Discipline in a Knight Templar squadron

It’s almost amusing to read the Templar Rule on how a Templar squadron should behave on crusade.  Basically, the Templars were required to ride in silence and not break rank unless given explicit permission to do so.  No bawdy songs or idle chatter – the Templars really were boy scouts.  What a contrast they must have been to the secular knights.

Even if a Templar saw somebody being attacked by a Saracen, there was a strict procedure to follow in how he conducted himself.  Just read this from the Rule:

“And if it happens by chance that any Christian acts foolishly, and any Turk attacks him in order to kill him, and he is in peril of death, and anyone who is in that area wishes to leave his squadron to help him, and his conscience tells him that he can assist him, he may do so without permission, and then return to his squadron quietly and in silence.”

So having stuck his sword in to a Saracen’s head, a Templar couldn’t come back panting and whooping shouting ‘ya see what I did there!’.   No – he had to be calm and stoic and continue riding in silence.  If he did charge off from his squadron “justice will be done even as far as going on foot to the camp and taking from him all that may be taken from him except his habit”.