The King Who Erased The Knights Templar D
King Phillip was known as the fair. But when he caught his daughters-in-law having affairs with knights, he resorted to an extremely gruesome punishment to ensure it wouldn’t happen again. Many rulers have led with extreme egos or great ambitions. But King Philip IV of France took self-righteousness to another level.
Acting under the divine calling he believed God had placed upon him, he showed little mercy or emotion in general. His willingness to do whatever it took to ensure his vision earned him no shortage of enemies and perhaps an early grave. [Music] Born in 1268, his mother was Isabella of Aragon, while his father was known as Prince Philip the Bold.
[Music] While on a crusade in August 1270, King Louis the 9th, Philip IVth’s grandfather, died and pulled the chain of succession up, making Philip the Bold the new king and Philip IVth’s brother, Louie, the heir apparent. Sadly, Philip would grow up without his mother.
In January 1271, the pregnant queen to be had a nasty fall from a horse, killing her and her unborn child. Then, Philip’s brother Louie died in 1276. Shocked and confused, the 8-year-old Philip now faced his new role as heir. He wasn’t king yet, but if the swiftness of the past few losses in his family were anything to go by, his ascension could come at any moment.
As he looked for someone to model himself after as a ruler, he became drawn to the reputation and legacy that his grandfather Louis the 9th had left behind. Under his rule, many admired Louis the 9th for his righteous disposition, and stories of his works, often miraculous, continued to spread after his passing.
Philip IV came to believe that not only was God charging him with following in his grandfather’s footsteps, but also to lead France as Catholicism’s chosen protector. When royals marry, it’s almost always to get some political or financial benefit, as was Philip IV’s marriage on August 16th, 1284. In marrying Joan of Navar, Philip would benefit by expanding his land to include Brie and Champagne since Joan was set to inherit them.
They also lucked out by actually falling in love with Philip refusing to remarry after her later passing. With strong ambition and his future queen by his side, Philip was ready to reign by the time his father died. While fighting a campaign against the kingdom of Aragon in 1285, King Philip III died of dissentry.
So at the young age of 17, Philip IV took the throne on January 6th, 1286. Befetting someone with such strong idealism, the new King Philip had one goal above all, ensuring that the monarchy would only get stronger. As a whole, this meant changing the way previous sovereigns had ruled, especially by giving more authority to his own bureaucracy, which included officials whose chief concern was the letter of the law.
Once he took the throne, King Philip IV faced one of the biggest problems he inherited from his father, debt. The previous king’s conflict with Aragon had been expensive and had largely been financed with borrowed money from the Knights Templar. Around this time, Aquatine remained a vassal state under France’s rule with its duche held by King Edward I of England.
As such, despite his likely begrudging attitude, the English king had no choice but to pay regular homage to King Phillip. And by 1291, relations between the two kings became tense. In the early 1290s, those tensions escalated into conflict. Sailors from either kingdom had started attacking and taking captive any opposing ships they came across, with the English sacking the port city of Lar Roelle.
To straighten things out, in 1293, King Philip summoned King Edward. But Edward was not thrilled about appearing before Philip in person, so he sent his brother. This seemingly worked, and the monarchs negotiated a deal where Edward would temporarily give Philip Gaskiny in feelalty as Duke in exchange for Philip’s forgiveness.
Unfortunately, the peace didn’t last, and it wasn’t long before the English king received another summons to Paris in April 1294. This time though, Edward had had enough, and rather than try to send someone else, he simply refused the summons entirely. Edward’s refusal had immediate repercussions, and in the following month, he lost great amounts of land for his failure to appear in person.
This meant that his surrender of Gaskiny became less temporary and Philip went as far as to revoke his duche of Aquitane. When Philip seized pieces of Edward’s lands, it wasn’t just in writing. The French army marched into Gaskiny and Aquitane, taking them by force. Naturally, Edward had only one answer to this, and he officially declared war on France in 1294.
But he wasn’t alone. Just a few years into the conflict, the county of Flanders also turned against King Phillip. [Music] As Flanders declared independence in 1297, England saw an opportunity to unite against a common enemy, aiding the Flemish people and simultaneously weakening France. However, France was not without allies and quickly called upon their old alliance with Scotland to help in the coming conflict.
As the war between England and France moved into its eighth year, King Philip met a staggering defeat at the Battle of the Golden Spurs. And it wasn’t from King Edward’s forces. In fact, it was the Flemish people who soundly defeated Philip’s 6 and a half thousandman army, causing him to rethink his odds against their rebellion.
Although he couldn’t immediately exact his vengeance on the Flemish people, around 2 years later in 1304, King Philip showed Flanders exactly what he thought of their efforts. At the battle of Monzon Pavel, France’s forces came at the Flemish army with no mercy and effectively ended the conflict between them.
Unfortunately for the Flemish people, the tenacity and strength they showed only allowed their uprising to go so far. In 1305, Philip both cemented his victory and implemented severe measures and punishments to ensure that Flanders would never again rise against his monarchy. By the end of England and France’s conflict, neither country was happy with the outcome.
The goal of it all had been to settle which land belonged to which kingdom and possibly acquire more of it. But almost none of this happened. Instead, the more significant impact was on the economy, especially with all the taxes used to finance the fighting. France’s economy took a major hit and suffered consequences that lasted long after the fighting.
The impact of the battle of Golden Spurs alone caused the value of French currency to decrease by 37%. And Philip started ordering the collection of silver objects from residents for minting into coins. In 1306, he brought the silver content of each coin back up to 3.96 g and devalued the coinage minted during the conflict.
But this meant that debtors then needed to use the new coinage in their repayment and lost quite a bit of money which inevitably led to brutal riots. France had come out on top against England. But Philip wasn’t interested in perpetuating the antagonism that led them to conflict. Therefore, in 1308, his daughter Isabella married King Edward’s son, Edward II, in keeping with the 1299 Treaty of Montroy.
This was their way of keeping the two kingdoms from fighting for the foreseeable future. Still, in the end, everything comes back to money. Rather than try to figure out the financial crisis that his international relations and policies had caused, Philip decided to expel all Jewish residents of France in 1306.
While he may have offered a different explanation at the time, this was likely to control the Jewish mints and collect any loans owed to the Jews. For ages, the Order of the Knights Templar had served as chivalri protectors of Christian pilgrims, but had since become more focused on the business of finance and banking.
As such, considering Philip had inherited his father’s monetary problems and added a few of his own, he was again heavily indebted to the Templars, and they expected him to pay it back. Unfortunately for the Templars, as he demonstrated with many before them, his answer to getting rid of debts was to get rid of the debtors.
Philip made it his next mission to eliminate the Knights Templar. So when accusations of heresy and sodomy were raised against the Knights, Philip used these complaints as an excuse to start tearing them down. Whatever degree of truth lay in the accusations against the Templars, Philip showed the ultimate holier than thou attitude in condemning them.
Since the Templars answered to the Pope primarily, Philip framed these actions as divine justice and claimed to operate above the papacy as an almost Christlike figure. The Templars’s numbers were up and they had nowhere to run. Philip’s vendetta against the Templars culminated one dark day in October 1307 on Friday the 13th.
Swiftly and without mercy, Philip’s men seized the knights in France and took them into custody by the hundreds. This is where the truth of the accusations gets more vague, as nearly all confessions of heresy made by the knights came from pain and coercion. The form of torture that Philip ordered on the Templars was brutal.
While the knights did serve the papacy, the Pope at the time, Clement V, was mostly inefficient at protecting them since he was in the pocket of King Phillip. However, Clement still tried to arrange several trials for the Templars with no success as Philip ordered their executions through burning at the stake before any proceedings could go through.
Several years after his mass execution of the Templars, Philip faced another issue, but this time it was much closer to home. At this time, Philip’s three sons, Louie, Philip, and Charles, had each been married for several years to members of the Burgundian nobility, Margaret, Joan, and Blanch. None of those marriages would last due to the actions of Philip’s daughter, Isabella, in 1313.
During a family visit, after all the siblings and their spouses enjoyed some entertainment, Isabella brought out a collection of distinctly embroidered coin purses and gifted one each to her brothers and their wives. Fairly innocuous until months later when Isabella allegedly spotted something truly scandalous.
While hosting a dinner, she claimed to spot the purses belonging to her sisters-in-law, Margaret and Blanch, in the hands of two knights. Isabella had suspicions, and she couldn’t keep them to herself. Believing it evidence of her sisters-in-law being unfaithful to her brothers, Isabella brought her claim to her father.
King Philip immediately ordered his men to watch his son’s wives. Supposedly Margaret and Blanch had been cheating on their husbands with the knights in an old guard tower called the Tur Denell. Although Margaret and Blanch were at the center of most of the adulterous claims, it didn’t only affect them.
Rumors started to circulate that Joan not only knew about the affairs, but had also been unfaithful to Prince Philillip, despite evidence suggesting their marriage was the happiest of all three. Of course, modern experts have their own opinions. Looking back through history, it’s impossible to know for sure how true Isabella’s allegations were and whether she was blowing the whistle or making up stories.
However, most modern historians tend to believe that while it’s less likely in Joan’s case, Margaret and Blanch were probably carrying out secret affairs. Whether she fabricated the story or truthfully exposed a scandal, some have posited that Isabella may have done so to achieve her own political gain. It’s possible the princess hoped that by removing her sisters-in-law, her newborn son would have an easier time taking the throne.
Whatever the case, her actions had serious consequences. Ultimately, King Phillip had enough evidence or testimony to satisfy him after having his three daughters in-law surveiled for a short period, subsequently taking them into custody. He also captured the two knights and just like the Templars, had them tortured, making their resulting confessions questionable.
Philip brought all his daughters-in-law to court, resulting in Margaret and Blanch being found guilty. Fortunately, his son, Prince Phillip, intervened and influenced Joan’s eventual verdict of innocence. However, the two knights weren’t so lucky. Found guilty of adultery, Margaret and Blanch each had their heads shaved, and the courts sentenced them to life in prison.
Comparatively, they may have gotten off easy as both guilty knights were then tortured, fleed, and executed in what became known as the Tur Denell affair. Of course, these weren’t the last significant executions Philip would order. In 1314, Philip faced further scrutiny when two of the last surviving Templars spoke to the public.
Preceptor of Normandy de Charne and grandmaster of the temple Jacqu de Mole revealed to everyone that Philip had coerced their confessions out of them and they were only guilty of betraying their order to save their own lives. Although valiant, this action sealed their fate. Outraged, Philip immediately ordered the executions of the two knights, foregoing any formal hearings.
Then one horrible March evening, Philip’s men placed De Mole and Des Charé on wooden pikes and burnt them alive. This only helped their case as many heard of the Templars’s unflinching composure throughout their execution and considered them martyrs. Meanwhile, King Philip’s own death wasn’t far, and it was anything but heroic.
In late 1314, while hunting in the forest of Alat, the king suffered a cerebral stroke. Although he initially survived and even looked like he might recover, he succumbed to his condition and died on November 29th. Some saw this as divine retribution. Around 7 months before King Phillip’s death, Pope Clement V had also died, likely from lupus.
The timing of both being so close to Demole’s execution led many to believe that something of a higher power was at play. Soon a legend started to spread that as he burned the late Templar Grandmaster had cursed Philillip or even that he told God of the king and Pope’s treachery. Thanks for watching History Expose.
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