| The military order of the Knights Templar was established in Jerusalem at the time of the Crusades to protect pilgrims to the Holy Land. Its members quickly became exceedingly rich and powerful, with some nine thousand commands spread across Europe. They acquired land in the marais in Paris around 1140, and began to build. After the loss of Palestine in 1291, this fortress property, which covered the area now bounded by rues du Temple, Bretagne, Picardie and Béranger and constituted a separate town without the city walls, became their international headquarters, as the seat of their Grand Master. They came to a sticky end, however, early in the fourteenth century, when King Philippe le Bel, alarmed at their power and in alliance with Pope Clement V, had them tried for sacrilege, blasphemy and sodomy. Fifty-four of them were burnt, including, in 1314, the Grand Master himself, in the presence of the king. Thereafter the order was abolished. The Temple buildings continued to exist until the Revolution, with about four thousand inhabitants: a mixed population, consisting of artisans not subject to the city's trade regulations, debtors seeking freedom from prosecution, and some rich residents of private hôtels. Louis XVI and the royal family were imprisoned in the keep in 1792. It was finally demolished in 1808 by Napoleon, determined to eradicate any possible focus for royalist nostalgia.
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