During the reign of Baldwin II. the kingdom was hard pressed by the Turks of Damascus, Mossul, and the neighbouring states, and the king had been a captive in their hands. On his liberation he sought every means of strengthening his kingdom, and as the Templars had displayed such eminent valour and devotion wherever they had been engaged, he resolved to gain them all the influence and consideration in his power. Accordingly he dispatched two of their members as his envoys to the Holy See, to lay before the Pope the state of the Holy Land, and also furnished them with a strong letter of recommendation to the celebrated Bernard of Clairvaux, the nephew of one of the envoys. Bernard approved highly of the object and institution of the Order. Hugo de Payens and five other brethren soon arrived in the west, and appeared before the fathers, who were assembled in council at Troyes, to whom Hugo detailed the maxims and the deeds of the Templars. The fathers expressed their approbation of all he said, the Order was pronounced good and useful, and same additions, taken from that of the Benedictines, were made to their rule. By the direction of Pope Honorius, the council appointed them a white mantle as their peculiar dress, to which Pope Eugenius some years afterwards added a red cross on the breast--the symbol of martyrdom. Their banner was of the black and white stripe, called, in old French, _Bauseant_ (which word became their war-cry,) and bore the pious inscription, _Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed nomini tua da gloriam_.[5] St. Bernard, if he did not himself draw up the rule of Order, had at least a considerable participation in it; throughout his life he cherished the Templars; he rarely wrote a letter to the Holy Land, in which he did not praise them, and recommend them to the favour and protection of the great. Owing to the influence of Bernard, and the sincere piety and noble qualities of its founders, the Order rapidly increased in wealth and consequence. Many Knights assumed its habit, and with Hugo de Payens travelled through France and England, to excite the Christians to the sacred war. With Henry I. of England they met the highest consideration. Fulk, of Anjou, re-united himself to Hugo de Payens, and on the invitation of King Baldwin, prepared, though advanced in years, to set out for Palestine, to espouse the daughter of the king, and succeed him on his throne. Gifts in abundance flowed in on the Order, large possessions were bestowed on it in all countries of the west, and Hugo de Payens, now its Grand Master, returned to the Holy Land in the year 1129, at the head of three hundred Knights Templars of the noblest families in Europe, ready to take the field against the Infidels.