King Philip was no sooner informed of the result, than, upon the first impulse of his indignation, without consulting either pope, or bishop, or ecclesiastical council, he commanded the instant execution of both these gallant noblemen. The same day at dusk they were led out of their dungeons, and were burned to death in a slow and lingering manner upon small fires of charcoal which were kindled on the little island in the Seine, between the king’s garden and the convent of Saint Augustine, close to the spot where now stands the equestrian statue of Henri IV.[168] Thus perished the last Grand Master of the Temple.
The fate of the persecutors of the order is not unworthy of notice.
A year and one month after the above horrible execution, the pope was attacked by a dysentery, and speedily hurried to his grave. The dead body was transported to Carpentras, where the court of Rome then resided; it was placed at night in a church which caught fire, and the mortal remains of the holy pontiff were almost entirely consumed. His relations quarrelled over the immense treasures he left behind him, and a vast sum of money, which had been deposited for safety in a church at Lucca, was stolen by a daring band of German and Italian freebooters. Before the close of the same year, king Philip died of a lingering disease which had baffled all the art of his medical attendants, and the condemned criminal, upon the strength of whose information the Templars were originally arrested, was hanged for fresh crimes. “History attests,” says Monsieur Raynouard, “that all those who were foremost in the persecution of the Templars, came to an untimely and miserable death. The last days of Philip were embittered by misfortune; his nobles and clergy leagued against him to resist his exactions; the wives of his three sons were accused of adultery, and two of them were publicly convicted of that crime. The misfortunes of Edward the Second, king of England, and his horrible death in Berkeley Castle, are too well known to be further alluded to.”
“The chief cause of the ruin of the Templars,” justly remarks Fuller, “was their extraordinary wealth. As Naboth’s vineyard was the chiefest ground of his blasphemy, and as in England Sir John Cornwall Lord Fanhope said merrily, not he, but his stately house at Ampthill, in Bedfordshire, was guilty of high treason, so certainly their wealth was the principal cause of their overthrow.... We may believe that king Philip would never have taken away their lives if he might have taken their lands without putting them to death, but the mischief was, he could not get the honey unless he burnt the bees.” King Philip, the pope, and the European sovereigns, appear to have disposed of all the personalty of the Templars, the ornaments, jewels, and treasures of their churches and chapels, and during the period of five years, over which the proceedings against the order extended, they remained in the actual receipt of the vast rents and revenues of the fraternity. King Philip put forward a claim upon their lands in France to the extent of two hundred thousand pounds for the expenses of the prosecution, and Louis, his son, claimed a further sum of sixty thousand pounds: “J’ignore,” says Voltaire, “ce qui revint au pape, mais je vois evidemment que les frais des cardinaux, des inquisiteurs déléguès pour faire ce procès épouvantable monterent à des sommes immenses.” The holy pontiff, according to his own account, received only a _small portion_ of the personalty of the order, but others make him a large participator in the good things of the fraternity.[169]