Philip III. bestowed a royal recompense on the laborious monks who had reclaimed those miasmatic marshes and given new means of defence to the capital; and towards the close of the thirteenth century the Templars had become an extraordinary power in France. In Paris they exercised large justiciary rights, and had their gallows standing without the Temple walls. They were concerned in all enterprises, civil, political, and military; their sovereignty was such that princes had to reckon with them, on pain of contact with the monkish steel. They had great monopolies of grain, and owned some of the richest lands in the kingdom; they touched the revenues of from eight to ten thousand manors. The Templars guarded at need the towns, treasures, and archives of royalty; and kings, popes, and nobles were their visitors and guests. The fortress dwelling of the Temple which had sprung fairy-like from the foul marshes of Paris shone with a splendour above that of the royal residence. Twenty-four columns of silver, carved and chased, sustained the audience-chamber of the grand master; and the chapter-hall, paved in mosaic, and enriched with woodwork in cedar of Lebanon, contained sixty huge vases of solid gold and a veritable armoury of Arabian, Moorish, and Turkish weapons, chiselled, damascened, and crusted with precious stones. The private chamber of every knight of the Order was distinguished by some particular object of beauty; whilst the chambers of the officers and commanders were stored with riches "so that they were a wonder to behold." How great a gulf separated the wealthy and powerful Templars of Paris from those "poor brothers of the Temple who rode two on one horse, lived frugally, without wives or children, had no goods of their own, and who, when they were not taking the field against the infidels, were employed in mending their weapons and the harness of their horses, or in pious exercises prescribed for them by their chief." The first institution of the Order of the Temple dates from the year 1118, when "certain brave and devout gentlemen" obtained from King Baudouin III. "the noble favour of guarding the approaches to Jerusalem." The Council of Troyes, in 1128, confirmed the religious and military Order of the Templars. The knights clothed themselves in long white robes adorned with a red cross; and the standard of the Order, called the _Beaucèant_, was white and black, for an emblem of life and death,—death for the infidels and life for the Christians of the Holy Land. Bravery in battle was almost an article of their faith; no Templar would fly from three opponents.