15-foot thick walls, held out.

It was a testament to its construction and design.

Now, for the first time, the team of historians

has rediscovered the long lost Templar city of Tortosa

and brought it back to life.

JONATHAN PHILLIPS: Through rediscovering Templar Tortosa,

with the castle and the chapel so close to one another,

we can see the dual role of the warrior and the monk

encapsulated.

NARRATOR: From Tortosa, power radiated out

to a network of castles and Christian cities

across the holy land.

But the linchpin of the network is not a castle,

but a unique, fortified church.

Within this building, the Templars

would have taken part in a sinister ritual,

venerating relics, the body parts of saints.

From the port of Tortosa, the Knights Templar

radiated their power and wealth across the holy land.

Just 25 miles from Tortosa is Chastel Blanc.

It's out in the frontier land of the Christian kingdom.

Today, all that remains is a solitary stone tower

on a hill that dominates the modern town of Safita.

Chastel Blanc towers 100 feet over the highest peak

in the region.

But this is a very special and unique building.

It is a fortified church.

It is the Templar ideal set in stone,

the Christian faith defended by military might.

The fusion of the warrior calling

and the religious calling because this

is a religious building.

It's a church, but it's a chapel with arrow slits instead

of stained-glass windows.

NARRATOR: Hidden within the 15-foot thick walls

of the fortified church is a secret staircase.

It leads to the roof.

Paul Crawford is exploring the fortification

to determine why Chastel Blanc was constructed on this site.

PAUL CRAWFORD: I can see why the Templars put a network

of castles here on this spot.

This is a dry, dead desert.

There isn't heaps of gravel.

It's orchards, olive trees, orange trees, lemon trees.

Look at the richness and the beauty of this countryside.

It's not only appealing to the eye,

it's appealing to the pocket book.

It's economically financially valuable territory.

NARRATOR: From here, there are sightlines to all

the nearby fortifications, putting Chastel Blanc

at the center of an impregnable web of defenses.

PAUL CRAWFORD: It forms the linchpin

of a network of castles that holds

this rich, beautiful, fertile, valuable land in place

and defends it.

NARRATOR: Chastel Blanc is a beautifully compact design

with a chapel on the lower level.

It has a dormitory above.

Cut into the rock below is a water cistern.

But to the medieval builder, constructing a fortification

high on this hill represented a major engineering challenge.

A castle like this is incredibly expensive to create.

Look at the depth of the walls, the size of the blocks.

Look at how carefully they're put together.

NARRATOR: Historian David Nicolle has studied how

the Templars moved the gigantic, 2,000-pound stones to construct

their castles.

They used timber cranes and pulley systems.

It was very, very sophisticated.

In a sense, they had all the engineering that we have,

the only difference being that it was made of wood and ropes,

not from steel or any of that kind of stuff.

NARRATOR: And instead of electric or diesel power,

the traction was provided by humans or animals.

There's a person inside a wheel which they walk along,

like hamsters in a wheel in a cage,

and that is converted into power which will then pull the ropes,

very, very effective.

NARRATOR: And it's not just the scale of the engineering that

is impressive, it's the quality.

Every stone is engineered to perfection.

And look at this.

The bottom of the arrow slit is angled so that when you come

over here, you can look.

And if there's an enemy out there,

you shoot your little bow at him.

And you can get him because of the angle.

There's no blind spot for him down there.

NARRATOR: For the Templars, guidance in battle

came from God.

Within their fortified chapel, the warrior monks

would have taken part in religious rituals venerating

relics, the body parts of saints.

There's always been this element in Christian history

of coming close to a holy person, being in their presence

or being able to touch them.

NARRATOR: Often, a relic would be a fragment of bone

or a piece of a saint's clothing.

Sometimes it would have been more gruesome,

like a severed head.

The relics were so important to the Templars

they were taken into battle to provide divine guidance.

But the ultimate relics were those of Jesus Christ himself.

TIM BUGBY: We can't have relics of our Lord

because he was ascended into heaven,

and so we've latched on to the things which were closest

to him.

And for many, of course, the cup of The Last Supper

is something which is very important.

NARRATOR: This cup, the Holy Grail,

has for centuries has been the subject of mythology.

It is claimed the Templars, in their search for relics,

unearthed the Holy Grail at Temple Mount.

This became their most sacred possession, which they guarded

with their lives.

But there is little evidence that this persistent legend

is true.

JONATHAN PHILLIPS: This was the invention of a 12th century

French romance writer called Chretien de Troyes.

The Templars could never have had hold of this thing that

goes back centuries back to the time of Christ.

In the Middle Ages, there were people who we would call today

fantasy writers who apparently thought that it would be really

cool to connect the ideas of the Holy Grail

with the ideas of the Templars.

NARRATOR: It seems linking the mysterious and secretive

Templars with the greatest icon in Christendom

was the ultimate medieval fantasy.

Well, trouble is it takes on a life of its own,

goes on and on, and then people start to believe it.

But it's fantasy.

NARRATOR: By stripping away the modern settlements,

we can reveal Chastel Blanc as the Templars would have known

it.

On top of the steeply-sided hill, protected

by double-concentric walls, the fortified church

was fantastically defended.

This centerpiece of the network links the headquarters

at Tortosa to the rest of the Christian defenses.

But just 25 miles away is the world's finest castle, Krak Des

Chevaliers, built to withstand the most brutal attack.

Lawrence of Arabia described Krak Des Chevaliers

as the finest castle in the world.

With outer walls 100-feet thick and seven guard towers

30-feet in diameter, this castle was virtually impregnable.

The fortress was constructed and manned by the Hospitallers,

partners and rivals of the Templars.

Its location is crucial.

It defends the most important trade route in the region.

DAVID NICOLLE: Over there, you have the long valley

with the main road.

It's a main road today, and it was a main road

in medieval times linking the coast to the inland cities,

which in the crusader period were

the centers of Islamic power, and the coast was the center

of the Crusader power.

NARRATOR: The Hospitallers and the Templars

joined forces to defend this important territory.

This was a massive military operation,

and David Nicolle is on a quest to find out

how the Knights operated.

Horses were essential to the holy warriors,

but stabling the animals was a major undertaking.

The first of two stables.

This one is the smaller of the two.

It's still pretty big.

NARRATOR: These magnificent, vaulted buildings could stable

up to 1,000 horses.

From here, they could be out and in battle in minutes.

They are quite literally chomping at the bit.

They're probably as eager as the men

who are going to ride them to get out there and get

into action.

NARRATOR: Horses were also essential to transport weapons,

food, and men around the castle.

The designers of Krak Des Chevaliers

had to find a way of allowing the animals to move around

the steep inclines of the fortress.

They solved the problem by constructing the passages

as long, shallow steps instead of slopes.

By having these relatively shallow steps,

it reduces the slope, which makes

it easier for the animals.

And of course, it gets wet.

It gets slippery.

And if you've got that many animals,

you're going to have an awful lot of animal dung.

NARRATOR: Moving men above the castle

was just as important, especially when under attack.

We're deep inside this really, really thick, solid piece

of masonry.

NARRATOR: This is known as a gallery wall, a secret passage

within the broad fortifications, allowing the Knights to move

clandestinely around the castle in times of attack.

They'd like to keep it as hidden as possible

from the enemy.

You imagine yourself being under attack, people racing backwards

and forwards with new arrows for the crossbow man

or bringing water or food to them, or help to the injured.

There's going to be a lot of activity going on

during a siege.

NARRATOR: Knights would be manning not only the arrow

slits, but an ingenious piece of high-tech medieval engineering

known as machicolations.

Machicolations protrude from the castle walls.

They are a cunning anti-tunneling measure.

DAVID NICOLLE: If you could get above them and then drop rocks

or, indeed, anything nasty on top of them, boiling water.

Forget the boiling oil.

That's far, far too expensive to waste.

But I think some boiling water on top of the enemy miner's

heads could be quite effective.

That's put them off.

NARRATOR: But the greatest example of military engineering

at Krak Des Chevaliers is the great, sloping wall that

surrounds the central keep.

Known as a talus, it prevented the enemy

undermining the towers.

DAVID NICOLLE: The idea being that if you do penetrate

into that, it all falls down on top of you.

NARRATOR: Despite the web of fortifications, by 1187

the tide was turning against the Templars.

Their great enemy Saladin swept through the holy land,

grabbing town after town from the Christians.

Ultimately, he captured Jerusalem.

Within months, his army was at the gates

of Tortosa, the Templar's military headquarters.

The city fell, but the Knights managed to shelter

within the castle.

The Templars needed to regroup.

They set about rebuilding their fortifications.

David Nicolle is searching for clues as to how they reinforced

Tortosa.

Now, this diagonal line here is a beautiful clue.

I think you can say with reasonable certainty that marks

the line of the talus that went around the base of this tower.

NARRATOR: This talus meant Tortosa would now

resist an enemy attempting to undermine its walls.

Inside, David Nicolle makes another discovery.

It is clear the inner section of the keep,

containing a weapons store and cistern,

is surrounded by a later fortification.

What the Templars do is build this extra bit on the outside.

They strengthen and greatly enlarge this.

And on the outside of that, the sea.

The whole structure is now very strong, very strong indeed.

NARRATOR: David's find reveals how reinforcements were

constructed around the existing keep at Tortosa.

This second wall created a passage

where archers could hide to defend

the inner fortifications.

In combination with the talus, that

keep within the castle at Tortosa was now impregnable.

But despite the unparalleled fortifications,

the Templars were unable to resist

the tide of the Muslim forces who wanted to sweep them out

of the holy land.

By the end of the 13th century, every Templar castle

had fallen, except Tortosa.

But without their network of castles,

the Templars were doomed.

Realizing all was lost, they retreated to a tiny island

less than a mile from Tortosa.

Their wealth, secrecy, and brutality were about come back

to haunt them.

By 1291, the Templars had failed in their task

to defend the Christian territories of the holy land.

Their seemingly impregnable fortresses had fallen.

The Templars were pushed back to the coast

to Tortosa, the only castle they still held.

But without their once-great network, this castle,

too, would soon fall.

The Templars were left with little choice but to escape.

PAUL CRAWFORD: Tortosa became pointless, in a way,

and indefensible.

So in August of 1291, the Templars got on their boats

and sailed away.

NARRATOR: The Templars sailed to the island of Cyprus.

This was a secure base where they could regroup,

ready to launch an attack on the mainland to retake Tortosa

and the castle network.

They assembled a fleet of ships designed to transport

the Knights to the mainland.

Horses would be essential to this new assault,

and the Templar ships were designed to transport up

to 30 animals each.

But the journey by sea from Cyprus to Tortosa

is over 100 miles.

Transporting horses over this distance would be challenging.

PAUL CRAWFORD: Horses get seasick just like humans do.

Unlike humans, horses can't throw up,

and that causes a problem.

NARRATOR: Launching an attack with sick horses

would be disastrous, so the Templars needed a staging point

for the animals to recover.

Less than a mile off the coast of Tortosa

is the island of Ruad.

PAUL CRAWFORD: If you have Ruad, you

can bring the horses by transport,

then take them off, rest them up, then put them back

on the ship and take them the mile or so over

to the mainland.

And they won't be in bad shape when you get there.

NARRATOR: In 1300, the Knights Templar

set sail for Ruad Island with a huge garrison

of 120 Knights and 500 archers, ready to launch the attack.

PAUL CRAWFORD: The Templars came back here in force,

intending to use it as a beachhead to retake Tortosa,

and then the entire mainland.

NARRATOR: The only territory in the holy land now held

by the Knights Templar was Ruad, an island less than half a mile

across.

PAUL CRAWFORD: Imagine having held all of that coastline

that we can see, having been in the city of Tortosa,

the cathedral, Krak Des Chevaliers, Chastel

Rouge, Chastel Blanc, all of those great structures

in those networks of castles across the hinterland

and having lost them all, having been reduced to possessing

an island only slightly larger than the dimensions of the city

of Tortosa.

NARRATOR: But in 1302, things went from bad

to worse for the Knights Templar.

A Muslim force got wind of their garrison

on Ruad threatening the mainland.

They launched an amphibious attack.

PAUL CRAWFORD: They made contact on two points

on the island, attacked the Templars and their infantry.

They drove the Templars back to a castle, a fortress, possibly

this one on this end of the island,

and separated them from their infantry.

And there was fierce house-to-house fighting

in the narrow alleyways and the buildings

that were on the island.

NARRATOR: Realizing the game was up,

the Knights Templar surrendered.

Their last foothold had fallen to the enemy.

The era of the Templars as defenders of the holy land

was over.

Back in Europe, they were held to account.

Their vocation was to defend the holy places,

and they failed.

I mean, everybody's poured all this money in over centuries

now on the basis that they would guard the Christian places.

It hasn't worked.

NARRATOR: The reputation of the once-great Templars

was now in tatters.

On Friday 13, October, 1307, the King of France

ordered their arrest.

JONATHAN PHILLIPS: He accused them

of denying Christ, spitting on the cross,

urinating on the cross.

He accused them of homosexual practices.

He accused them of worshipping idols, of worshipping heads.

NARRATOR: Their mysterious rituals

were challenged, in particular the secret reception ceremony

where new Knights were sworn into the brotherhood.

HELEN NICHOLSON: There were mutterings about what

could possibly be happening behind these closed doors.

If it was a good thing, like the Templars said,

and holy and honest, why can't we go in to see?

They must pay up to something horrible and obscene in there

that they want to keep the secret.

There's no smoke without fire.

NARRATOR: The Templars were interrogated

under brutal torture.

PAUL CRAWFORD: There was one record of a Templar priest

whose feet were held over a fire, and the soles of his feet

were burned until, a few days later, the bones fell out.

There were other Templars who were hung from the ceilings

of dungeons and had weights attached to their feet, or even

their sensitive private parts, and then dropped.

NARRATOR: These broken men confessed to everything

from idol worship to sodomy.

PAUL CRAWFORD: We know that, today, you

can make a man suffer enough that you can make him say

anything.

And that fact alone makes historians

suspect that the charges against the Templars were not true.

NARRATOR: In March 1314, the Templars

were found guilty en masse.

The grand master was burned at the stake,

and the Knights disbanded.

When an organization as big, grand, and powerful as this one

falls, conspiracy theories will inevitably develop.

The most enduring myth is that of the Holy Grail

and the Templars' quest to find it.

It has gripped western imagination more

than any other legend.

JONATHAN PHILLIPS: In the trial proceedings,

in the interrogations, this thing isn't mentioned.

If the Templars had had it in their possession,

this would have come to light in the trial proceedings.

It's not mentioned at all.

NARRATOR: The destruction of their records

in the 16th century by Turkish invaders

means there will always be an air of mystery

about the Knights Templar.

JONATHAN PHILLIPS: The Templars obsession with secrecy,

and their interest in relics and arcane rituals,

means that, in many respects, that their own worst enemy.

But they go from the heroes of Christendom,

and they fall, and they're the bad guys.

NARRATOR: Today, everyone knows the Knights Templar

for the mystique that surrounds them.

But their buildings defended the holy land for almost 200 years.

Now, they're slowly crumbling into the landscape.

And so it seems the mythical status of the Templars

will outlive their lost world.

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