What do you think about this?
For almost two hundred years the Knights Templar were the most powerful men in Europe. They began as a handful of warrior monks guarding pilgrims to Jerusalem, and grew into the richest organization on the continent, the bankers of kings, holders of castles and fleets and a war chest that even monarchs envied.
Then, on Friday the thirteenth of October, 1307, it all came apart in a single morning. King Philip the Fourth of France, deep in debt to the order, sent out sealed orders to be opened at dawn across the country. In one coordinated sweep, hundreds of Templars were arrested, their Grand Master Jacques de Molay among them, and the crown moved to seize everything they owned.
But here is the part that has fascinated treasure hunters ever since. When the king’s men opened the vaults, the legendary Templar treasure was not there. The order’s great fleet, said to have been anchored at the port of La Rochelle, slipped away and was never accounted for. Where it went, and what it carried, no one has ever proven. The trail runs cold into legend, toward Scotland’s Rosslyn Chapel, toward islands in the Atlantic, toward a fortune that may have simply vanished.
What if the wealthiest brotherhood in medieval Europe saw the arrests coming and moved their treasure somewhere it has quietly waited for seven hundred years?
Lost to history, melted into the coffers of kings, or still hidden where the Templars left it? What do you think happened to their treasure?
