put forward by
the historians who have espoused their cause. The character of the
Templars is not rehabilitated by condemning the conduct of the King and
Pope. Yet this is the line of argument usually adopted by the defenders
of the Order. Thus the two main contentions on which they base their
defence are, firstly, that the confessions of the Knights were made
under torture, therefore they must be regarded as null and void; and,
secondly, that the whole affair was a plot concerted between the King
and Pope in order to obtain possession of the Templars' riches. Let us
examine these contentions in turn.

In the first place, as we have seen, all confessions were not made under
torture. No one, as far as I am aware, disputes Michelet's assertion
that the enquiry before the Papal Commission in Paris, at which a number
of Knights adhered to the statements they had made to the Pope, was
conducted without pressure of any kind. But further, the fact that
confessions are made under torture does not necessarily invalidate them
as evidence. Guy Fawkes also confessed under torture, yet it is never
suggested that the whole story of the Gunpowder Plot was a myth.
Torture, however much we may condemn it, has frequently proved the only
method for overcoming the intimidation exercised over the mind of a
conspirator; a man bound by the terrible obligations of a confederacy
and fearing the vengeance of his fellow-conspirators will not readily
yield to persuasion, but only to force. If, then, some of the Templars
were terrorized by torture, or even by the fear of torture, it must not
be forgotten that terrorism was exercised by both sides. Few will deny
that the Knights were bound by oaths of secrecy, so that on one hand
they were threatened with the vengeance of the Order if they betrayed
its secrets, and on the other faced with torture if they refused to
confess. Thus they found themselves between the devil and the deep sea.
It was therefore not a case of a mild and unoffending Order meeting
with brutal treatment at the hands of authority, but of the victims of a
terrible autocracy being delivered into the hands of another autocracy.

Moreover, do the confessions of the Knights appear to be the outcome of
pure imagination such as men under the influence of torture might
devise? It is certainly difficult to believe that the accounts of the
ceremony of initiation given in detail by men in different countries,
all closely resembling each ot