- Roche-Guillaume
La Roche-Guillaume was a medieval fortress of the
Knights Templar located near theSyrian Gates in what is now theHatay Province ofTurkey . Its exact location is the subject of debate.Origin
The date that the Templars first took possession of the fortress is unknown, but it is known that the fortress was previously occupied by the de la Roche family.cite web|url=http://maxime.goepp.free.fr/site.php?site=guillaume|title=Roche Guillaume, la (Turquie) :: Principauté d'Antioche|author=Forteresses d'Orient|accessdate=2007-09-05]
Legend states that in
1188 ,Saladin placed the castle under siege becauseJehan Mange , a knight against whom he sought revenge, was there.Years prior, Mange had beenexcommunicated from theChristian community for murder and had found refuge with Saladin inMuslim territory. Saladin charged Mange with the education of his nephew, but wanting to regain his standing among the Christians, Mange turned over Saladin's nephew to the Templars, driving Saladin to vengeance. Saladin may have taken Roche-Guillaume, but news fromPalestine that KingGuy de Lusignan had led knights intoTripoli as forebearers of theThird Crusade brought an early end to his siege of the castle.In 1203, the king of
Lesser Armenia took the castle, but it was reclaimed by the Templars in1237 , around the same time as they launched a campaign to recapture the castle ofTrapessac , located about 15 kilometers away. Roche-Guillaume was reconquered by the Muslims in 1298-99 when thesultan of Egypt sent an army to invade northernSyria . The castle ofServantikar was also seized in the campaign.In 1298 or 1299, the military orders—the
Knights Templar andKnights Hospitaller —and their leaders, including Jacques de Molay,Otton de Grandson and the Great Master of the Hospitallers, briefly campaigned in Armenia, in order to fight off an invasion by the Mamluks.Demurger, p.142-143] [Hayton of Corycus mentions "Otton de Grandson and the Masters of the Temple and of the Hospitallers as well as their convents, who were at that time [1298 or 1299] in these regions [Cilician Armenia] ", quoted in Demurger, p.116] [Newman, p. 231, that says that De Molay had an "ill-fated expedition to Armenia around 1299, in which the last Templar holding in that kingdom was lost."] However, they were not successful, and soon, the fortress of Roche-Guillaume, the last Templar stronghold in Antioch, was lost to the Muslims.Characteristics
The fortress occupies a strategic location on a convert|1250|m|ft|adj=on rocky precipice above the plain of Karasu Çayı. The castle also controlled the road that led to Antioch and the plain below.
Today, little remains of Roche-Guillaume but ruins. These, however, show that the constructors of the fortress used the rock upon which the castle was built as a cut foundation. The castle's remains suggest that the structure may be
Byzantine in origin, or at the very least it was maintained at some length by the Byzantines.The best-preserved portion of the fortress is the
chapel , which was common in fortresses of military orders. The presence and current state of the chapel further suggests Byzantine custodianship.Notes
References
* Alain Demurger, "The Last Templar"
* Newman, Sharan (2006). Real History Behind the Templars. Berkley Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-425-21533-3.
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