best prosecute his favourite object of breaking the power of the infidels. The aged monarch fell the following year in the battle of Fraga, against the Moors; and, negligent of his disposition of the realm, the nobles of Arragon and Navarre met and chose sovereigns out of his family. The orders were not strong enough to assert their rights; and this instance, therefore, only serves to show the high degree of consideration to which they had so early attained. [Illustration: Seal of the Templars.] CHAPTER III. Return of the Templars to the East--Exoneration and Refutation of the Charge of a Connection with the Ismaïlites--Actions of the Templars--Crusade of Louis VII.--Siege of Ascalon--Sale of Nassir-ed-deen--Corruption of the Hospitallers--The bull, _Omne Datum Optimum_--Refusal of the Templars to march against Egypt--Murder of the Ismaïlite Envoy. In the year 1129 Hugh de Payens, accompanied by 300 knights of the noblest families in Europe, who had become members of the order, and followed by a large train of pilgrims, returned to the Holy Land. Shortly after his arrival, the unlucky expedition to Damascus above narrated[74], was undertaken, and the Templars formed a portion of the troops which marched, as they fancied, to take possession of that city. As has been observed, this is the first occasion on which we find the Christians in alliance and connection with the Ismaïlites; and as Hammer, the historian of the last, makes the grave charge against Hugh de Payens, of having modelled his new society on the plan of that deadly association, and of having been the chief planner and instigator of the treacherous attempt on Damascus, we will suspend the course of our narration, to discuss the probability of that opinion, though in so doing we must anticipate a little respecting the organisation of the Order of the Temple. [Footnote 74: _See_ p. 88.] Hammer argues an identity between the two orders, as he styles them, of the Ismaïlites and the Templars, from the similarity of their dress, their internal organisation, and their secret doctrine; and as the two societies existed in the same country, and that of the Ismaïlites was first instituted, he infers that this was the original, and that of the Templars the copy.