Isabel Shepperson

The battle of Tours had as result the dominance of the Aryan race over the Semitic in Europe; and of the Cross over the Crescent throughout the world. As Gibbon says speaking of the phenomenal conquests of the followers of Mohammed: “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 might 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. From such calamities was Christendom delivered by the genius and fortune of one man.” (Charles Martel).

Persia, Lydia, northern Africa, Spain, had successively fallen under the devouring zeal of the fanatics of the desert. Hot and arid and consuming as the sun o’er yellow sands was the inspiration of the Prophet fire-breathing thro’ the Koran. “The sword,” says Mahomet, “is the key of heaven. A drop of blood shed in the cause of God is of more avail than two months of fasting and prayer; whoso falls in battle, all his sins are forgiven; at the day of judgment his wounds shall be as resplendent as vermillion and odoriferous as musk.” Hearts thus athirsting aflame had as their dream-goal, their vermillion glory—the conquest and subjugation of the city of the CÆsars, the city of the Church, Rome, Immortal Rome.

From the Bosphorus to the Gibraltar glowed the victor Crescent with extremities burning into Europe. Unsuccessful on the Bosphorus but successful on the Gibraltar, Spain was soon enveloped in its fanatic fire and its flame-tongues darted over the Pyrenees.

The Saracens of Spain were commanded by Abderame, favorite of the caliph Hashen, victor of many fields, idol of the army, and devout believer in the promises of the Prophet. Abderame was proud of his battle scars, not yet indeed resplendent as vermillion and odoriferous as musk, but potentially so and cherished accordingly. He would yet slay “many cut-throat dogs of misbelievers” and so gain more vermillion. One is here tempted to say, in the words of Virgil describing the sacrifice of Iphigenia,

“Learn thou then

To what damned deeds religion urges men.”

Too bad that the word “religion” must needs do service to express the extravagances of mythology, the ravings of fanaticism, and the teachings of the gentle Christ.

Eudes, duke of Aquitaine, first opposed the Moslems as they advanced beyond the Pyrenees. He was at first successful but later suffered a signal defeat at Toulouse, “in so much so”, says an old chronicler, “that only God could count the number of Christians slain.” Eudes himself escaped and hastening northward sought the aid of Charles, duke of Austrasia, mayor of the palace, and soon to be known as Charles Martel (Charles the Hammer.)

On came the conquering Saracen hosts, grown insolent by victory, deeming themselves invincible, and proudly confident in the destiny that should lead them to Rome. Asia and Africa were in arms against Europe; the old against the new; maturity against lusty youth; and they met steel to steel on the plains of Tours.

Tours towers in solemn awe in the vague What might have been. Was it wise to have risked Christendom on the issue of one battle? The result says Yes; but—

Upon what seeming trifles turns the hinge of destiny! The casting-vote of Callimachus, urged by the eloquence of Miltiades, made Marathon; panic-fear let loose among Darius’ million men made Arbela; an eclipse of the sun won at Zama; Teutoberger Wald, Chalons, Tours—invisible, unknown, but not the less effective were the forces in these fights making fatefully for defeat and for victory. That which we term a trifle may be as a single bead of perspiration; trifling in itself, no doubt, but representative of a force far from trifling.

Battle raged indecisively all day long from early light till dark. Prince Charles seemed to wield the hammer of Thor. Abderame fell. The Saracens withdrew sullenly within their tents. Quiet darkness gathered mournfully over the living, the dying, and the dead.

And the next morning there was a great silence in the Moslem camp; in so much that the Christians trembled as at some uncanny treachery and stood awaiting they knew not what. But as the early morning hours passed and broad daylight brought back manly courage, the Christian army approached the camp of the enemy. It was deserted. The foe had fled. Christendom had won.

Charles did not immediately pursue the fleeing Moslem hordes. He still feared treachery. Perhaps, too, some wakening sentiment of humanity restrained him from further bloodshed. The vast plains of Tours were covered with ghastly forms horribly hacked and hewed but now strangely still. According to an old chronicle the number of Moslem dead upon the field of Tours was three hundred and fifty thousand; that of the Christians, fifteen hundred. Surely that was enough of slaughtering death even for Karl Martel.

The battle of Tours was fought Oct. 4, 732 A. D. The following Spring Charles went in pursuit of the Saracens who were still ravaging southern France. They withdrew from place to place as Charles drew near; and ultimately—without risking another encounter with the Hammer of Thor—they retired across the Pyrenees. France was freed from the Crescent.

The Eighth Century.

All writers agree that the eighth century was the darkest age of the so-called Dark Ages. The Benedictine monks, authors of L’ histoire litteraire de la France say that the eighth century was the darkest, the most ignorant, the most barbarous that France had ever seen. It seemed to be the seething culmination of four hundred years of Barbarism, one infusion following fast upon another.

In 407 A. D. the Vandals from the upper Rhine invaded Gaul and Germany: in 410 the West Goths under Alaric besieged and sacked Rome: in 429 the Vandals under Genseric came down upon Numidia and Mauritania: in 443 the Burgundian invaders settled on the upper Rhone and on the Saone: in 451 came the Huns under Attila. Towards the end of the fifth century the Franks from the lower Rhine came into Gaul, destroying every vestige of civilization that had survived the invasion and occupation of France by the Vandals and Burgundians. About this time, too, the Angles and Saxons established themselves in Britain, and the Visigoths in Spain. In the sixth and seventh centuries the Heruli, the East Goths, and the Lombards destroyed whatever remained of Roman civilization in northern Italy.

And now to complete this scene of chaotic confusion came the fanatic Moslem hordes from the south. Surely every remaining reminder of old-world civilization seemed about to be crushed and broken to pieces between these contending crest waves of barbarism. The cataclysmic clash and crash came at the battle of Tours.

The Church.

William Turner, S. T. D. in his History of Philosophy speaking of the eighth century says: “We can scarcely realize the desolation that during these centuries reigned throughout what had been the Roman Empire. Although surrounded by all the external signs and conditions of dissolution and decay, the Church remained true to her mission of moral and intellectual enlightenment, drawing the nations to her by the very grandeur of her confidence in her mission of peace, and by the sheer force of her obstinate belief in her own ability to lift the new peoples to a higher spiritual and intellectual life. It was these traits in the character of the Church that especially attracted the barbarian kings. But, though towards the end of the fifth century Clovis became a Christian, it was not until the beginning of the ninth century that the efforts of the Church to reconquer the countries of Europe to civilization began to show visible results. The Merovingian kings—the ‘do-nothing-kings,’ as they were styled—could scarcely be called civilized. Even Charlemagne, who was the third of the Carolingian dynasty, could hardly write his name.”

The Church is for all ages and all conditions of men. She is equally effective in answering the soul-questionings of savage peoples, barbarous, semi-civilized, cultured, and Æsthetic: of a superstitious monk of the Thebaid and of the philosopher Augustine, Bishop of Hippo: of a Thais of the desert and of Ursula, virgin and martyr: of Charles Martel, of the bloody battle Tours, and the gentle Francis of Assisi: of Constantine, Clovis, Charlemagne; and of John Henry Cardinal Newman, Mangan, Oscar Wilde, Strindberg, and Francis Thompson. As the manna that fell from heaven for the Israelites had in it every taste that might be in accordance with the peculiar desire of him who tasted, so in like manner, the Church of all ages has ever brought to her children that which was in accordance with their peculiar needs and desires. Fiercely kind, sternly kind, firmly kind, humanly kind, and divinely kind—as occasion may require, the Church has been and may be.

In Charles Martel, hero of Tours, the Church had a gallant defender. Under his son Pepin, and his greater grandson Charlemagne, the Church made that leap forward, away from ninth century barbarism, up and onward to her fair and full flowering in the thirteenth century Renaissance.

Greek Fire.

At the second siege of Constantinople, when Moslemah with a land force of one hundred twenty thousand Arabs and Persians stood ready to attack the city; and a fleet of eighteen hundred ships—as a moving forest,—covered the Bosphorus, Constantinople seemed doomed. A night attack of the combined land and sea forces was planned; and no one might reasonably doubt the issue of the conflict. But here again the unexpected happened.

Truly the race is not to the swift nor is the battle to the strong. Marathon, Salamis, Arbela, Tours, Cressy, Poitiers, Agincourt, Saratoga, Valmy,—were battles not to the strong. “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends.”

As night approached and the formidable “moving forest” gathered round the doomed city, suddenly there darted amidst the towering timbers—lighted monsters, Greek Fire-ships belching forth from dragon-mouthed prows the fatal Greek Fire. Here, there, everywhere plunged the fire-breathing ships leaving behind them Moslem vessels in flames. The Bosphorus was on fire. Of the fated soldiers in that mighty fleet of eighteen hundred ships, few escaped to make known the tragedy or to describe the horribly magnificent scene.

What was the Greek Fire? how compounded? how used? how propelled? does the world of today know the secret of Greek Fire? Gibbon says: “The historian who presumes to analyze this extraordinary composition should suspect his own ignorance and that of his Byzantine guides, so prone to the marvelous, so careless, and, in this instance, so jealous of the truth. From their obscure, and perhaps fallacious, hints it should seem that the principal ingredient of the Greek Fire was the naphtha, or liquid bitumen, a light, tenacious, and inflammable oil, which springs from the earth, and catches fire as soon as it comes in contact with the air. The naphtha was mingled, I know not by what methods or in what proportions, with sulphur and with pitch that is extracted from evergreen firs. From this mixture, which produced a thick smoke and a loud explosion, proceeded a fierce and obstinate flame, which not only rose in perpendicular ascent, but likewise burnt with equal vehemence in descent or lateral progress; instead of being extinguished, it was nourished and quickened by the element of water; and sand or vinegar were the only remedies that could damp the fury of this powerful agent, which was justly denominated by the Greeks the liquid or the maritime fire. For the annoyance of the enemy it was employed, with equal effect, by sea and land, in battles or in sieges. It was either poured from the rampart in large boilers, or launched in red-hot balls of stone and iron, or darted in arrows and javelins, twisted round with wax and tow, which had deeply imbibed the inflammable oil; sometimes it was deposited in fire-ships, the victims and instruments of a more ample revenge, and was most commonly blown through long tubes of copper which were planted on the prow of a galley, and fancifully shaped into the mouths of savage monsters, that seemed to vomit a stream of liquid and consuming fire.”

The paralyzing effect of fear let loose among a multitude of men has decisively determined many a battle. When the Romans saw elephants for the first time, and saw them too, in the midst of Pyrrhus’ hostile hosts bearing down upon them—those brave world-conquerors promptly turned and fled. Chariots armed with scythes madly rushing down upon a body of infantry, were used with success by the Britons against CÆsar’s terrified legions. And Greek Fire, Byzantium’s secret for four hundred years, infused such enduring terror into the hearts of the nations that had taken part in that night attack upon Constantinople, that this remembering fear, rather than the effective force of Byzantium, may be said to have saved Christendom.

By the defeat of Tours in the west and the failure of the siege in the east, the two horns of the Crescent, burning into Europe, were effectively repulsed and chilled. Mohammedanism with its threefold blight—propagation by the sword, polygamy, and religious intolerance—was swept back into Asia, leaving Europe to develop under the milder sway of Christianity.

Writers of note are unanimous in attributing to the victory of Charles Martel over the Saracens at Tours the deliverance of Europe from the thraldom of Mahomet. Even Gibbon so characteristically fond of “Snapping a solemn creed with solemn sneer” speaks of this battle as “the event that rescued our ancestors of Britain and our neighbors of Gaul from the civil and religious yoke of the Koran.” Arnold speaks of this victory as “among those signal deliverances which have effected for centuries the happiness of mankind.” The historian Ranke writing of this period points out as “one of the most important epochs in the history of the world, the commencement of the eighth century, when on 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-defense calls forth, and finally extended them into new regions.” Schlegel, with devoutly grateful heart, tells of this “mighty victory whereby the arm of Charles Martel saved and delivered the Christian nations of the West from the deadly grasp of all-destroying Islam.”