In the day of their military and political power, the Templars of France acknowledged none but the authority of the grand master of the Order, and treated with royalty as between power and power. Up to the reign of Philippe le Bel, the Kings of France were little more than courtiers of the Temple, Royalty knocked humbly at those august, defiant portals, for leave to deposit within them its treasures and its charters, or to solicit a loan from the golden coffers of the knights. Not so, however, Philippe le Bel. This was the sovereign who, in 1307, broke the power of the Knights Templars of France. The act of accusation which he flung at the Order proscribed its members as "ravening wolves," "a perfidious and idolatrous society, whose works, nay, whose very words soil the earth and infect the air." The last grand master, Jacques de Molay, seized by the King's Inquisitor, passed through the torments of the torture chamber, and thence to the torments of the stake. The Knights of the Temple in their turn, loaded with chains, were led before the Inquisitor, Guillaume de Paris, to answer his charges of heresy and idolatry. The Templars were pursued through all the States of Europe, the Pope encouraging the hue and cry. Jacques de Molay, and his companion in misfortunes, Gui, Dauphin of Auvergne, were burned alive in Paris; and the persecution of the Templars lasted for six years. Their Order was abolished, and most of their wealth was bestowed by Philippe upon the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. The prison of the Temple became a prison of the State; and the Temple and the Louvre were the forerunners of the Bastille. The Dukes of Aquitaine and Brabant were confined in the Temple under Philippe V. and Philippe de Valois, the Counts of Dammartin and Flanders under King John. Four sovereigns, indeed, Charles VII., Louis XI., Charles VIII., and Louis XII., seemed to have forgotten the dungeon which the Templars had bequeathed them (they might well have done so, since Mediæval Paris had its prisons at every turn); and the cells and chambers in the great tower of the Temple remained closed,—to be opened no more until after the 10th of August, 1792. But there were social passages of interest in the history of this famous fastness, and it was not unfitting that Francis I., the magnificent monarch of the Renaissance, should repair the palace of the Templars, restore those historic ruins, re-establish the spreading gardens, gild afresh those illustrious halls,—re-create, in a word, the once brilliant dwelling of the Chevaliers of the Cross: in 1540, the Temple became the sumptuous abode of the Grand Priors of France.