On.) DE of the Templars drawn by one of the leading dignitaries of the AVUTÏ' ï*** kingdom. W e must now resume our narrative of the principal events connected with the order. In the year 1172, the Knight Templar Walter du Meanil was guilty of a foul murder, which created a great sensation in the East. An odious religious sect, supposed to be descended from the Ismaelians of Persia, were settled in the fastnesses of the mountains above Tripoli. They devoted their souls and bodies in blind obedience to a chief who is called by the writers of the crusades " the old man of the mountain," and were employed by bun in the most extensive system of murder and assassination known in the history of the world. Both Christian and Moslem writers enumerate with horror the many illustrious victims that fell beneath their daggers. They assumed all shapes and disguises for the furtherance of their deadly designs, and carried, in general, no arms except a small poniard concealed in the folds of their dress, called in the Persian tongue hassissin, whence these wretches were called assassins, their chief the prince of the assassius ; and the word itself, in all its odious import, has passed into most European languages.* llaimond, sou of the count of Tripoli, was slain by these lanatics whilst kneeling at the foot of the altar in the church of the Blessed Virgin at Carchusa or Tortosa ; the Templars flew to amis to avenge his death ; they penetrated into the fastnesses and strongholds of " the mountain chief," and at last compelled him to purchase peace by the payment of an annual tribute of two thousand crowns into the treasury of the order. In the ninth year of Amalric's reign, Sinan Ben Suleiman, iuiaun of the assassins, sent a trusty counsellor to Jerusalem, offering, in ' Dieserrrition tmr Ιββ Anaa-saina. Aciulémit ite Inwcrir/tioîiii, torn. xvii. p. [27. 170. lir (Jutffttet, ΒϊΛ. Av Huns.—Will. Tyr. lib, xx. cnp. ίΐ.