To compensate for the weakness of their numbers, the Crusaders undertook the construction of fortresses in the Latin States of the East. The Templars participated in this momentum by having new castles built for their needs. They also undertook to rebuild those that had been destroyed by Saladin around 1187 and agreed to occupy those that the lords of the East (or Spain) gave them for lack of being able to maintain them. Some of them made it possible to secure the routes frequented by Christian pilgrims around Jerusalem. Serving as a military, economic and political establishment of order, the stronghold represented for the Muslim populations a center of Christian domination. It should also be noted that the Templars occupied a greater number of strongholds in the Iberian Peninsula in order to participate in the Reconquista.
East in the 12th century
After the fall of the city of Jerusalem before the forces of Saladin in 1187, the Templars managed to resist for a few months in some of their strongholds, but gradually lost most of them.
It will be necessary to wait for the outcome of the third crusade, led by the kings of France, England and the emperor of Germany, for the Templars to reconstitute their military presence in the Holy Land.
East in the 13th century
In the kingdom of Jerusalem, the Templars had four fortresses:the Pèlerin Castle built in 1217-1218, the fortress of Safed rebuilt in 1240-1243, the castle of Sidon and the fortress of Beaufort both ceded by Julien, lord of Sidon in 1260.
In the county of Tripoli, they had the castle of Tortose rebuilt in 1212, Arima and Chastel Blanc.
To the north, in the principality of Antioch, the Templar strongholds were Baghras (Gaston) recovered in 1216, as well as Roche de Roissel and Roche-Guillaume which they still held, Saladin having given up trying to conquer them in 1188.
Iberian Peninsula
In 1143, Raymond Béranger IV, Count of Barcelona, asked the Templars to defend the Western Church in Spain, to fight the Moors and to exalt the Christian faith. The Templars reluctantly accepted, but limited themselves to defending and pacifying the Christian borders and colonizing Spain and Portugal. A new Christian population had just settled around the castles given to the Templars, the region being pacified. The Reconquista was a royal war. As a result, the orders of chivalry were less autonomous there than in the East. They had to provide the royal army with a variable number of fighters, proportional to the scale of the military operation in progress. Thus, the Spanish Templars took part in the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212. In Portugal, the Templars took part in the capture of Alcácer do Sal, in 1217, in the capture of Valencia in 1238, of Tarifa in 1292, to conquer Andalusia and the Kingdom of Granada.
The action of the Order of the Temple in the Iberian Peninsula was therefore secondary, because the order wanted to favor its activities in the Holy Land. However, he had many more strongholds in the Iberian Peninsula than in the East. Indeed, there are at least seventy-two sites just for Spain and at least six for Portugal (there are only about twenty strongholds in the East). It is also in this area that we find the buildings that have best resisted time (or that have benefited from restorations), such as the castles of Almourol, Miravet, Tomar and Peniscola.
Eastern Europe
Unlike the East and the Iberian Peninsula where the Templars faced the Muslims, Eastern Europe, where the religious-military orders were also established, confronted them with paganism. Indeed, the territories of Poland, Bohemia, Moravia, Hungary, but also Lithuania and Livonia formed a corridor of paganism, made up of wild lands largely uncleared, caught in pincers between the Catholic West and Orthodox Russia. Prussians, Lithuanians, Lives or Cumans, still pagans, resisted the slow but inexorable advance of Christianity there for several centuries. Catholic Christianization, which interests us here, was done on the initiative of the papacy but with the support of the converted Germanic princes (who saw in it the opportunity to enlarge their earthly possessions at the same time as to reinforce the chances of salvation for their soul) and with the support of the bishops, in particular that of Riga, who held strongholds in a way in pagan territory.
After the disappearance in 1238 of the order of Dobrin (officially recognized by Pope Gregory IX under the name "Knights of Christ of Prussia"), which had carried out the first conversions, the Templars saw themselves formally invited to establish themselves in Eastern Europe. . To this end, the Order was granted three villages along the Bug River as well as the fortress of Łuków (which they were entrusted with in 1258, along with the mission of defending the Christian presence in this region). Throughout the 13th century, the presence of the Templars in Eastern Europe increased and there were up to 14 establishments and 2 Templar fortresses.
However, the Templars (just like the Hospitallers, who were also present in Eastern Europe) quickly gave way to the Teutonic Order in the fight against the paganism dominating these remote regions. The two orders hesitated to open a third front in addition to those of the Holy Land and the Iberian Peninsula, while the primary idea of this installation at the borders of Christianity was above all to diversify the sources of income in order to finance the continuation of the main activities of the Order in the Holy Land.
Another region of Eastern Europe, but more southern, Hungary had to face, like Poland, the devastating invasions of the Mongols around 1240. Present there too, the Templars sent information to Western kings without managing to alert them sufficiently. so that a voluntary and effective reaction is triggered.