Their jealousy of the Knights Hospitallers induced them to interfere with a man of position, a vassal of the Order of St. John, and to drive him from a castle he possessed in the neighbourhood of their establishment at Margat. This caused a violent quarrel between the two orders, which soon became a permanent struggle for supremacy. The pope wrote to the grand masters of both orders to exhort them to re-establish peace and good-will, and to forget their mutual rancour, so dangerous for Christendom and so fatal to the interests of the Holy Land. An apparent truce took place between them; but the Templars had not forgotten their hatred, and they lost no opportunity of showing it to the knights of St. John. Moreover, they no longer cared to support the holy cause that had led to the birth of their order. They signed a treaty of alliance with the Old Man of the Mountain, the leader of the sect of the Assassins or Ishmaelites, the most implacable enemies of the cross; they allowed him, on condition of paying tribute, to fortify himself in Lebanon; they made war against the king of Cyprus and the prince of Antioch; ravaged Thrace and Greece, where the Christian nobles had founded principalities, marquisates, and baronies; took Athens by storm, and massacred Robert de Brienne, its duke. In short, the consciousness of their strength, of their wealth, and of their power, inspired the Templars with an audacity that nothing could restrain. Their pride, which had become proverbial, was particularly offensive. Their belief and their morals were very far from orthodox, and even in 1273, Pope Gregory X. had thought of fusing their order in that of the Hospitallers. In the beginning of the following century, Philippe le Bel, King of France, received weighty accusations against them of most serious offences, accusations that were generally believed to be true, and consulted Pope Clement V. on the subject. Clement at first declared the crimes with which they were accused to be altogether improbable, but the grand master having insisted on a rigorous inquiry, the pope wrote to the king for the details of his information. Philippe le Bel wished to decide the matter himself, and proceeded to arrest all the Templars within his jurisdiction, amongst them their grand master, Jacques de Molai, who had just returned from Cyprus. [Illustration: Fig. 149.--Seal of the Knights of Christ (Thirteenth Century).--Early Device of the Order of Templars, representing two knights on one horse.]