Guillaume de Chateauneuf

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An engraving of Guillaume de Chateauneuf from c. 1725

Guillaume de Chateauneuf was the 19th Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller. He was captured during the Battle of Gaza in 1244, held hostage in Egypt and ransomed through the Sixth Crusade.^[1][2]

This French knight was appointed on October 3, 1233 and became Marshal of the Order on November 18, 1241. He took over the leadership of the Order on May 31, 1243.^[3] He was taken prisoner and replaced in his duties as Grand Master by  [fr]. However, the date of his death is not known; he was already replaced by his successor Hugues de Revel on 9 October 1258, but he was still in office on 20 February 1258 and most probably died in the summer of 1258.^[3]

Possession and loss of Jerusalem[]

When Chateauneuf took over as Grand Master, the Arab sultans were in full competition and had just left Jerusalem to the Christians. The Templars began fortifying the city in 1244 when the Khwarezmian invasion occurred.^[4] This Turkish tribe, which had invaded Mesopotamia, was called by the Sultan of Egypt: they seized Tiberias, Safed and Tripoli and were in front of Jerusalem on July 11th 1244, where the walls were very inadequate following the agreement between Frederick II and Al Kamil.^[4]The patriarch of Jerusalem, Robert of Nantes, and the great masters of the Temple and the Hospital, having come to raise the courage of the inhabitants, repelled the attackers but the imperial lord and the great tutor of the Hospital lost their lives in the battle.^[5] In the confusion, the inhabitants left Jerusalem on July 15, but saw the banners of the Christians flying on the city walls; deceived, they turned back and were all massacred, while the city was sacked.

Battle[]

The forces allied to the Christians, associated with the Templars, the Hospitallers and Teutonic Knights, and the Muslims of Syria and Transjordan left Acre on 4 October 1244, marched on Jaffa and fell on the Khwarezmians and the Egyptian troops on 17 October.^[6] In the battle of La Forbie, near Gaza, the Muslim allies dropped out at the first encounter and the Christians found themselves alone. The unequal fighting ended in disaster; 16,000 men lost their lives and 800 were taken prisoner, among them 325 knights and 200 turcoples of the Hospitallers, including the Grand Master Guillaume de Chateauneuf, who was taken to Cairo; only 18 Templars and 16 Hospitallers were able to escape.^[6]

Bibliography[]

Joseph Delaville Le Roulx, Paris, Ernest Leroux, 1904, ISBN 978-1421208435

Bertrand Galimard Flavigny, Paris, Perrin, 2006, ISBN 978-2262021153

References[]