of her.” (Fauriel, Historie de la Gaulle, &c., t. III., p. 115.)
Abdel-Rhaman, at ease touching the interior of Spain, reassembled the forces he had prepared for his expedition, marched towards the Pyrenees by Pampeluna, crossed the summit become so famous under the name of Port de Roncevaux, and debouched by a single defile and in a single column, say the chroniclers, upon Gallic Vasconia, greater in extent than French Biscay now is. M. Fauriel, after scrupulous examination, according to his custom, estimates the army of Abdel-Rhaman, whether Mussulman adventurers flocking from all parts, or Arabs of Spain, at from sixty-five to seventy thousand fighting men. Duke Eudes made a gallant effort to stop his march and hurl him back towards the mountains; but exhausted, even by certain small successes, and always forced to retire, fight after fight, up to the approaches to Bordeaux, he crossed the Garonne, and halted on the right bank of the river, to cover the city. Abdel-Rhaman who had followed him closely, forced the passage of the river, and a battle was fought, in which the Aquitanians were defeated with immense loss. “God alone,” says Isidore of Beja, “knows the number of those who fell.” The battle gained, Abdel-Rhaman took Bordeaux by assault and delivered it over to his army. The plunder, to believe the historians of the conquerors, surpassed all that had been preconceived of the wealth of the vanquished: “The most insignificant soldier,” say they, “had for his share plenty of topazes, jacinths, and emeralds, to say nothing of gold, a somewhat vulgar article under the circumstances.” What appears certain is that, at their departure from Bordeaux, the Arabs were so laden with booty that their march became less rapid and unimpeded than before.
In the face of this disaster, the Franks and their duke were evidently the only support to which Eudes could have recourse; and he repaired in all haste to Charles and invoked his aid against the common enemy, who, after having crushed the Aquitanians, would soon attack the Franks, and subject them in turn to ravages and outrages. Charles did not require solicitation. He took an oath of the Duke of Aquitania to acknowledge his sovereignty and thenceforth remain faithful to him; and then, summoning all his warriors, Franks, Burgundians, Gallo-Romans, and Germans from beyond the Rhine, he set himself in motion towards the Loire. It was time. The Arabs had spread over the whole country between the Garonne and the Loire; they had even crossed the latter river and penetrated into Burgundy as far as Autun and Sens, ravaging the country, the towns, and the monasteries, and massacring or dispersing the populations. Abdel-Rhaman had heard tell of the city of Tours and its rich abbey, the treasures whereof, it was said, surpassed those of any other city and any other abbey in Gaul. Burning to possess it, he recalled towards this point his scattered forces. On arriving at Poitiers he found the gates closed and the inhabitants resolved to defend themselves; and, after a fruitless attempt at assault, he continued his march towards Tours. He was already beneath the walls of the place when he learned that the Franks were rapidly advancing in vast numbers. He fell back towards Poitiers, collecting the troops that were returning to him from all quarters, embarrassed with the immense booty they were dragging in their wake. He had for a moment, say the historians, an idea of ordering his soldiers to leave or burn their booty, to keep nothing but their arms, and think of nothing but battle: however, he did nothing of the kind, and, to await the Franks, he fixed his camp between the Vienne and the Clain, near Poitiers, not far from the spot where, two hundred and twenty-five years before, Clovis had beaten the Visigoths; or, according to others, nearer Tours, at Mire, in a plain still called the Landes de Charlemagne.
The Franks arrived. It was in the month of September or October, 732: and the two armies passed a week face to face, at one time remaining in their camps, at another deploying without attacking. It is quite certain that neither Franks nor Arabs, neither Charles nor Abdel-Rhaman themselves, took any such account, as we do in our day, of the importance of the struggle in which they were on the point of engaging; it was a struggle between East and West, South and North, Asia and Europe, the Gospel and the Koran; and we now say, on a general consideration of events, peoples, and ages, that the civilization of the world depended upon it. The generations that are passing upon earth see not so far, nor from such a height, the chances and consequences of their acts; the Franks and Arabs, leaders and followers, did not regard themselves, now nearly twelve centuries ago, as called upon to decide, near Poitiers, such future question; but vaguely, instinctively they felt the grandeur of the part they were playing, and they mutually scanned one another with that grave curiosity which precedes a formidable encounter between valiant warriors. At length, at the breaking of the seventh or eighth day, Abdel-Rhaman, at the head of his cavalry, ordered a general attack; and the Franks received it with serried ranks, astounding their enemies by their tall stature, stout armor, and their stern immobility. “They stood there,” says Isidore of Beja, “like solid walls or icebergs.” During the fight, a body of Franks penetrated into the enemy’s camp, either for pillage or to take the Arabs in the rear. The horsemen of Abdel-Rhaman at once left the general attack, and turned back to defend their camp or the booty deposited there. Disorder set in amongst them, and, before long, throughout their whole army; and the battle became a confused melley, wherein the lofty stature and stout armor of the Franks had the advantage. A great number of Arabs and Abdel-Rhaman himself were slain. At the approach of night both armies retired to their camps. The next day, at dawn, the Franks moved out of theirs, to renew the engagement. In front of them was no stir, no noise, no Arabs out of their tents and reassembling in their ranks. Some Franks were sent to reconnoitre, entered the enemy’s camp, and penetrated into their tents; but they were deserted. “The Arabs had decamped silently in the night, leaving the bulk of their booty, and by this precipitate retreat acknowledging a more severe defeat than they had really sustained in the fight.”
Foreseeing the effect which would be produced by their reverse in the country they had but lately traversed as conquerors, they halted nowhere, but hastened to reenter Septimania and their stronghold Narbonne, where they might await reenforcements from Spain. Duke Eudes, on his side, after having, as vassal, taken the oath of allegiance to Charles, who will be henceforth called Charles Martel (Hammer), that glorious name which he won by the great blow he dealt the Arabs, reentered his dominions of Aquitania and Vasconia, and applied himself to the reestablishment there of security and of his own power. As for Charles Martel, indefatigable alike after and before victory, he did not consider his work in Southern Gaul as accomplished. He wished to recover and reconstitute in its entirety the Frankish dominion; and he at once proceeded to reunite to it Provence and the portions of the old kingdom of Burgundy situated between the Alps and the Rhone, starting from Lyons. His first campaign with this object, in 733, was successful; he retook Lyons, Vienne, and Valence, without any stoppage up to the Durance, and charged chosen “leudes” to govern these provinces with a view especially to the repression of attempts at independence at home and incursions on the part of the Arabs abroad. And it was not long before these two perils showed head. The government of Charles Martel’s “leudes” was hard to bear for populations accustomed for some time past to have their own way, and for their local chieftains thus stripped of their influence. Maurontius, patrician of Arles, was the most powerful and daring of these chieftains; and he had at heart the independence of his country and his own power far more than Frankish grandeur. Caring little, no doubt, for the interests of religion, he entered into negotiations with Youssouf- ben-Abdel-Rhaman, governor of Narbonne, and summoned the Mussulmans into Provence. Youssouf lost no time in responding to the summons; and, from 734 to 736, the Arabs conquered and were in military occupation of the left bank of the Rhone from Arles to Lyons. But in 737 Charles Martel returned, reentered Lyons and Avignon, and, crossing the Rhone, marched rapidly on Narbonne, to drive the Arabs from Septimania. He succeeded in beating them within sight of their capital; but, after a few attempts at assault, not being able to become master of it, he returned to Provence, laying waste on his march several towns of Septimania, Agde, Maguelonne, and Nimes, where he tried, but in vain, to destroy the famous Roman arenas by fire, as one blows up an enemy’s fortress. A rising of the Saxons recalled him to Northern Gaul; and scarcely had he set out from Provence, when national insurrection and Arab invasion recommenced.
