seen hanging in a row
along the ramparts of the town. It was rumored that the Templars had not
been altogether ignorant of the gathering of this popular tumult, and
that if the entrance to their fortress had been so easily forced it was
not altogether without their knowledge; their ruin is said by some
historians to have been determined in the king's mind from this date. On
Friday, the 13th (!) of October, 1307, the Parisian population were very
much surprised to learn that the grand-master of the order and all the
knights had been arrested, their entire property confiscated, and the
Temple occupied by the king and his court. In this nefarious enterprise
Philippe had taken care to secure the co-operation of the Pope, Clement
V; the wildest charges, of idolatry, magic practices, cruelty and
outrage, were brought against the order; fifty-six of the knights were
burned alive at a slow fire at Vincennes, and, finally, in 1313, the
grand-master and another dignitary, on the little Ile aux Vaches, to-day
the platform of the Pont-Neuf, in the presence of the king and all his
court. A popular legend asserts that as the figure of the grand-master,
Jacques de Molay, disappeared finally in the smoke and flame of his
pyre, he was heard, in a solemn voice, to summon his executioners to
meet him before the bar of God, the Pope within forty days and the king
within the year. Certain it is that both these potentates died within
the appointed time.

The provincial synod which had condemned the fifty-six Templars had been
presided over by one of Philippe's confidants, the Archbishop of Sens,
brother of the king's minister of finances, Enguerrand de Marigny. It
was this latter who set the melancholy example of being hanged by his
royal master's successor, which was followed by other finance ministers
in two succeeding reigns. His innocence, however, was formally
recognized by the king, Louis X, before the end of his short reign of
eighteen months, a sum of ten thousand livres was granted to his
children, "in consideration of the great misfortune which has befallen
them," and his principal accuser, the Comte de Valois, stricken with
paralysis ten years later, made amends by a general distribution of alms
to the poor of Paris, with the request that they would "pray to God for
Monseigneur Enguerrand and for Monseigneur Charles de Valois." Much the
same fate awaited Gerard de la Guette, minister of Philippe V, le Long,
who reigned for six ye