The Origin of Freemasonry and Knights Templar ... - Lodge Prudentia

FREEMASONRY AND KNIGHTS TEMPLARthe horizon was all at once covered with such ipipenetrabledarkness that the combatants couldscarcely distinguish the gplors they fought under,or see the standards floated over the towers; theflames appeared in several quarters without any onemaking an effort to extinguish them the ; conquerorsonly thought of destroying the city the only objectof the conquered was to escape. Whole ;familiestook refuge in churches, where they were stifledby the flames, or cut to pieces at the foot of thealtars ; many women and timid virgins, to preservetheir chastity, cut off their noses and otherwise disfiguredthemselves to escape the brutalityconquerors,of thefor when the Moslems beheld theirbleeding faces, they would conceive a disgust forthem and put them to the sword at once.The castle of the Templars, situated on the seacoast,in which all the Knights had taken refugewho had escaped the steel of the Moslems, was theonly place in the city that had held out.After severaldays' siege, the Sultan granted a capitulation,and sent three hundred Moslems to execute thetreaty. Scarcely had these entered one of the principaltowers, the tower of the Grand Master, thanthey began to outrage the women who had takenrefuge there. This violation of the rights of warirritated the Christian warriors to such a degreethat all the Moslems who entered the tower wereput to death. The angry Sultan ordered the siegerenewed at once, and that all Templars in the asylumbe put to the sword. The Templars and their companionsdefended themselves for several days; atlength the tower of the Grand Master was undermined,and fell at the very moment the Moslems149