Guillaume de Beaujeu
21st Grand Master of the Knights Templar
Guillaume de Beaujeu, aka William of Beaujeu (c. 1230 – 1291) was the 21st Grand Master of the Knights Templar, from 1273 until his death during the siege of Acre in 1291. He was the last Grand Master to preside in Kingdom of Jerusalem.
Biography
Guillaume was born around 1230, to be the youngest son of Guichard II of Beaujeu, Seigneur of Montpensier and Catherine, daughter of Guillaume VIII son of Dalfi d'Alvernha.
He joined the Knights Templar in 1253, where he probably participated in the Seventh Crusade. He later went to the Kingdom of Jerusalem by 1260 or 1261, then he was captured during an ambush in the region of Tiberias, but released shortly after along with John II of Beirut and John de Embriaco. He was also part of the War of Saint Sabas, which deeply divided the nobility of the Crusader States and military orders. Hence, Baibars, Mamluk Sultan of Egypt, took the opportunity to conquer many Christian fortresses including Beaufort Castle, and destroy the Principality of Antioch.
In 1271, he became commander of the Templars in Tripoli. Later on, he was appointed as Grand Master of the Knights Templar to succeed Thomas Bérard in 1273.
“Guillaume de Beaujeu” enters the record as 21st Grand Master of the Knights Templar. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Guillaume, Beaujeu and 21st can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q552712. VIAF identifies the subject as 6148036052687972535. The Library of Congress control number is n2021038082. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1230, 1291, 1273 and 1253.
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This entry incorporates text from “Guillaume de Beaujeu” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.