Guillaume de Beaujeu

Guillaume de Beaujeu was the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar to die defending the Holy Land, killed at the fall of Acre in 1291. He was a member of a great Burgundian house, related to the Capetian kings and to Charles of Anjou, and he was elected Grand Master in 1273 while serving as commander of the order in Apulia. His mastership was spent mostly on politics, and he was accused in his own time of being an agent of Angevin interests. He ran an intelligence network among the Mamluks that was probably the best in the crusader states, and it is the reason he spent his last years warning the barons of Acre that Sultan Qalawun and then al-Ashraf Khalil intended to finish them, and being disbelieved. The immediate provocation was a massacre of Muslim merchants and peasants by newly arrived Italian crusaders in 1290, for which Acre refused to hand over the culprits. Khalil arrived in April 1291 with a siege train contemporaries described as enormous. Beaujeu commanded the defence of a city of perhaps 40,000 with a garrison in the low thousands, held for six weeks, and led a night sortie against the Mamluk camp that failed in the dark and the tent ropes. When the Accursed Tower fell on 18 May he was struck under the armpit by a javelin where his armour was open. He is said to have been carried off telling men who accused him of deserting the wall to look at the wound. He died that day; the city fell within hours, and the crusader presence on the mainland ended with it.

• Lived: 1230 CE – 1291 CE
• Nationality: French
• Roles: military_leader, religious_leader