The Knights Templars were a professional standing Army along with the Knights Hospitallers etc.
The French kingdom until Phillip the Fair (under the senior house of the Capetians) was little more than a cult of personality and with control over only a small part of France -- the Angevin kings controlled the entire western coast until King John's time. diverting -- the Angevin kings in the period 1140 - 1400 built up an impressive set of holdings -- they ruled in England and controlled Scotland, Ireland and Wales, they ruled in Normandy, Gascony, Anjou (the entire Atlantic coast of France), they ruled the house of Aragon and all of eastern Spain, they ruled over Sardinia, Sicily, southern Italy. One branch became king of Hungary and of Poland and his daughter, Jadwiga married Duke Jagiełło of Lithuania to form the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth
Philip the Fair created a bureaucracy and combatted this. He created much of the "idee France" but he needed money to do this -- and the Templars had this. In the end it was a sordid affair to get money and he destroyed the finest standing army in Europe to get it
The curse put upon his house also held and after him, the senior line of the Capetians died out....