The Templars never gave up their military role, but continued to fight in the Holy Land alongside their role as bankers. They fought at the fall of Acre in 1291, the last foothold of the Crusader States on the mainland (Armenian Cilicia survived until 1375, but its status as a Crusader State is tenuous). Their grand master Guillaume de Beaujeu died in the defence of Acre. The Order retreated to Cyprus, but also still held the island of Ruad, just off the mainland, until it was captured by the Saracens in 1302.

Though expelled from the Holy Land, the Templars planned to return. In 1293/4, the masters of the Templars and Hospitallers both visited Cilician Armenia to rally support. In 1306 the Pope wrote to the master of each order to consult them about a future crusade. The Templar grand master, Jacques de Molay, responded with a recovery treatise, a detailed plan for a crusade to recover the Levant. De Molay visited France in 1307 to speak with the Pope about the crusade. However, these plans were cut short by the Templars' arrest in 1307, and their suppression in 1312. De Molay himself was arrested in France rather than Cyprus because he had still not given up the hope of retaking the Holy Land.

Sources:

Malcolm Barber, The New Knighthood (Cambridge, 1994).

Jochen Burgtorf, Paul F. Crawford, and Helen J. Nicholson (eds), The Debate on the Trial of the Templars (1307-1314) (Farnham, 2010).

Antony Leopold, How to Recover the Holy Land: the Crusade Proposals of the Late Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries (Aldershot, 2000).

Desmond Seward, The Monks of War (London, 1972).