Two Knights Templar are shown in battle garb (175), armed and wearing chainmail armor beneath his robes, and in house wear (176), or monastery robes.. The Order of the Knights Templar was a military order founded in 1118 by Hugues de Payens, a knight of Champagne, and eight other knights to protect pilgrims to the Holy Land. From humble beginnings as "Poor Knights of the Temple," they grew to become a powerful and rich army of warrior monks, with barracks/ monasteries all over Europe, and several castles in Palestine: Safed (1140), Karak (1143), and Castle Pilgrim (1217). The order came to a tragic end in 1312 when all the Templars were branded as heretics, tortured and executed.. Handcolored copperplate engraving of a knight from a religious military order from Robert von Spalart's "Historical Picture of the Costumes of the Principal People of Antiquity and of the Middle Ages" (1796).