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Battle of Tours

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Ancient History,
Classical History and Mythology

   Battle of Tours
   Part of the Muslim conquests
   Charles de Steuben's Bataille de Poitiers en Octobre 732 depicts a
   triumphant Charles Martel (mounted) facing ‘Abd-al-Raḥmān al-Ghāfiqī
   (right) at the Battle of Tours.

     Date   October 10, 732
   Location near Tours, France
    Result  Decisive Frankish victory
   Combatants
   Carolingian Franks Umayyad Caliphate
   Commanders
   Charles Martel ‘Abd-al-Raḥmān al-Ghāfiqī†
   Strength
   Unknown, possibly 20,000 to 30,000 Unknown, but the earliest Arab
   sources, still after the era of the battle mention a figure of 80,000.
   Modern Historian Paul Davis echoes this estimate, while another modern
   source estimates around 20,000 to 30,000
   Casualties
   Unknown; 1500 reported in early Christian chronicles. Unknown, but
   possibly 10,000, notably ‘Abd-al-Raḥmān
         Umayyad conquest of Hispania
   Guadalete – Toulouse – Covadonga – Tours
   Campaigns of Charles Martel
   Cologne – Amblève – Vincy – Soissons – Tours – Avignon – Narbonne –
   River Berre – Nîmes

   The Battle of Tours ( October 10, 732), often called Battle of Poitiers
   and also called in Arabic بلاط الشهداء (Balâṭ al-Shuhadâ’) The Court of
   Martyrs was fought near the city of Tours, close to the border between
   the Frankish realm and the independent region of Aquitaine. The battle
   pitted Frankish and Burgundian forces under Austrasian Mayor of the
   Palace Charles Martel against an army of the Umayyad Caliphate led by
   ‘Abd-al-Raḥmān al-Ghāfiqī, Governor-general of al-Andalus. The Franks
   were victorious, ‘Abd-al-Raḥmān was killed, and Martel subsequently
   extended his authority in the south. Ninth-century chroniclers, who
   interpreted the outcome of the battle as divine judgment in his favour,
   gave Charles the nickname Martellus ("The Hammer"), possibly recalling
   Judas Maccabeus ("The Hammerer") of Maccabean revolt. Details of the
   battle, including its exact location and the exact number of
   combatants, cannot be determined from accounts that have survived.

   As later chroniclers increasingly came to praise Charles Martel as the
   champion of Christianity, pre-20th century historians began to
   characterize this battle as being the decisive turning point in the
   struggle against Islam. "Most of the 18th and 19th century historians,
   like Gibbon, saw Poitiers (Tours), as a landmark battle that marked the
   high tide of the Muslim advance into Europe." Leopold Von Ranke felt
   that "Poitiers was the turning point of one of the most important
   epochs in the history of the world."

   While modern historians are divided as to whether or not the victory
   was responsible — as Gibbon and his generation of historians claimed —
   for saving Christianity and halting the conquest of Europe by Islam,
   the battle helped lay the foundations for the Carolingian Empire, and
   Frankish domination of Europe for the next century. "The establishment
   of Frankish power in western Europe shaped that continent's destiny and
   the Battle of Tours confirmed that power."

Background

   The battle followed twenty years of Muslim conquests in Europe,
   beginning with the invasion of the Visigoth Christian Kingdoms of the
   Iberian peninsula in 711 and progressing into the Frankish territories
   of Gaul, former provinces of the Roman Empire. Muslim military
   campaigns had reached northward into Aquitaine and Burgundy, including
   a major battle at Bordeaux and a raid on Autun. Martel's victory is
   believed by some historians to have stopped the northward advance of
   Muslims from the Iberian peninsula, and to have preserved Christianity
   in Europe during a period when Muslim rule was overrunning the remains
   of the old Roman and Persian Empires. Others have argued that the
   battle marked only the defeat of a raid in force and was not a
   watershed event.

   The exact location of the Battle of Tours remains unknown. Surviving
   contemporary sources, both Western and Muslim, agree on certain details
   while disputing others. Most historians assume that the two armies met
   where the rivers Clain and Vienne join between Tours and Poitiers. The
   number of troops in each army is not known. Drawing on non-contemporary
   Arab sources Creasy describes the Muslim forces as 80,000 strong or
   more. Writing in 1999, Paul K. Davis estimates the Muslim forces at
   80,000 and the Franks at about 30,000, while noting that modern
   historians have estimated the strength of the Muslim army at Tours at
   between 20–80,000. Edward J. Schoenfeld (rejecting the older figures of
   60–400,000 Muslim and 75,000 Franks) contends that "estimates that the
   Muslims had over fifty thousand troops (and the Franks even more) are
   logistically impossible." Another modern military historian, Victor
   Davis Hanson, believes both armies were of roughly the same size, about
   30,000 men. Modern historians may be more accurate than the mediæval
   sources as the modern figures are based on estimates of the logistical
   ability of the countryside to support these numbers of men and animals.
   Both Davis and Hanson point out that both armies had to live off the
   countryside, neither having a commissary system sufficient to provide
   supplies for a campaign. Losses during the battle are unknown but
   chroniclers later claimed that Martel's force lost about 1,500 while
   the Muslim force was said to have suffered massive casualties of up to
   375,000 men. However, these same casualty figures were recorded in the
   Liber pontificalis for Duke Odo of Aquitaine's victory at the Battle of
   Toulouse (721). Paul the Deacon, correctly reported in his Historia
   Langobardorum (written around the year 785) that the Liber pontificalis
   mentioned these casualty figures in relation to Odo's victory at
   Toulouse (though he claimed that Charles Martel fought in the battle
   alongside Odo), but later writers, probably "influenced by the
   Continuations of Fredegar, attributed the Saracen casualties solely to
   Charles Martel, and the battle in which they fell became unequivocally
   that of Poitiers." The Vita Pardulfi, written in the middle of the
   eighth century, reports that after the battle ‘Abd-al-Raḥmân's forces
   burned and looted their way through the Limousin on their way back to
   Al-Andalus, which implies that they were not destroyed to the extent
   imagined in the Continuations of Fredegar.

The Opponents

   The Invasion of Hispania, and then Gaul, was led by the Umayyad Dynasty
   (Arabic: بنو أمية banū umayya / الأمويون al-umawiyyūn‎; Persian: امویان
   Omaviyân‎; Turkish: Emevi), also "Umawi", the first dynasty of caliphs
   of the Islamic empire after the reign of the Four Rightly Guided
   Caliphs ( Abu Bakr, Umar, Uthman, and Ali) ended. The Umayyad
   Caliphate, at the time of the Battle of Tours, was perhaps the world’s
   foremost military power. Great expansion of the Caliphate occurred
   under the reign of the Umayyads. Muslim armies pushed across North
   Africa and Persia, through the late 600s, expanding the borders of the
   empire from the Iberian Peninsula, in the west, to what is today
   Pakistan, in the east. Forces led by Tariq ibn-Ziyad crossed Gibraltar
   and established Muslim power in the Iberian peninsula, while other
   armies established power far away in Sind, in what is now the modern
   state of Pakistan. The Muslim empire under the Umayyads was now a vast
   domain that ruled a diverse array of peoples. It had destroyed what
   were the two former foremost military powers, the Sassanid Empire,
   which it absorbed completely, and the Byzantine Empire, most of which
   it had absorbed, including Syria, Armenia and North Africa, although
   Leo the Isaurian successfully defended Anatolia at the Battle of
   Akroinon ( 739) in the final campaign of the Umayyad dynasty.

   The Frankish realm under Charles Martel was the foremost military power
   of Western Europe. It consisted of what is today most of Germany, the
   low countries, and part of France (Austrasia, Neustria and Burgundy).
   The Frankish realm had begun to progress towards becoming the first
   real imperial power in Europe since the fall of Rome, as it struggled
   against the hordes of barbarians on its borders, such as the fierce
   Saxons, and internal opponents such as Eudes, the Duke of Aquitaine.

Muslim conquests from Hispania

   The "Age of the Caliphs," showing Muslim dominance stretching from the
   Middle East to the Iberian peninsula, including the port of Narbonne,
   c. 720
   Enlarge
   The "Age of the Caliphs," showing Muslim dominance stretching from the
   Middle East to the Iberian peninsula, including the port of Narbonne,
   c. 720

   The Moors, under Al-Samh ibn Malik, the governor-general of al-Andalus,
   overran Septimania by 719, following their sweep up the Iberian
   peninsula. Al-Samh set up his capital from 720 at Narbonne, which the
   Moors called Arbūna. With the port of Narbonne secure, the Moors
   swiftly subdued the largely unresisting cities of Alet, Béziers, Agde,
   Lodève, Maguelonne, and Nîmes, still controlled by their Visigoth
   counts.

   The Muslim campaign into Aquitaine suffered a temporary setback at the
   Battle of Toulouse (721), when Duke Odo of Aquitaine (also known as
   Eudes the Great) broke the siege of Toulouse, taking Al-Samh ibn
   Malik's forces by surprise and mortally wounding the governor-general
   Al-Samh ibn Malik himself. This defeat did not stop incursions into old
   Roman Gaul, as Arab forces, soundly based in Narbonne and easily
   resupplied by sea, struck eastwards in the 720s, penetrating as far as
   Autun in Burgundy (725).

   Threatened by both the Arabs in the south and by the Franks in the
   north, in 730 Eudes allied himself with the Berber emir Uthman ibn
   Naissa, called "Munuza" by the Franks, the deputy governor of what
   would later become Catalonia. As a gage, Uthman was given Eudes's
   daughter Lampade in marriage to seal the alliance, and Arab raids
   across the Pyrenees, Eudes's southern border, ceased.

   However, the next year, Uthman rebelled against the governor of
   al-Andalus, ‘Abd-al-Raḥmân, who quickly crushed the revolt and directed
   his attention against Eudes. ‘Abd-al-Raḥmân had brought a huge force of
   Arab heavy cavalry and Berber light cavalry, plus troops from all
   provinces of the Caliphate, in the Umayyad attempt at a conquest of
   Europe north of the Pyrenees. According to one unidentified Arab, "That
   army went through all places like a desolating storm." Duke Eudes
   (called King by some), collected his army at Bordeaux, but was
   defeated, and Bordeaux was plundered. The slaughter of Christians at
   the Battle of the River Garonne was evidently horrific; the Mozarabic
   Chronicle of 754 commented, "solus Deus numerum morientium vel
   pereuntium recognoscat", ("God alone knows the number of the slain").
   The Muslim horsemen then utterly devastated that portion of Gaul, their
   own histories saying the "faithful pierced through the mountains,
   trampled over rough and level ground, plundered far into the country of
   the Franks, and smote all with the sword, insomuch that when Eudo came
   to battle with them at the River Garonne, he fled."

   Sir Edward Creasy said, (incorporating verses from Robert Southey's
   poem "Roderick, the Last of the Goths"):


   Battle of Tours

    It was under one of their ablest and most renowned commanders, with a
     veteran army, and with every apparent advantage of time, place, and
   circumstance, that the Arabs made their great effort at the conquest of
   Europe north of the Pyrenees. The victorious Moslem soldiery in Spain,
   eager for the plunder of more Christian cities and shrines, and full of
           fanatic confidence in the invincibility of their arms."

          "A countless multitude;
          Syrian, Moor, Saracen, Greek renegade,
          Persian, and Copt, and Tartar, in one bond
          Of erring faith conjoined — strong in the youth
          And heat of zeal — a dreadful brotherhood"
          "Nor were the chiefs
          Of victory less assured, by long success
          Elate, and proud of that o'erwhelming strength
          Which surely, they believed, as it had rolled
          Thus far uncheck'd, would roll victorious on,
          Till, like the Orient, the subjected West
          Should bow in reverence at Mahommed's name;
          And pilrims from remotest Arctic shores
          Tread with religious feet the burning sands
          Of Araby and Mecca's stony soil."
          SOUTHEY'S Roderick, the Last of the Goths


   Battle of Tours

   And so, after smashing Eudes and laying waste in the south, the Muslim
   Cavalry advanced north, pursuing the fleeing Eudes, and looting, and
   destroying all before them.

Eudes' appeal to the Franks

   From the former Gothic Kingdoms of Hispania and Septimania, lower left,
   Muslim armies advanced deep into Aquitaine and Burgundy. Note the
   location of Tours south of the Loire river.
   Enlarge
   From the former Gothic Kingdoms of Hispania and Septimania, lower left,
   Muslim armies advanced deep into Aquitaine and Burgundy. Note the
   location of Tours south of the Loire river.

   Eudes appealed to the Franks for assistance, which Charles Martel only
   granted after Eudes agreed to submit to Frankish authority.

   It appears as if the Muslims were not aware of the true strength of the
   Franks. The Muslim forces were not particularly concerned about any of
   the Germanic tribes, including the Franks, and the Arab Chronicles, the
   history of that age, show that awareness of the Franks as a growing
   military power only came after the Battle of Tours.

   Further, the Muslims appear not to have scouted northward for potential
   foes, for if they had, they surely would have noted Charles Martel as a
   force to be reckoned with in his own account, due to his thorough
   domination of Europe from 717: this might have alerted the Moors that a
   real power led by a gifted general was rising in the ashes of the
   Western Roman Empire.

Advance toward the Loire

   In 732, the Arab advance force was proceeding north toward the River
   Loire having outpaced their supply train and a large part of their
   army. Essentially, having easily destroyed all resistance in that part
   of Gaul, the invading army had split off into several raiding parties,
   while the main body advanced more slowly.

   The Muslim attack was likely so late in the year because many men and
   horses needed to live off the land as they advanced; thus they had to
   wait until the area's wheat harvest was ready and then until a
   reasonable amount of the harvest was threshed (slowly by hand with
   flails) and stored. The further north, the later the harvest is, and
   while the men could kill farm livestock for food, horses cannot eat
   meat and needed grain as food. Letting them graze each day would take
   too long, and interrogating natives to find where food stores were kept
   would not work where the two sides had no common language.

   A military explanation for why Eudes was defeated so easily at Bordeaux
   and at the Battle of the River Garonne after having won 11 years
   earlier at the Battle of Toulouse is simple. At Toulouse, Eudes managed
   a basic surprise attack against an overconfident and unprepared foe,
   all of whose defensive works were aimed inward, while he attacked from
   the outside. The Arab cavalry never got a chance to mobilize and meet
   him in open battle. As Herman de Carinthia wrote in one of his
   translations of a history of al-Andalus, Eudes managed a highly
   successful encircling envelopment which took the attackers totally by
   surprise — and the result was a chaotic slaughter of the Muslim
   cavalry.

   At Bordeaux, and again at the Battle of the River Garonne, the Arab
   cavalry were not taken by surprise, and given a chance to mass for
   battle, this led to the devastation of Eudes's army, almost all of whom
   were killed with minimal losses to the Muslims. Eudes's forces, like
   other European troops of that era, lacked stirrups, and therefore had
   no armoured cavalry. Virtually all of their troops were infantry. The
   Muslim heavy cavalry broke the Christian infantry in their first
   charge, and then slaughtered them at will as they broke and ran.

   The invading force went on to devastate southern Gaul. A possible
   motive, according to the second continuator of Fredegar, was the riches
   of the Abbey of Saint Martin of Tours, the most prestigious and holiest
   shrine in Western Europe at the time. Upon hearing this, Austrasia's
   Mayor of the Palace, Charles Martel, collected his army and marched
   south, avoiding the old Roman roads and hoping to take the Muslims by
   surprise. Because he intended to use a phalanx, it was essential for
   him to choose the battlefield. His plan — to find a high wooded plain,
   form his men and force the Muslims to come to him — depended on the
   element of surprise.

Battle

Preparations and maneuver

   From all accounts, the invading forces were caught entirely off guard
   to find a large force, well disposed and prepared for battle, with high
   ground, directly opposing their attack on Tours. Charles had achieved
   the total surprise he hoped for. He then chose to begin the battle in a
   defensive, phalanx-like formation. According to the Arabian sources the
   Franks drew up in a large square, with the trees and upward slope to
   break any cavalry charge.

   For seven days, the two armies watched each other with minor
   skirmishes. The Muslims waited for their full strength to arrive, which
   it did, but they were still uneasy. A good general never likes to let
   his opponent pick the ground and the conditions for battle.
   'Abd-al-Raḥmân, despite being a good commander, had managed to let
   Martel do both. Furthermore, it was difficult for the Muslims to judge
   the size of the army opposing them, since Martel had used the trees and
   forest to make his force appear larger than it probably was. Thus,
   'Abd-al-Raḥmân recalled all his troops, which did give him an even
   larger army - but it also gave Martel time for more of his veteran
   infantry to arrive from the outposts of his Empire. These infantry were
   all the hope for victory he had. Seasoned and battle hardened, most of
   them had fought with him for years, some as far back as 717. Further,
   he also had levies of militia arrive, but the militia was virtually
   worthless except for gathering food, and harassing the Muslims. (Most
   historians through the centuries have believed the Franks were badly
   outnumbered at the onset of battle by at least 2-1) Martel gambled
   everything that ‘Abd-al-Raḥmân would in the end feel compelled to
   battle, and to go on and loot Tours. Neither of them wanted to attack -
   but Abd-al-Raḥmân felt in the end obligated to sack Tours, which meant
   literally going through the Frankish army on the hill in front of him.
   Martel's decision to wait in the end proved crucial, as it forced the
   Muslims to rush uphill, against the grade and the woods, which in and
   of themselves negated a large part of the natural advantages of a
   cavalry chage.

   Martel had been preparing for this confrontation since Toulouse a
   decade before. He was well aware that if he failed, no other Christian
   force remained able to defend western Christianity. But Gibbon
   believes, as do most pre and modern historians, that Martel had made
   the best of a bad situation. Though outnumbered and depending on
   infantry, without stirrups in wide use, Martel had a tough, battle
   hardened heavy infantry who believed in him implicitly. Martel had the
   element of surprise, and had been allowed to pick the ground.

   The Franks in their wolf and bear pelts were well dressed for the cold,
   and had the terrain advantage. The Arabs were not as prepared for the
   intense cold of an oncoming northern European winter, despite having
   tents, which the Franks did not, but did not want to attack a Frankish
   army they believed may have been numerically superior -- according to
   most historians it was not. Essentially, the Arabs wanted the Franks to
   come out in the open, while the Franks, formed in a tightly packed
   defensive formation, wanted them to come uphill, into the trees,
   diminishing at once the advantages of their cavalry. It was a waiting
   game which Martel won: The fight began on the seventh day, as Abd er
   Rahman did not want to postpone the battle indefinitely with winter
   approaching.

Engagement

   ‘Abd-al-Raḥmân trusted the tactical superiority of his cavalry, and had
   them charge repeatedly. This time the faith the Muslims had in their
   cavalry, armed with their long lances and swords which had brought them
   victory in previous battles, was not justified. The Franks, without
   stirrups in wide use, had to depend on unarmoured foot soldiers.

   In one of the instances where medieval infantry stood up against
   cavalry charges, the disciplined Frankish soldiers withstood the
   assaults, though according to Arab sources, the Arab cavalry several
   times broke into the interior of the Frankish square. "The Moslem
   horsemen dashed fierce and frequent forward against the battalions of
   the Franks, who resisted manfully, and many fell dead on either side."

   Despite this, the Franks did not break. It appears that the years of
   year-round training that Charles had bought with Church funds, paid
   off. His hard-trained soldiery accomplished what was not thought
   possible at that time: unarmoured infantry withstood the fierce Muslim
   heavy cavalry. Paul Davis says the core of Martel's army was a
   professional infantry which was both highly disciplined and well
   motivated, "having campaigned with him all over Europe," buttressed by
   levies that Charles basically used to raid and disrupt his enemy. The
   Mozarabic Chronicle of 754 says: "And in the shock of the battle the
   men of the North seemed like a sea that cannot be moved. Firmly they
   stood, one close to another, forming as it were a bulwark of ice; and
   with great blows of their swords they hewed down the Arabs. Drawn up in
   a band around their chief, the people of the Austrasians carried all
   before them. Their tireless hands drove their swords down to the
   breasts of the foe."

The battle turns

   Those Muslims who had broken into the square had tried to kill Martel,
   but his liege men surrounded him and would not be broken. The battle
   was still in flux when Frankish histories claim that a rumor went
   through the Arab army that Frankish scouts threatened the booty that
   they had taken from Bordeaux. Some of the Muslim troops at once broke
   off the battle and returned to camp to secure their loot. According to
   Muslim accounts of the battle, in the midst of the fighting on the
   second day (Frankish accounts have the battle lasting one day only),
   scouts from the Franks sent by Charles began to raid the camp and
   supply train (including slaves and other plunder).

   Charles supposedly had sent scouts to cause chaos in the Muslim base
   camp, and free as many of the slaves as possible, hoping to draw off
   part of his foe. This succeeded, as many of the Muslim cavalry returned
   to their camp. To the rest of the Muslim army, this appeared to be a
   full-scale retreat, and soon it became one. Both Western and Muslim
   histories agree that while trying to stop the retreat, ‘Abd-al-Raḥmân
   became surrounded, which led to his death, and the Muslims then
   withdrew altogether to their camp. "All the host fled before the
   enemy," candidly wrote one Arabic source, "and many died in the
   flight." The Franks resumed their phalanx, and rested in place through
   the night, believing the battle would resume at dawn the following
   morning.

Following day

   The next day, when the Muslims did not renew the battle, the Franks
   feared an ambush. Charles at first believed that the Muslims were
   trying to lure him down the hill and into the open. This tactic he knew
   he had to resist at all costs; he had in fact disciplined his troops
   for years to under no circumstances break formation and come out in the
   open. (See the Battle of Hastings for the results of infantry being
   lured into the open by armoured cavalry.) Only after extensive
   reconnaissance of the Muslim camp by Frankish soldiers — which by both
   historical accounts had been so hastily abandoned that even the tents
   remained, as the Muslim forces headed back to Iberia with what loot
   remained that they could carry — was it discovered that the Muslims had
   retreated during the night.

   Given the disparity between the armies, in that the Franks were mostly
   infantry, all without armour, against Berber cavalry and armored or
   mailed Arab horsemen (the Berbers were less heavily protected), Charles
   Martel fought a brilliant defensive battle. In a place and time of his
   choosing, he met a far superior force, and defeated it.

Contemporary accounts

   The Mozarabic Chronicle of 754 "describes the battle in greater detail
   than any other Latin or Arabic source". It says of the encounter that,

     While Abd ar-Rahman was pursuing Eudes, he decided to despoil Tours
     by destroying its palaces and burning its churches. There he
     confronted the consul of Austrasia by the name of Charles, a man
     who, having proved himself to be a warrior from his youth and an
     expert in things military, had been summoned by Eudes. After each
     side had tormented the other with raids for almost seven days, they
     finally prepared their battle lines and fought fiercely. The
     northern peoples remained as immobile as a wall, holding together
     like a glacier in the cold regions. In the blink of an eye, they
     annihilated the Arabs with the sword. The people of Austrasia,
     greater in number of soldiers and formidably armed, killed the king,
     Abd ar-Rahman, when they found him, striking him on the chest. But
     suddenly, within sight of the countless tents of the Arabs, the
     Franks despicably sheathed their swords postponing the fight until
     the next day since night had fallen during the battle. Rising from
     their own camp at dawn, the Europeans saw the tents and canopies of
     the Arabs all arranged just as they had appeared the day before. Not
     knowing that they were empty and thinking that inside them there
     were Saracen forces ready for battle, they sent officers to
     reconnoitre and discovered that all the Ishmaelite troops had left.
     They had indeed fled silently by night in tight formation, returning
     to their own country.

     — Wolf (trans), Chronicle of 754, p. 145

   The Continuations of Fredegar provide a highly stylised account of the
   battle, which says only that,

     Prince Charles bodly drew up his battle lines against them [the
     Arabs] and the warrior rushed in against them. With Christ's help he
     overturned their tents, and hastened to battle to grind them small
     in slaughter. The king Abdirama having been killed, he destroyed
     [them], driving forth the army, he fought and won. Thus did the
     victor triumph over his enemies.

     — Fouracre, Continuations of Fredegar, p. 149

   The fourth book of the Continuums of the Chronicle of Fredegar, details
   further that "he (Charles Martel) came down upon them like a great man
   of battle." It goes on to say Charles "scattered them like the
   stubble."

   The references to "rushing in" and "overturning their tents" may allude
   to the phraseology of the Book of Numbers, chapter 24, "where the
   Spirit of God 'rushed in' to the tents of Israel." The Latin word used
   for "warrior", belligerator, "is also biblical, from the Book of
   Maccabees, chapters 15 and 16, which describe huge battles.

   It is thought that Bede's Historiam Ecclesiasticam Gentis Anglorum
   (Chapter XXIII) includes a reference to the Battle of Poitiers: "...a
   dreadful plague of Saracens ravaged France with miserable slaughter,
   but they not long after in that country received the punishment due to
   their wickedness".

Strategic analysis

   ‘Abd-al-Raḥmân was a good general and should have done two things he
   failed to do, Gibbon makes the point that he did not move at once
   against Charles Martel, was surprised by him at Tours as Martel had
   marched over the mountains avoiding the roads to surprise the Muslim
   invaders, and thus the wily Martel selected the time and place they
   would collide:
     * ‘Abd-al-Raḥmân either assumed that the Franks would not come to the
       aid of their Aquitanian rivals, or did not care, and he thus failed
       to assess their strength before invasion.
     * He failed to scout the movements of the Frankish army, and Charles
       Martel.

   Having done either, he would have curtailed his lighthorse ravaging
   throughout lower Gaul, and marched at once with his full power against
   the Franks. This strategy would have nullified every advantage Charles
   had at Tours:
     * The invaders would have not been burdened with booty that played
       such a huge role in the battle.
     * They would have not lost one warrior in the battles they fought
       before Tours. (Though they lost relatively few men in overrunning
       Aquitaine, they suffered some casualties — losses that may have
       been pivotal at Tours).
     * They would have bypassed weaker opponents such as Eudes, whom they
       could have picked off at will later, while moving at once to force
       battle with the real power in Europe, and at least partially picked
       the battlefield.

   While some military historians point out that leaving enemies in your
   rear is not generally wise, the Mongols proved that indirect attack,
   and bypassing weaker foes to eliminate the strongest first, is a
   devastatingly effective mode of invasion. In this case, those enemies
   were virtually no danger, given the ease with which the Muslims
   destroyed them. The real danger was Charles, and the failure to scout
   Gaul adequately was disastrous.

   According to Creasy, the Muslims' best strategic choice would have been
   to simply decline battle, depart with their loot, garrisoning the
   captured towns in southern Gaul, and return when they could force
   Martel to a battleground more to their liking, one that maximized the
   huge advantage they had in their mailed and armored horsemen—the first
   true "knights". It might have been different, however, had the Muslim
   forces remained under control. Both western and Muslim histories agree
   the battle was hard fought, and that the Muslim heavy cavalry had
   broken into the square, but agreed that the Franks were in formation
   still strongly resisting.

   Charles could not afford to stand idly by while Frankish territories
   were threatened. He would have to face the Muslims sooner or later, and
   his men were enraged by the utter devastation of the Aquitanians and
   wanted to fight. But Sir Edward Creasy noted that,


   Battle of Tours

   when we remember that Charles had no standing army, and the independent
    spirit of the Frank warriors who followed his standard, it seems most
    probable that it was not in his power to adopt the cautious policy of
     watching the invaders, and wearing out their strength by delay. So
     dreadful and so widespread were the ravages of the Saracenic light
   cavalry throughout Gaul, that it must have been impossible to restrain
   for any length of time the indignant ardor of the Franks. And, even, if
   Charles could have persuaded his men to look tamely on while the Arabs
   stormed more towns and desolated more districts, he could not have kept
     an army together when the usual period of a military expedition had
                                  expired.


   Battle of Tours

   Both Hallam and Watson argue that had Martel failed, there was no
   remaining force to protect Western Europe. Hallam perhaps said it best:
   "It may justly be reckoned among those few battles of which a contrary
   event would have essentially varied the drama of the world in all its
   subsequent scenes: with Marathon, Arbela, the Metaurus, Châlons, and
   Leipzig."

   Strategically, and tactically, Martel probably made the best decision
   he could in waiting until his enemies least expected him to intervene,
   and then marching by stealth to catch them by surprise at a battlefield
   of his choosing. Probably he and his own men did not realize the
   seriousness of the battle they had fought, as Matthew Bennett and his
   co-authors, in Fighting Techniques of the Medieval World (2005) says:
   "few battles are remembered 1,000 years after they are fought [...] but
   the Battle of Tours is an exception [...] Charles Martel turned back a
   Muslim raid that had it been allowed to continue, might have conquered
   Gaul."

Aftermath

Muslim retreat and second invasion

   The Arab army retreated south over the Pyrenees. Martel continued to
   drive the Muslims from France in subsequent years. After the death (c.
   735) of Eudes, who had reluctantly acknowledged Charles' suzerainty in
   719, Charles wished to unite Eudes's Duchy to himself, and went there
   to elicit the proper homage of the Aquitainians. But the nobility
   proclaimed Hunold, Eudes' son, as the Duke, and Charles recognized his
   legitimacy when the Arabs entered Provence as part of an alliance with
   Duke Maurontus the next year. Hunold, who originally resisted
   acknowledging Charles as overlord, soon had little choice. He
   acknowledged Charles at once as his overlord, and Martel confirmed his
   Duchy, and the two prepared to confront the invaders. Martel believed
   it was vital to confine the Muslims to Iberia and deny them any
   foothold in Gaul, a view many historians share. Therefore he marched at
   once against the invaders, defeating one army outside Arles, which he
   took by storm and razed the city, and defeated the primary invasion
   force at the Battle of the River Berre, outside Narbonne.

Advance to Narbonne

   Despite this, the Arabs remained in control of Narbonne and Septimania
   for another 27 years, though they could not expand further. The
   treaties reached earlier with the local population stood firm and were
   further consolidated in 734 when the governor of Narbonne, Yusuf ibn
   'Abd al-Rahman al-Fihri, concluded agreements with several towns on
   common defense arrangements against the encroachments of Charles
   Martel, who had systematically brought the south to heel as he extended
   his domains. He destroyed Muslim armies and fortresses at the Battle of
   Avignon and the Battle of Nimes. The army attempting to relieve
   Narbonne met him in open battle at the Battle of the River Berre and
   was destroyed, but Charles failed in his attempt to take Narbonne by
   siege in 737, when the city was jointly defended by its Muslim Arab and
   Christian Visigoth citizens.

Carolingian dynasty

   Reluctant to tie down his army for a siege that could last years, and
   believing he could not afford the losses of an all out frontal assault
   such as he had used at Arles, Martel was content to isolate the few
   remaining invaders in Narbonne and Septimania. The threat of Muslim
   invasion was diminished after the Arab defeat at Narbonne, and the
   unified Caliphate would collapse into civil war in 750 at the Battle of
   the Zab. It was left to Martel's son, Pippin the Short, to force
   Narbonne's surrender in 759, thus bringing Narbonne into the Frankish
   domains. The Umayyad dynasty was expelled, driven back to Al-Andalus
   where Abd ar-Rahman I established an emirate in Cordoba in opposition
   to the Abbasid Caliph in Baghdad. The threat posed by the Arab heavy
   cavalry also receded as the Christians copied the Arab model in
   developing similar forces of their own, giving rise to the familiar
   figure of the western European medieval armored knight.

   Martel's grandson, Charlemagne, became the first Christian ruler to
   begin what would be called the Reconquista from Europe. In the
   northeast of Spain the Frankish emperors established the Marca
   Hispanica across the Pyrenees in part of what today is Catalonia,
   reconquering Girona in 785 and Barcelona in 801. This formed a buffer
   zone against Muslim lands across the Pyrenees. Historian J.M. Roberts
   said in 1993 of the Carolingian Dynasty:

                "It produced Charles Martel, the soldier who turned the
                Arabs back at Tours, and the supporter of Saint Boniface
                the Evangelizer of Germany. This is a considerable double
                mark to have left on the history of Europe."

The Last Umayyad Invasions of Gaul

   In 735 the new governor of al-Andalus again invaded Gaul. Antonio
   Santosuosso and other historians detail how the new governor of
   Al-Andalus, 'Uqba b. Al-Hajjaj, again moved into France to avenge the
   defeat at Poitiers and to spread Islam. Santosuosso notes that 'Uqba b.
   Al-Hajjaj converted about 2,000 Christians he captured over his career.
   In the last major attempt at forcible invasion of Gaul through Iberia,
   a sizable invasion force was assembled at Saragossa and entered what is
   now French territory in 735, crossed the River Rhone and captured and
   looted Arles. From there he struck into the heart of Provence, ending
   with the capture of Avignon, despite strong resistance. Uqba b.
   Al-Hajjaj's forces remained in French territory for about four years,
   carrying raids to Lyons, Burgundy, and Piedmont. Again Charles Martel
   came to the rescue, reconquering most of the lost territories in two
   campaigns in 736 and 739, except for the city of Narbonne, which
   finally fell in 759. Alessandro Santosuosso strongly argues that the
   second (Muslim) expedition was probably more dangerous than the first
   to Poitiers. Yet its failure put an end to any serious Muslim
   expedition across the Pyrenees, although raids continued. And internal
   turmoil in the Muslim lands often made enemies out of their own kind.

Historical and macrohistorical views

   The Historical views of this battle fall into three great phases, both
   in the East and and especially in the West. Western historians
   beginning with the Mozarabic Chronicle of 754 stressed the
   macrohistorical impact of the battle, as did the Continuations of
   Fredegar. This became a claim that Martel had literally saved
   Christianity as Gibbon and his generation of historians agreed that the
   Battle of Tours was unquestionably decisive in world history.

   Modern historians have essentially fallen into two camps on the issue.
   The first camp essentially agrees with Gibbon, and the other argues
   that the Battle has been massively overstated—turned from a raid in
   force to an invasion, and from a mere annoyance to the Caliph to a
   shattering defeat that helped end the Islamic Expansion Era.

   In the East, Arab histories followed a similar path. First, the Battle
   was regarded as a disastrous defeat, then it faded essentially from
   Arab histories, leading to a modern dispute which regards it as either
   a secondary loss to the great defeat of the Second Siege of
   Constantinople or a part of a series of great macrohistorical defeats
   which together brought about the fall of the first Caliphate.
   Essentially, many modern Muslim scholars argue that the first Caliphate
   was a jihadist state which could not withstand an end to its constant
   expansion. With the Byzantines and Franks both successfully blocking
   further expansion, internal social troubles came to a head, starting
   with the Great Berber Revolt of 740, and ending with the Battle of the
   Zab, and the destruction of the Umayyad Caliphate.

In Western history

   Mid era scholars, such as Edward Gibbon, contended that had Martel
   fallen, the Moors would have easily conquered a divided Europe. Gibbon
   famously observed:


   Battle of Tours

    A victorious line of march had been prolonged above a thousand miles
   from the rock of Gibraltar to the banks of the Loire; the repetition of
      an equal space would have carried the Saracens to the confines of
   Poland and the Highlands of Scotland; the Rhine is not more impassable
     than the Nile or Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have sailed
      without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames. Perhaps the
      interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of
    Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the
              sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.


   Battle of Tours

   Gibbon was echoed a century later by the Belgian historian Godefroid
   Kurth, who wrote that the Battle of Poitiers “must ever remain one of
   the great events in the history of the world, as upon its issue
   depended whether Christian Civilization should continue or Islam
   prevail throughout Europe.”

   German historians were especially ardent in their praise of Martel;
   Schlegel speaks of this "mighty victory"in terms of fervent gratitude,
   and tells how "the arm of Charles Martel saved and delivered the
   Christian nations of the West from the deadly grasp of all-destroying
   Islam." Creasy quotes Leopold von Ranke's opinion that this period was


   Battle of Tours

      one of the most important epochs in the history of the world, the
   commencement of the eighth century, when on the one side Mohammedanism
    threatened to overspread Italy and Gaul, and on the other the ancient
    idolatry of Saxony and Friesland once more forced its way across the
    Rhine. In this peril of Christian institutions, a youthful prince of
    Germanic race, Karl Martell, arose as their champion, maintained them
    with all the energy which the necessity for self-defence calls forth,
                 and finally extended them into new regions.


   Battle of Tours

   Had Martel failed, Henry Hallam argued, there would have been no
   Charlemagne, no Holy Roman Empire or Papal States; all these depended
   upon Martel's containment of Islam from expanding into Europe while the
   Caliphate was unified and able to mount such a conquest.

   Another great mid era historian, Thomas Arnold, ranked the victory of
   Charles Martel even higher than the victory of Arminius in its impact
   on all of modern history: "Charles Martel's victory at Tours was among
   those signal deliverances which have affected for centuries the
   happiness of mankind."

   John Bagnell Bury, writing at the beginning of the 20th century, said
   "The Battle of Tours… has often been represented as an event of the
   first magnitude for the world’s history, because after this, the
   penetration of Islam into Europe was finally brought to a standstill.”

   But, as will be seen below, today’s historians are very clearly divided
   on the importance of the Battle, and where it should rank in the signal
   moments of military history.

In Muslim history

   Eastern historians, like their western counterparts, have not always
   agreed on the importance of the Battle. According to Bernard Lewis,
   "The Arab historians, if they mention this engagement [the Battle of
   Tours] at all, present it as a minor skirmish," and Gustave von
   Grunebaum writes: "This setback may have been important from the
   European point of view, but for Muslims at the time, who saw no master
   plan imperilled thereby, it had no further significance." Contemporary
   Arab and Muslim historians and chroniclers were much more interested in
   the second Umayyad siege of Constantinople in 718, which ended in a
   disastrous defeat.

   However, Creasy has claimed: "The enduring importance of the battle of
   Tours in the eyes of the Moslems is attested not only by the
   expressions of 'the deadly battle' and 'the disgraceful overthrow'
   which their writers constantly employ when referring to it, but also by
   the fact that no more serious attempts at conquest beyond the Pyrenees
   were made by the Saracens."

   Thirteenth-century Moroccan author Ibn Idhari al-Marrakushi, mentioned
   the battle in his history of the Maghrib, “al-Bayan al-Mughrib fi
   Akhbaral-Maghrib.” According to Ibn Idhari, “Abd ar-Rahman and many of
   his men found martyrdom on the balat ash-Shuhada'i ("the path of the
   martyrs).” Antonio Santosuosso points out in his book Barbarians,
   Marauders and Infidels: The Ways of Medieval Warfare, on p. 126 "they
   (the Muslims) called the battle's location, the road between Poitiers
   and Tours, "the pavement of Martyrs." However, as Henry Coppée has
   explained, "The same name was given to the battle of Toulouse and is
   applied to many other fields on which the Moslemah were defeated: they
   were always martyrs for the faith"

   Khalid Yahya Blankinship has argued that the military defeat at Tours
   was amongst one of the failures that contributed to the decline of the
   Umayyad caliphate: “Stretching from Morocco to China, the Umayyad
   caliphate based its expansion and success on the doctrine of
   jihad--armed struggle to claim the whole earth for God's rule, a
   struggle that had brought much material success for a century but
   suddenly ground to a halt followed by the collapse of the ruling
   Umayyad dynasty in 750 CE. The End of the Jihad State demonstrates for
   the first time that the cause of this collapse came not just from
   internal conflict, as has been claimed, but from a number of external
   and concurrent factors that exceeded the caliphate's capacity to
   respond. These external factors began with crushing military defeats at
   Byzantium, Toulouse and Tours, which led to the Great Berber Revolt of
   740 in Iberia and Northern Africa.”

Current opinion

   Some modern historians argue that the Battle of Tours was of no great
   historical significance while others continue to contend that Martel's
   victory was important in European or even world history. William
   Watson, for example, wrote of the battle's importance in Frankish
   history in 1993:


   Battle of Tours

    There is clearly some justification for ranking Tours-Poitiers among
   the most significant events in Frankish history when one considers the
        result of the battle in light of the remarkable record of the
    successful establishment by Muslims of Islamic political and cultural
      dominance along the entire eastern and southern rim of the former
   Christian, Roman world. The rapid Muslim conquest of Palestine, Syria,
   Egypt and the North African coast all the way to Morocco in the seventh
      century resulted in the permanent imposition by force of Islamic
     culture onto a previously Christian and largely non-Arab base. The
   Visigothic kingdom fell to Muslim conquerors in a single battle on the
    Rio Barbate in 711, and the Hispanic Christian population took seven
       long centuries to regain control of the Iberian peninsula. The
      Reconquista, of course, was completed in 1492, only months before
    Columbus received official backing for his fateful voyage across the
   Atlantic Ocean. Had Charles Martel suffered at Tours-Poitiers the fate
   of King Roderick at the Rio Barbate, it is doubtful that a "do-nothing"
   sovereign of the Merovingian realm could have later succeeded where his
   talented major domus had failed. Indeed, as Charles was the progenitor
        of the Carolingian line of Frankish rulers and grandfather of
      Charlemagne, one can even say with a degree of certainty that the
      subsequent history of the West would have proceeded along vastly
  different currents had ‘Abd ar-Rahman been victorious at Tours-Poitiers
                                   in 732.


   Battle of Tours

   Watson adds, "After examining the motives for the Muslim drive north of
   the Pyrenees, one can attach a macrohistorical significance to the
   encounter between the Franks and Andalusi Muslims at Tours-Poitiers,
   especially when one considers the attention paid to the Franks in
   Arabic literature and the successful expansion of Muslims elsewhere in
   the medieval period."

   A number of modern historians and writers in other felds agree with
   Watson. Professor of religion Huston Smith says in The World's
   Religions: Our Great Wisdom Traditions "But for their defeat by Charles
   Martel in the Battle of Tours in 733, the entire Western world might
   today be Muslim."

   In An Islamic Europe educationalist Dexter Wakefield writes, “A Muslim
   France? Historically, it nearly happened. But as a result of Martel’s
   fierce opposition, which ended Muslim advances and set the stage for
   centuries of war thereafter, Islam moved no farther into Europe.
   European schoolchildren learn about the Battle of Tours in much the
   same way that American students learn about Valley Forge and
   Gettysburg.

   Victorian writer John Henry Haaren says in Famous Men of the Middle
   Ages, "The battle of Tours, or Poitiers, as it should be called, is
   regarded as one of the decisive battles of the world. It decided that
   Christians, and not Moslems, should be the ruling power in Europe."
   Bernard Grun delivers this assessment in his "Timetables of History,"
   reissued in 2004: "In 732 Charles Martel's victory over the Arabs at
   the Battle of Tours stems the tide of their westward advance.”

   Michael Grant, author of History of Rome, lists the battle of Tours in
   the macrohistorical dates of the Roman era. Historian Norman Cantor
   says in 1993: "It may be true that the Arabs had now fully extended
   their resources and they would not have conquered France, but their
   defeat (at Tours) in 732 put a stop to their advance to the north."
   Robert W. Martin considers Tours "one of the most decisive battles in
   all of history."

   Paul Davis argued in 1999, "had the Muslims been victorious at Tours,
   it is difficult to suppose what population in Europe could have
   organized to resist them."

   Writer and philosopher Mark Whittington says that “Along with the
   defeat at the gates of Constantinople… the Battle of Tours halted
   Muslim Expansion into Europe. It has been suggested by numerous
   historians, including Edward Gibbon that had the Franks been defeated
   at Tours, the Muslim advance into Europe, then divided into squabbling
   kingdoms, would have been unstoppable. France, Germany, even England,
   would have fallen to Islam, putting an end to Christian Europe."
   Likewise, George Bruce in his update of Harbottle's classic military
   history Dictionary of Battles maintains that "Charles Martel defeated
   the Moslem army effectively ending Moslem attempts to conquer western
   Europe."

   Other historians disagree with this assessment. Alessandro Barbero
   writes, "Today, historians tend to play down the significance of the
   battle of Poitiers, pointing out that the purpose of the Arab force
   defeated by Charles Martel was not to conquer the Frankish kingdom, but
   simply to pillage the wealthy monastery of St-Martin of Tours".
   Similarly, Tomaž Mastnak writes:


   Battle of Tours

    Modern historians have constructed a myth presenting this victory as
     having saved Christian Europe from the Muslims. Edward Gibbon, for
   example, called Charles Martel the savior of Christendom and the battle
     near Poitiers an encounter that changed the history of the world...
   This myth has survived well into our own times... Contemporaries of the
    battle, however, did not overstate its significance. The continuators
   of Fredegar's chronicle, who probably wrote in the mid-eighth century,
     pictured the battle as just one of many military encounters between
     Christians and Saracens - moreover, as only one in a series of wars
   fought by Frankish princes for booty and territory... One of Fredegar's
   continuators presented the battle of Poitiers as what it really was: an
    episode in the struggle between Christian princes as the Carolingians
                 strove to bring Aquitaine under their rule.


   Battle of Tours

   The Lebanese-American historian Philip Hitti believes that "In reality
   nothing was decided on the battlefield of Tours. The Moslem wave,
   already a thousand miles from its starting point in Gibraltar - to say
   nothing about its base in al-Qayrawan - had already spent itself and
   reached a natural limit."

   The view that the battle has no great significance is perhaps best
   summarized by Franco Cardini in Europe and Islam, who writes,


   Battle of Tours

          Although prudence needs to be exercised in minimizing or
      'demythologizing' the significance of the event, it is no longer
    thought by anyone to have been crucial. The 'myth' of that particular
      military engagement survives today as a media cliché, than which
   nothing is harder to eradicate. It is well known how the propaganda put
     about by the Franks and the papacy glorified the victory that took
               place on the road between Tours and Poitiers...


   Battle of Tours

   In their introduction to The Reader's Companion to Military History
   Robert Cowley and Geoffrey Parker summarise this side of the modern
   view of the Battle of Tours by saying “The study of military history
   has undergone drastic changes in recent years. The old drums-and-bugles
   approach will no longer do. Factors such as economics, logistics,
   intelligence, and technology receive the attention once accorded to
   solely to battles and campaigns and casualty counts Words like
   "strategy" and "operations" have acquired meanings that might not have
   been recognizable a generation ago. Changing attitudes and new research
   have altered our views of what once seemed to matter most. For example,
   several of the battles that Edward Shepherd Creasy listed in his famous
   1852 book Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World rate hardly a mention
   here, and the confrontation between Muslims and Christians at
   Poitiers-Tours in 732, once considered a watershed event, has been
   downgraded to a raid in force."

Conclusion

   Modern military historian Victor Davis Hanson acknowledges the debate
   on this battle, citing historians both for and against its
   macrohistorical placement:


   Battle of Tours

       Recent scholars have suggested Poitiers, so poorly recorded in
    contemporary sources, was a mere raid and thus a construct of western
      mythmaking or that a Muslim victory might have been preferable to
    continued frankish dominance. What is clear is that Poitiers marked a
     general continuance of the successful defense of Europe, (from the
    Muslims). Flush from the victory at Tours, Charles Martel went on to
     clear southern France from Islamic attackers for decades, unify the
    warring kingdoms into the foundations of the Carolingian Empire, and
           ensure ready and reliable troops from local estates.".


   Battle of Tours

   Paul Davis, another modern historian who addresses both sides in the
   debate over whether or not this Battle truly determined the direction
   of history, as Watson claims, or merely was a relatively minor raid, as
   Cardini writes, says "whether Charles Martel saved Europe for
   Christianity is a matter of some debate. What is sure, however, is that
   his victory ensured that the Franks would dominate Gaul for more than a
   century."
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