On the 6th of June, A. D. 1306, a few months after his coronation, this new French pontiff addressed letters from Bourdeaux to the Grand Masters of the Temple and Hospital, expressing his earnest desire to consult them with regard to the measures necessary to be taken for the recovery of the Holy Land. He tells them that they are the persons best qualified to give advice upon the subject, and to conduct and manage the enterprize, both from their great military experience and the interest they had in the success of the expedition. "We order you," says he, "to come hither without delay, with as much secrecy as possible, and with a _very little retinue_, since you will find on this side the sea a sufficient number of your knights to attend upon you."[330] The Grand Master of the Hospital declined obeying this summons; but the Grand Master of the Temple forthwith accepted it, and unhesitatingly placed himself in the power of the pope and the king of France. He landed in France, attended by sixty of his knights, at the commencement of the year 1307, and deposited the treasure of the order which he had brought with him from Cyprus, in the Temple at Paris. He was received with distinction by the king, and then took his departure for Poictiers to have an interview with the pope. He was there detained with various conferences and negotiations relative to a pretended expedition for the recovery of the Holy Land. Among other things, the pope proposed an union between the Templars and Hospitallers, and the Grand Master handed in his objections to the proposition. He says, that after the fall of Acre, the people of Italy and of other christian nations clamoured loudly against Pope Nicholas, for having afforded no succour to the besieged, and that he, by way of screening himself, had laid all the blame of the loss of the place on pretended dissensions between the Templars and Hospitallers, and projected an union between them. The Grand Master declares that there had been no dissensions between the orders prejudicial to the christian cause; that there was nothing more than a spirit of rivalry and emulation, the destruction of which would be highly injurious to the Christians, and advantageous to the Saracens; for if the Hospitallers at any time performed a brilliant feat of arms against the infidels, the Templars would never rest quiet until they had done the same or better, and _e converso_. So also if the Templars made a great shipment of brethren, horses, and other beasts across sea to Palestine, the Hospitallers would always do the like or more. He at the same time positively declares, that a member of one order had never been known to raise his hand against a member of the other.[331] The Grand Master complains that the reverence and respect of the christian nations for both orders had undeservedly diminished, that everything was changed, and that most persons were then more ready to take from them than to give to them, and that many powerful