But, although as reigning powers the Assassins and Fatimites ceased to exist, the sects from which they derived have continued up to the present day; still every year at the celebration of the Moharram the Shiahs beat their breasts and besprinkle themselves with blood, calling aloud on the martyred heroes Hasan and Husain; the Druses of the Lebanon still await the return of Hakim, and in that inscrutable East, the cradle of all the mysteries, the profoundest European adept of secret society intrigue may find himself outdistanced by pastmasters in the art in which he believed himself proficient. The sect of Hasan Saba was the supreme model on which all systems of organized murder working through fanaticism, such as the Carbonari and the Irish Republican Brotherhood, were based, and the signs, the symbols, the initiations, of the Grand Lodge of Cairo formed the groundwork for the great secret societies of Europe. How came this system to be transported to the West? By what channel did the ideas of these succeeding Eastern sects penetrate to the Christian world? In order to answer this question we must turn to the history of the Crusades. 3 THE TEMPLERS In the year 1118--nineteen years after the first crusade had ended with the defeat of the Moslems, the capture of Antioch and Jerusalem, and the instalment of Godefroi de Bouillon as king of the latter city--a band of nine French _gentilshommes_, led by Hugues de Payens and Godefroi de Saint-Omer, formed themselves into an Order for the protection of pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre. Baldwin II, who at this moment succeeded to the throne of Jerusalem, presented them with a house near the site of the Temple of Solomon--hence the name of Knights Templar under which they were to become famous. In 1128 the Order was sanctioned by the Council of Troyes and by the Pope, and a rule was drawn up by St. Bernard under which the Knights Templar were bound by the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. But although the Templars distinguished themselves by many deeds of valour, the regulation that they were to live solely on alms led to donations so enormous that, abandoning their vow of poverty, they spread themselves over Europe, and by the end of the twelfth century had become a rich and powerful body. The motto that the Order had inscribed upon its banner, "_Non nobis, Domine, sed nomini tuo da gloriam_," was likewise forgotten, for, their faith waxing cold, they gave themselves up to pride and ostentation. Thus, as an eighteenth-century masonic writer has expressed it: