LONDON,September 20,O.S.1748.
DEAR BOY:I wait with impatience for your accurate history of the 'Chevaliers Forte Epees',which you promised me in your last,and which I take to be the forerunner of a larger work that you intend to give the public,containing a general account of all the religious and military orders of Europe.Seriously,you will do well to have a general notion of all those orders,ancient and modern;both as they are frequently the subjects of conversation,and as they are more or less interwoven with the histories of those times.Witness the Teutonic Order,which,as soon as it gained strength,began its unjust depredations in Germany,and acquired such considerable possessions there;and the Order of Malta also,which continues to this day its piracies upon the Infidels.
Besides one can go into no company in Germany,without running against Monsieur le Chevalier,or Monsieur le Commandeur de l'Ordre Teutonique.
It is the same in all the other parts of Europe with regard to the Order of Malta,where you never go into company without meeting two or three Chevaliers or Commandeurs,who talk of their 'Preuves',their 'Langues',their 'Caravanes',etc.,of all which things I am sure you would not willingly be ignorant.On the other hand,I do not mean that you should have a profound and minute knowledge of these matters,which are of a nature that a general knowledge of them is fully sufficient.I would not recommend you to read Abbe Vertot's "History of the Order of Malta,"in four quarto volumes;that would be employing a great deal of good time very ill.But I would have you know the foundations,the objects,the INSIGNIA,and the short general history of them all.
As for the ancient religious military orders,which were chiefly founded in the eleventh and twelfth centuries,such as Malta,the Teutonic,the Knights Templars,etc.,the injustice and the wickedness of those establishments cannot,I am sure,have escaped your observation.Their pious object was,to take away by force other people's property,and to massacre the proprietors themselves if they refused to give up that property,and adopt the opinions of these invaders.What right or pretense had these confederated Christians of Europe to the Holy Land?
Let them produce their grant of it in the Bible.Will they say,that the Saracens had possessed themselves of it by force,and that,consequently,they had the same right?Is it lawful then to steal goods because they were stolen before?Surely not.The truth is,that the wickedness of many,and the weakness of more,in those ages of ignorance and superstition,concurred to form those flagitious conspiracies against the lives and properties of unoffending people.The Pope sanctified the villany,and annexed the pardon of sins to the perpetration of it.This gave rise to the Crusaders,and carried such swarms of people from Europe to the conquests of the Holy Land.Peter the Hermit,an active and ambitious priest,by his indefatigable pains,was the immediate author of the first crusade;kings,princes,all professions and characters united,from different motives,in this great undertaking,as every sentiment,except true religion and morality,invited to it.The ambitious hoped for kingdoms;the greedy and the necessitous for plunder;and some were enthusiasts enough to hope for salvation,by the destruction of a considerable number of their fellow creatures,who had done them no injury.I cannot omit,upon this occasion,telling you that the Eastern emperors at Constantinople (who,as Christians,were obliged at least to seem to favor these expeditions,seeing the immense numbers of the 'Croisez',and fearing that the Western Empire might have some mind to the Eastern Empire too,if it succeeded against the Infidels,as 'l'appetit vient en mangeant';these Eastern emperors,very honestly,poisoned the waters where the 'Croisez'were to pass,and so destroyed infinite numbers of them.
The later orders of knighthood,such as the Garter in England;the Elephant in Denmark;the Golden Fleece in Burgundy;the St.Esprit,St.