In relation to the Templars, the King of France Philip IV the Handsome of the Capetian dynasty did not just an injustice. It was a betrayal. When popular unrest broke out in France due to unbearable taxes and the king's decision to reduce the weight of gold and silver coins, the monarch took refuge in the fortified city of Temple, which the Templar order had erected for their top leadership in the center of Paris.
Grand Master Jacques de Molay warmly welcomed Philip IV and did not hide anything from him, revealing the secrets of the fortress's defensive system and the secret of its underground storerooms, filled with treasures collected by the Templars over two centuries. The Grand Master did not take into account the fact that being richer than a king is a mortal risk. He was godfather to the daughter of Philip IV and believed that the monarch favored him. However, he, having seen with his own eyes the legendary treasures of the Templars, was determined to take possession of them.
The envy of the king
True, outwardly he showed that he still trusts de Molay. On October 12, 1307, the funeral of the suddenly deceased daughter-in-law of Philip the Fair took place in Paris. The Grand Master at the funeral was honored to carry the funeral veil. Putting his vigilance to sleep, the king secretly prepared to deliver a smashing blow to the order. And applied it the very next day. On Friday, October 13, on the orders of Philip the Fair, mass arrests of the Templars began. Soon 15 thousand members of the order were in prison, including 60 of its leaders, led by the Grand Master.
The Knights of the Temple of Solomon were one of the most powerful orders of medieval Europe
However, the king was disappointed - no wealth was found in the Temple. They were hidden or removed, and their whereabouts still remain a mystery. To extort the secret of the treasures from the Templars, they were subjected to sophisticated torture for several years. One of the Templars, presented before the papal commission, as evidence of the torture he had endured, showed his heel bones, which were exposed after roasting on a brazier. He said that dozens of his comrades had died as a result of the torture.
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And then the Templars began to burn at all at the stake. On April 12, 1310, 54 members of the order were executed by burning at once in the San diocese. And soon bonfires flared up all over France. The massacre reached its climax on March 18, 1314, when the Grand Master of the Order, Jacques de Molay, was burned alive over a low fire along with three comrades. And during the execution, he cast out his famous curse:
- There is a Holy Court, the decisions of which are just and inevitable. I want to see you, Pope, before this court! Forty days will pass, and you will appear before God! Oh Philip! Oh my king! Before this Heavenly Court, I will wait for you for one year! And may your offspring be cursed up to the thirteenth generation!
The prophecy is coming true
And then something strange began. Jacques de Molay's prophecy began to come true with the inevitability of fate. Less than a month later, Pope Clement V died. Dysentery acted as God's punishment, which brought the head of the church into the mud. Then came the turn of the Capetian. Moreover, their death was not a majestic knightly - on the battlefield with a sword in hand, but some ridiculous and unworthy of monarchs.
Philip IV the Handsome
Philip IV, shortly after the execution of the Grand Master, began to suffer from a debilitating illness that doctors could not recognize. On November 29, 1314, he died in terrible agony. And then it was the turn of his descendants. He had three sons. The eldest, Louis X, reigned for only two years and, at the age of 26, died in convulsions from a fever. The middle son, Philip V, ruled longer - six years, but he also died young from the notorious dysentery.
According to one version, he picked her up, drinking from a river poisoned by the Templars. Dysentery tormented the king so that two weeks before his death, he screamed out loud. The youngest son of Philip the Fair, Charles V, also reigned for six years. Only Louis X had a male child. His son John I was born five months after his father's death, but lived and, accordingly, reigned for only five days.
It seemed that the Grand Master's prophecy had come true - the Capetian dynasty on the French throne came to an end. And it did not even reach the thirteenth tribe of this family. A new dynasty ascended to the throne of France. On May 29, 1328, Philip VI, a representative of the Valois family, was crowned at the Cathedral of Reims. The new king was the nephew of Philip the Fair, and it soon turned out that the curse of the Templars had spread to Valois.
Philip VI reigned for quite a long time - 22 years, but his reign was overshadowed by an epidemic of plague, which decimated almost half of the population of France. And his personal failure was the beginning of the Hundred Years War with England and the crushing defeat at Cressy. So the fate that promised misfortunes to the kings carried them to the whole of France. The next monarch, John II, completely brought his country to the handle. He suffered an even more disgraceful fiasco at the Battle of Poitiers and was captured by the British. While in England, he contracted an "unknown disease" and died.
Charles V, who succeeded him on the throne, suffered from an incredible number of chronic diseases, among which are called lymphostasis, tuberculous adenitis and gout, which caused fistulas. These diseases drove him to the grave. Charles married his relative Jeanne de Bourbon, granddaughter of Charles Valois, and, possibly, the close relationship of the spouses caused the insanity of the heir to the throne Charles VI. For more than 40 years, an insane king sat on the French throne. This resulted in the French Civil War and the resumption of the Hundred Years War.
In fact, Jeanne d'Arc saved the country from collapse. And thanks to her, the son of Charles VI, Charles VII, was able to become king. But his death became sad. At the end of his life, Karl had a manic idea that he would be poisoned on the orders of his son. Under the influence of illness, he went mad. And on top of his misfortunes, the execution of the templars formed a tumor that did not allow him to eat, and the king died of hunger. The next monarch, Louis XI, fearing for his safety, actually walled himself up during his lifetime in the secluded castle of Plessis-le-Tours, where he lived as in a prison, not trusting anyone.
Death by inertia
Soon it began to seem that someone up there, who embodied the curse of the Templars, became bored of plague the French kings with diseases, and he began to be sophisticated. The death of King Charles VIII in 1498 became the height of absurdity. To take a shortcut, he decided to go through the gallery of the royal palace, which served as a restroom. There, the monarch slipped and banged his head on the doorpost, after which he fell into a coma and soon died.
Execution of the Templars
In 1559, a piece of a spear in the hand of the captain of the royal guard, Montgomery, became a kind of "spear of fate." Otherwise, it is simply difficult to explain the absurdity of the situation when, at a knightly tournament, King Henry II managed to catch his eye on a fragment of the opponent's spear shaft. The wound was fatal. Neither before nor after did I hear about similar situations at tournaments. The sons of Henry II and Catherine de Medici - Francis II, Charles IX and Henry III - just like the sons of Philip the Fair, alternately became kings, but just as quickly left this world.
Finally, on August 2, 1589, the curse of the Templars overtook the 13th king (excluding the baby John I) in the Capetian and Valois family. Henry III was stabbed to death by the monk Jacques Clement. The Capetian and Valois dynasty was interrupted, and the Bourbons took the French throne.
The Temple Fortress, which once stood in the center of Paris
It would seem that the soul of the Grand Master can calm down. His curse came true completely. However, the evil fate by inertia got the first king from the Bourbon dynasty. Henry IV, like his predecessor on the throne, was also slain by a fanatic assassin.
However, perhaps this death was already the result of a completely different curse. It is known that Henry IV of Bourbon was cursed by Pope Sixtus V.
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