The Templars and the Hospitallers were the constituted guardians of the true cross when it was brought forth from its sacred repository in the church of the Resurrection to be placed at the head of the christian army. The Templars marched on the right of the sacred emblem, and the Hospitallers on the left; and the same position was taken up by the two orders in the line of battle.[85]
An eye-witness of the conduct of the Templars in the field tells us that they were always foremost in the fight and the last in the retreat; that they proceeded to battle with the greatest order, silence, and circumspection, and carefully attended to the commands of their Master. When the signal to engage had been given by their chief, and the trumpets of the order sounded to the charge, "then," says he, "they humbly sing the psalm of David, _Non nobis, non nobis, Domine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam_, 'Not unto us, not unto us, O Lord, but unto thy name give the praise;' and placing their lances in rest, they either break the enemy's line or die. If any one of them should by chance turn back, or bear himself less manfully than he ought, the white mantle, the emblem of their order, is ignominiously stripped off his shoulders, the cross worn by the fraternity is taken away from him, and he is cast out from the fellowship of the brethren; he is compelled to eat on the ground without a napkin or a table-cloth for the space of one year; and the dogs who gather around him and torment him he is not permitted to drive away. At the expiration of the year, if he be truly penitent, the Master and the brethren restore to him the military girdle and his pristine habit and cross, and receive him again into the fellowship and community of the brethren. The Templars do indeed practise the observance of a stern religion, living in humble obedience to their Master, without property, and spending nearly all the days of their lives under tents in the open fields."[86] Such is the picture of the Templars drawn by one of the leading dignitaries of the Latin kingdom.
We must now resume our narrative of the principal events connected with the order.
In the year 1172, the Knight Templar Walter du Mesnil was guilty of a foul murder, which created a great sensation in the East. An odious religious sect, supposed to be descended from the Ismaelians of Persia, were settled in the fastnesses of the mountains above Tripoli. They devoted their souls and bodies in blind obedience to a chief who is called by the writers of the crusades "the old man of the mountain," and were employed by him in the most extensive system of murder and assassination known in the history of the world. Both Christian and Moslem writers enumerate with horror the many illustrious victims that fell beneath their daggers. They assumed all shapes and disguises for the furtherance of their deadly designs, and carried, in general, no arms except a small poniard concealed in the folds of their dress, called in the Persian tongue _hassissin_, whence these wretches were called _assassins_, their chief the prince of the assassins; and the word itself, in all its odious import, has passed into most European languages.[87]