The Knights Templar

- This is one of the most recent additions to my father's library. I grabbed the book a couple of days ago and read the introduction, it captured me. I think I will read the book very soon. It is by Sean Martin, a Thunder's Mouth Press publishing in 2004.
The book opens up quoting Napoleon Bonaparte : "What is history, but a fable agreed upon?"

Introduction : The Temple and the Myth

“On the morning of 21 January 1793, the French king, Louis XVI, was led out into the Place de la Concord in Paris to face execution. He stepped up onto the platform where the guillotine had been erected, and turned to address the huge crowd who had come to watch him die. He announced that he forgave the revolutionary council who had voted for his death, and then gave himself over to the executioner.

The blade fell at 10:15. The executioner held Louis’ decapitated head up by the hair to show that the king was dead. What happened next, according to some sources, took the crowd by surprise: a man jumped up onto the platform and dipped his fingers in the dead king’s blood. He held his hand aloft and shouted “Jacques de Molay, thus you are avenged!”.The crowd cheered, understanding the reference to the last Templar Grand Master, who was burned as a relapsed heretic in 1314; the long-held popular rumor that one day the Templars would have their revenge on the French monarchy – which had brought the Order down on dubious charges of heresy, blashphemy and sodomy – seemed to have come true.

Indeed, speculation was rife that the Templars were among the instigators of the revolution that had swept through France in 1789, ultimately claiming the lives of Louis and his queen, Marie Antoinette…”

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