William Watson

Last Of The Templars (1979)

If you only read one Templar novel, try this. Watson brings a novelist’s insight into his historically scrupulous account of the Templars’ precipitous decline from the fall of Acre in 1291 to the burning of James of Molay in 1314. For once the Templars are not mystics, seers or heretics blackmailing the Church but the soldiers and bankers of historical record. Watson’s clever, dreamlike narrative offers a cogent analysis of the factors that doomed the order: the rise of nationalism, the order’s arrogance, the greed of King Philip, Papal acquiescence and, most of all, the loss of the Holy Land and the end of the Crusades, which left the Templars, without a mission, suddenly superfluous.

Beltran, the last of the order, is a soldier-monk whose personal allegiance lies with Thibaud Gaudin, the penultimate Grand Master, who effectively dies from the strain of trying to reverse the decline in the Templars’ fortunes. Watson convincingly records the milestones on the order’s road to nowhere. While most novelists describe Molays death as a ceremony accompanied by pomp and circumstance, Watson presents the burning as a hurried.

Slightly disorganised spectacle, unforgettably noting, Grand Master has become a cinder.’

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Watson sees the brutal, unpredictable reality behind the noble stereotypes of conflict in the Holy Land and handles his historical cast-especially King Philip, his unscrupulous aide William of Nogaret and Pope Clement-with aplomb, even offering an intriguing explanation for the fact that all three were dead by Christmas 1314. Last of the Templars is worth reading both for its insight into the order and as a brilliant historical novel.