View Full Version : Knights Hospitaller (knights of St. John)
Teutonic Knight
12-03-2002, 16:54
the Knights Hospitaller,(aka the knights of St. John the Baptist) were founded in Jerusalem at the crusader hospital, after the knights crusade by Frenchmen. So why in the game, are they exclusively Italian units? Why can't they be French only? Was this just a compensation for the Italians, or does it have some historical legitimacy? And lastly, is there any way I can mod the game to enable them for the French crusaders too? thx alot -Teutonic Knight
Teutonic Knight
12-03-2002, 17:05
does anyone know?? http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif
no, but the compensation theory looks the most logical explanation (since 'Italians' as a nation did not exist, and their main contribution to crusades was to ship them, finance them, and redirect them to plunder Byzantium).
Because the French already have the Templars.
In reality, both orders included members from both countries (and more besides).
This is merely a gameplay issue; historically none of the knights orders were under the control of any single country anyway.
For historical realism the Papacy should have been the only faction with Knightly Orders at its disposal.
Teutonic Knight
12-03-2002, 17:36
well is there any way I can mod the game for this, just for my own sake?
Yes you can ... quite easily
Have you ever done some modding ?? If not ... a single mistake can ruin your day If you need help ... mail me to : shezadin@web.de ... the exact changes you want to apply ... I´ll try to walk you trough it safely http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif .
The necessary changes would make the thread explode ... explaining takes time http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif .
Give some time before you cry http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif I was sleeping when you asked the question http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
Annie
All you gotta do is modify the crusaders folder of unit. Search for crusaders_unit_prod11.txt. Go find the Hospittaler and scroll to the right until you find a thing that says ITLIANS. Change this to FRENCH or whatever faction you want to have the knights.
Sephiroth
12-04-2002, 12:08
Maybe they are included as being Italian because they fought a very famous battle against turkish forces on Malta where they withstood a massive and lengthy seige and kept MAlta in christian hands and maybe Malta was considered Italian back then...noly reason i could think of.Knights Templar are Frnech as their founder was from Normandy.Teutonic Knights are german but the english, ot the bet of my knowledge, did not have a specific order to fight with. THe Knights of St John are basically like your cosmopolitan crusader lads
Leet Eriksson
12-04-2002, 12:56
the knights hospitaller also occupied cernacia(libya) for sometime until of course ali barbarossa kicked them out,ali is not to be confused with fredrick here becuase ali existed in the 15 century when ottoman expansion in in north africa started.
Quote[/b] (Sephiroth @ Dec. 04 2002,05:08)]Maybe they are included as being Italian because they fought a very famous battle against turkish forces on Malta where they withstood a massive and lengthy seige and kept MAlta in christian hands and maybe Malta was considered Italian back then...noly reason i could think of.Knights Templar are Frnech as their founder was from Normandy.Teutonic Knights are german but the english, ot the bet of my knowledge, did not have a specific order to fight with. THe Knights of St John are basically like your cosmopolitan crusader lads
Actually, there was no such thing as italy at the time, italy as a nation didnt exist till the 19th century.
Even if it did, Malta was not a part of any nation as it was owned by the Knights of StJohn, and both they and the Templars owed allegiance only to the Pope and noone else; they were a law unto themselves in all respects basically.
Assigning them to certain factions is merely a gameplay mechanism, nothing more, but it works ok so no problem.
Michiel de Ruyter
12-04-2002, 14:42
I did not know it before, but this is not merely decided because of gameplay
Okay... just read it in a book about the crusades...
Here it goes... In 1070 AD, rich merchants from Amalfi (located at the Gulf of Salerno in Italy) founded a Christian hospitium, with permission from the Egyptian governor, to provide a bed to all the Christian pilgrims. This hospitium was dedicated to John Elemosarius, a minor saint and 7th century priest from Alexandria. Right after the arrival of the Crusaders and their conquest of Jerusalem, the leader of the hospitium at that time, a laybrother named Gerhard, founded an order (recognized by 1113), dedicated to providing healthcare (for the poor) in general, and bed and food for pilgrims in addition to that. They also provided comfort for the dying, and buried them. Because of this, they started to call themselves hospitalarii. For this they received plenty of gifts, and the power and wealth of the order grew considerably. By the time of Gerhards death, in 1118, they possessed lands and goods in the Holy Land, as well as France, Italy and Spain. Gerhards successor,Raimond of La Puy, converted them into a military order, after substituting John the Baptist for John of Alexandria as patron saint, modelled on (and in order to compete with) the Templars.. The rules they used were based on those of St. Augustinus, and partially copied from the Templars... They officialy received their new status in 1155....
So, the history of the order lies with the Italian merchants and therefor the Hospittalers are considered Italian.
Source: The Dutch translation of "Operation Heiliges Grab" (Operation Holy Grave), by Rudolf Pörtner, 1978
The Teutonic Knights were formed between 1118 and 1127 in Jerusalem, by Germans, and remained the smallest of the three monastic fighting orders (Templars, Hospittalers and Teutonic Knights)..they later shifted their attention (also because they had their most possesions there, and no powerfull kings to compete with) to Prussia and Eastern Europe.
If you'd read the rules you mention above, you'd know that their strictest rule was never to fight fellow christians.
Hence including them in the armies of factions which fight each other _is_ a simplification because of gameplay.
I can understand the developers choosing Templars for the french faction, as Bernard de Clairvaux was after all a frenchman, but historically the knights templar were certainly not a 'french' order in any way. The same goes for the knights of st john.
They had to answer only to god himself, and by extension to the pope, but to noone else (and they (ab)used that fact on numerous occasions).
Only the teutonic knights were somewhat under the control of a secular monarch, though the degree of it varied a bit.
Michiel de Ruyter
12-04-2002, 19:35
Daevyll,
I have never read any of the rules of the orders, to be honest. Yet do not think any of the fighting monastic orders was allowed to fight fellow Christians http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/rolleyes.gif ...
Also, unless you cheat, you can only use these units in Crusades (at least initially) The Knights Templar were, just as the other orders, an international order. Yet their (main)founders, Hugo of Payens and Godfrey of Saint-Omer were French (or at least their liege lord was the king of France).. also, many of their early worldly supporters were French, most important among them Hugo, count of Champagne, who eventually even joined the order (he might even have been family of Hugo of Payens by the way)... Eventually, their main holdings (outside the Holy Land) were in Britain and France, hence they are a French and British unit. This also was one of the reasons for their downfall. Bernard of Clairvaux was not involved in the founding of the order itself directly, he was just asked to write down the rules of the order (due to the good connections the order had with both the Pope and the French higher nobility).
Besides that, these orders might not have fought eachother on the battlefield, but they surely fought eachother to gain power and influence and wealth.
You are right about the fact that these orders were not founded by the French, or Italians or the English etc. in the strictest sence of the word.... Yet there was a clear base each unit had in Europe, which was more or less divided over the different countries (Templars in England and France, Teutonic Knights in Germany, Knights Hospittaler in Italy (and Spain)), and also, the founders of each order are clearly divided along the lines of the different nations/ethnicities. These orders existed, even though the different states continuously fought eachother...
I never discredited the argument that these orders might have been included for gameplay, I think it actually was one of the main reasons... Yet what I responded to was those who argued that the only reason to give the Knights Hospittaler to the Italians was purely based on gameplay... there is some historic base to combine the Knights Hospittaler with the Italians. Though to be more correct the Sicilians should be able to produce them as well....
Teutonic Knight
12-04-2002, 20:14
Ok here is the History of the order: (in reality)
Knights of Saint John of Jerusalem (in full The Sovereign Military Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes, and of Malta), historically, the protectors of a hospital built in Jerusalem before the first Crusade by Gerard. Known in short as Hospitalers or Knights Hospitalers, the order was founded after the formation of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem approved by Pope Paschal II in 1113 and again by Pope Eugene III in 1153. The brothers were sworn to poverty, obedience, and chastity and to assistance in the defense of Jerusalem. Gerard, their first leader, was called rector; later heads of the order were called grand masters. Of necessity, the order became a military one, and the armed knights were of noble birth. They formed a community under the Rule of St. Augustine. At first devoted to the care of pilgrims and Crusaders, the order left the Holy Land with the failure of the Crusades.
Knights of Rhodes
After 1309 the order had its headquarters on the island of Rhodes. It formed a territorial state, and its navy kept the eastern Mediterranean Sea free of Muslims. The properties of the Knights Templars were given to the order in 1312. The Knights of Rhodes, as they came to be called, formed national units of the order elsewhere; they were called Tongues (French Langues). Forced to leave Rhodes when it was seized by Suleiman I, ruler of the Ottoman Turks, in 1522, they had no home until 1530, when they were ceded the island of Malta.
Knights of Malta
The order figured in European history until well into the 19th century. As the Knights of Malta, it lost its English and German properties during the Reformation and its French holdings during the French Revolution. The Russians granted the order protection, but the French under Napoleon seized Malta. The convent was moved to Trieste in 1798 and to Rome in 1834. By this time the Russians had confiscated all properties held by them in Russian territories.
The Knights of Malta, as recognized by Pope John XXIII in 1961, form a religious community and an order of chivalry. Organized in five grand priories and a number of national associations, they carry on diplomatic relations with the Vatican and with individual countries. As a religious community, they maintain hospitals, first-aid centers, and facilities to care for war casualties and refugees. They wear a black cloak on which an eight-pointed Maltese cross is applied. The grand master is titled prince and holds a church rank equal to that of a cardinal.
http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif
Michiel, Bernard the Clairvaux is as close as the Templars come to having a spiritual 'father'; he paved the way for their existence in so many ways it would be beyond the scope of this forum to extoll it all.
Read 'De Laude novae militiae' written by him if you are interested in the Knightly Orders.
But the fact that both he and most of the grandmasters were french does not take away from my argument that the Templars were in no way 'french' as in controlled by france.
I dont think it is 'wrong' for the game to lob them in with the french and english factions, since those two countries is where the Templars had most of their assets (outside the Holy Land that is..).
HOWEVER I am merely stating that it is a _gameplay_ decision, not one that has historical value.
If you were to assign the Templars, or Knights of StJohn for that matter, to any faction than it should be the Papacy as I've already explained. That would not be much fun however, since then we wouldnt get to play with them ourselves..
More realistic still would be to have them as separate factions that could only attack non-catholic provinces (hmmm, perhaps an idea for an expansion pack...).
(ps, Hugo of Champagne was Hugo de Payns' uncle. Bernard de Clairvaux was one of Hugo of Champagne's closest friends.)
Michiel de Ruyter
12-04-2002, 23:16
Daevyll,
I agree with you that, if historically correct, the Knightly Orders either should be independent, or controlled by the Pope... It indeed adds to the gameplay that we can obtain them ourselves...
And indeed, especially Bernard, paved the way for the rise of military orders...
ICantSpellDawg
12-05-2002, 04:26
DOWNLOAD OUTREMER 1100 mod
in tripoli, it allows you to build teutonic units
in jerusalem, you can build templar and hospitaller units
NO MATTER WHAT CHRISTIAN NATION YOU ARE
you start out as the kingdom of jerusalem, but if the crusade text is written over, in the regular game you get to do the same thing with franks, italians, germans etc
it also renames the turks to the seldjuks, the egyptians to the fatimades and the sicilians to the normans (and even replaces the names with realistic norman names!http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif
yes, im excited, this makes the game much more fun, cuz whoever takes the holy land, gets all of these awesome units
i just wish santiago knights were able to be made in castile, aragon, leon and valentia
Why does it rename the Turks the Seljuks?
As far a I know the Seljuks were a dynasty of Turkish rulers, that was eventually replaced by another dynasty.
It would be a bit like naming the french faction the 'bourbons' or the english faction the 'plantagenets', forgetting in the process the other dynasties that ruled those factions over the years.
vBulletin® v3.7.1, Copyright ©2000-2025, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.