The grand-mastership of Gilbert d'Assailly was signalized by the participation of the Hospitallers in the abortive expeditions of Amalric of Jerusalem into Egypt in 1162,1168 and 1169. The failure of the expedition to Egypt brought considerable odium on Gilbert d'Assailly, who resigned the grand mastership, probably in the autumn of 117o. Under the short rule of the grand master Jobert (d. 1177) the question of a renewed attack on Egypt was mooted; but the confusion reigning in the Latin kingdom and, not least, the scandalous quarrels between the Templars and Hospital lers, rendered all aggressive action impossible. In 1179 the growing power of the two military orders received its first set back when, at the instance of the bishops, the Lateran Council forbade them to 'receive gifts of churches and tithes at the hands of laymen without the consent of the bishops, ordered them to restore all "recent" gifts of this nature (i.e., within ten years of the opening of the council), and passed a number of decrees in restraint of the abuse of their privileges.
A more potent discipline was to befall them, however, at the hands of Saladin, sultan of Egypt, who in 1186 began his sys tematic conquest of the kingdom. It was the Hospitallers who, with the other military orders, alone offered an organized resist ance to his victorious advance. In May 1187 occurred the defeat of Tiberias, in which the grand master Gilbert des Moulins fell riddled with arrows; this was followed on July 4 by the still more disastrous battle of Hittin. The flower of the Christian chivalry was slain or captured; Hospitallers and Templars who fell into his hands Saladin massacred in cold blood. In October Jerusalem fell. The news of these disasters again roused the crusad ing spirit in Europe; the offensive against Saladin was resumed, the Christians concentrating their forces against Acre in the autumn of 1189. In the campaigns that followed, of which Richard I.
of England was the most conspicuous hero, and which ended in the recovery of Acre and the sea-coast generally for the Latin kingdom, the Hospitallers played a prominent part ; and during the following decade there was a steady restoration and develop ment of the property and privileges of the order, notwithstanding renewed quarrels with the Templars, and the establishment—in face of the protests of the Hospitallers—of the Teutonic knights as a separate order. An increasing secularisation of their spirit can now be traced. In 1236 Pope Gregory IX. thought it necessary to threaten both them and the Templars with excommunication, to prevent their forming an alliance with the Assassins, and in 1238 issued a bull in which he inveighed against the scandalous lives and relaxed discipline of the Hospitallers.
Events were soon to expose the order to fresh tests. In the midst of the strife of parties, in which the fatal weakness of the Christian cause lay, came the news of the invasion of the Chorasm ians. In August the Tatar horde took and sacked Jerusalem. In October, it overwhelmed the Christian host at Gaza. Amid the
general ruin that followed this defeat, the Hospitallers held out in the fortress of Ascalon, until forced to capitulate in October 1247. In 1249 they took part in the Egyptian expedition of St. Louis of France, only to share in the crushing defeat of Mansurah (February r25o). At the instance of St. Louis, after the conclusion of peace, 25 Hospitallers, together with the grand master, were released.
Upon the withdrawal of St. Louis from the Holy Land (April 1254), a war of aggression and reprisals broke out between Christians and Muslims ; and no sooner was this ended by a precarious truce than the Christians fell to quarrelling among themselves, and the Hospitallers and Templars actually fought on opposite sides. In spite of so great a scandal and of the hope less case of the Christian cause, the possessions of the order were largely increased, both in the Holy Land and in Europe.
The menace of a new Tatar invasion led to serious efforts to secure harmony in the kingdom. In 1258 the Templars, Hospital lers, and Teutonic knights decided to submit their disputes to arbitration, a decision which bore fruit in 1260 in the settlement of their differences in Tripoli and Margat. The concord was badly needed; for Bibars, having in 126o driven back the Tatars and established himself in the sultanate of Egypt, began the series of campaigns which ended in the destruction of the Latin king dom. Antioch fell in 1268 and the great fortress of Krak in 1271. The crusade of Prince Edward of England did little to avert the ultimate fate of the kingdom, and with it that of the Hospitallers in the Holy Land. This was merely delayed by the preoccupations of Bibars elsewhere, and by his death in 1277. In May 1285 Margat was lost, and Tripoli in April 1289. In May 1291 the Muslims captured Acre, the last hope of the Christians in the Holy Land. The headquarters of the Hospital were moved to Cyprus, and the problem of reorganization was taken in hand. Guillaume de Villaret, who became grand master in 1296, secured immense additions of property and privileges in Europe from the pope and many kings and princes, and effected a drastic reorganization of the order promulgated in a series of statutes between 1300 and The Knights in Rhodes.—The history of the order for the next fifty years is very obscure. Certain changes, however, took place which profoundly modified its character. Hitherto the order had been a cosmopolitan society, in which the French ele ment had tended to predominate; henceforth it became a federa tion of national societies united only for purposes of commerce and war. To the headship of each national organization was at tached one of the great dignitaries of the order, which thus came to represent, not the order as a whole, but the interests of a section. The motive of this change was probably fear of the designs of Philip IV. of France and his successors to which point had been given by the fate of the Templars, and the consequent desire to destroy the preponderance of the French element.