Roche-Guillaume

La Roche-Guillaume was a fortress of the Knights Templar in the Holy Land. It was located in the Principality of Antioch, north of the city of Antioch.

Origin

The date that the Templars first took possession of the fortress is unknown, but it is known that the fortress was previously occupied by the de la Roche family.

Legend states that in 1188, Saladin placed the castle under siege because Jehan Mange, a knight against whom he sought revenge, was there. Years prior, Mange had been excommunicated from the Christian community for murder and had found refuge with Saladin in Muslim territory. Saladin charged Mange with the education of his nephew, but wanting to regain his standing among the Christians, Mange turned over Saladin's nephew to the Templars, driving Saladin to vengeance. Saladin may have taken Roche-Guillaume, but news from Palestine that King Guy de Lusignan had led knights into Tripoli as forebearers of the Third Crusade brought an early end to his siege of the castle.

In 1203, the king of Lesser Armenia took the castle, but it was reclaimed by the Templars in 1237, around the same time as they launched a campaign to recapture the castle of Trapessac, located about 15 kilometers away. Roche-Guillaume was reconquered by the Muslims in 1298-99 when the sultan of Egypt sent an army to invade northern Syria. The castle of Servantikar was also seized in the campaign.

Characteristics

The fortress occupies a strategic location on a 1250-meter rocky precipice above the plain of Kara Çu. The controller of the castle also had control of the road that led to Antioch and of the plain below.

Today, little remains of Roche-Guillaume but ruins. The ruins, however, show that the constructors of the fortress used the rock upon which the castle was built as a cut foundation. The castle's remains suggest that the structure may be Byzantine in origin, or at the very least it was maintained at some length by the Byzantines.

The best-preserved portion of the fortress is the chapel, which was common in fortresses of military orders. The presence and current state of the chapel further suggests Byzantine custodianship.