as the Templars seemed to be in bad repute and had outlived their usefulness as papal bankers and protectors of pilgrims in the East. False charges of heresy and sodomy set aside, the guilt or innocence of the Templars is one of the more difficult historical problems, partly because of the atmosphere of hysteria that had built up in the preceding generation (marked by habitually intemperate language and extravagant denunciations exchanged between temporal rulers and churchmen), partly because the subject has been embraced by conspiracy theorists and quasi-historians. Crusades and relations with the Mongols Clement sent John of Montecorvino to Beijing to preach in China. Clement engaged intermittently in communications with the Mongol Empire towards the possibility of creating a Franco-Mongol alliance against the Muslims. In April 1305, the Mongol Ilkhan ruler Oljeitu sent an embassy led by Buscarello de Ghizolfi to Clement, Philip IV of France, and Edward I of England. In 1307, another Mongol embassy led by Tommaso Ugi di Siena reached European monarchs. However, no coordinated military action was forthcoming and hopes of alliance petered out within a few years. In 1308, Clement ordered the preaching of a crusade to be launched against the Mamluks in the Holy Land in the spring of 1309. This resulted in the unwanted Crusade of the Poor appearing before Avignon in July 1309. Clement granted the poor crusaders an indulgence, but refused to let them participate in the professional expedition led by the Hospitallers. That expedition set off in early 1310, but instead of sailing for the Holy Land, the Hospitallers conquered the city of Rhodes from the Byzantines. On 4 April 1312, a Crusade was promulgated by Pope Clement V at the Council of Vienne. Another embassy was sent by Oljeitu to the West and to Edward II of England in 1313. The same year, Philip IV "took the cross", making the vow to go on a Crusade in the Levant. Relations with Rome In March 1309, the entire papal court moved from Poitiers (where it had remained for 4 years) to the Comtat Venaissin, around the city of Avignon (which was not then part of France, but technically part of the Kingdom of Arles within the Holy Roman Empire, since 1290 held as an imperial fief by the Charles II of Naples). This move, actually to Carpentras, the capital of the territory, was justified at the time by French