The Hammer Falls | Charles Martel

“The men of the north stood as motionless as a wall, they were like a belt of ice frozen together, and not to be dissolved...The Austrasians, vast of limb, and iron of hand, hewed on bravely in the thick of the fight.”

- The Chronicle of 754, description of the Frankish army at Tours, author unknown -

The Duke of Aquitaine and Gascony sat with his council of war. Together they had seen more than two hundred summers. Their swords had flashed as one in their youth, but now the flames which burned in their hearts had dimmed with age. And yet, they continued to take the field with their armies to protect the people they governed—this was the oath they had sworn before God. They would die to protect their land from any invader, be they Christian or pagan.

Now, a great host of enemies from Iberia was gathering beyond the mountains, its eyes fixed upon Aquitaine and the riches of its cities and churches. The duke’s daughter had been taken prisoner and sent to a far-off land to be a prostitute for godless men in a harem. He still mourned the loss, but troubles closer to home had prevented him from saving her. He had met the enemy on the field near Bordeaux but had been defeated, his soldiers scattered to the winds or slaughtered like cattle. Duke Odo the Great had no choice but to reach out to his mortal foe; only together could they save Christendom from the Muslim Moors. As one, the men of his council nodded their assent. A messenger and a scribe were summoned. Odo would ask Charles of the Franks for help.

Gaul in the Middle Ages

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD, its lands had been divided among thousands of local warlords. These men waged war against once another, and the once-great civilization of Rome collapsed into anarchy and chaos. Only the power of the Church and the shared faith of Christianity united the peoples of Western Europe, but it was not enough to keep the peace. Five years into the so-called “Dark Ages,” the Frankish chieftain Childeric I died and his fifteen-year-old son Clovis I became king of the Salian Franks. His realm consisted of a small parcel of land between the Scheldt and Meuse rivers in modern-day Belgium, but he quickly conquered much of northern France and united the Frankish tribes. In 509, he was proclaimed King of the Franks, and history knows him as “the first king of what would become France.”

Clovis was a brutal warrior, murdering entire villages because their chief had insulted his honor or challenged his rule. But he was also a pragmatist, and in the religious atmosphere of the late fifth century he understood the power of the Church. Therefore, in 496 AD, he converted to Christianity and pledged himself to be the defender of the Bishop of Rome. At this time, the Arian Controversy still raged, and Clovis’ acceptance of Nicene Christianity over Arianism helped to speed the decline of Arianism in modern-day France. His dynasty, the Merovingians, would continue to defend the Church from all enemies, cementing the fusion of church and state in medieval France.

By the dawn of the 8th century, the Kingdom of the Franks had grown to include most of France, but the Merovingian kings were no longer interested in governing their realm. They preferred to pursue either religious duties as monastics or the pleasures of the flesh in lavish parties which could last for weeks. The day-to-day rule of the kingdom thus passed to the kings’ chief ministers, the “mayors of the palace,” comparable to modern-day prime ministers or chiefs of staff. The mayors eventually eclipsed the Merovingian kings in power and status within the wider world of medieval politics. Though they were not monarchs with a divine right to rule, they often passed their powers from father to son as though they were, and outsiders seeking the favor of the Franks addressed their requests to the mayors, not the kings.

The Franks continued to wage war as Clovis had done, and for many decades they hoped to conquer Aquitaine in southwestern France along the Mediterranean coast north of Spain. The Dukes of Aquitaine pursued alliances with the Muslim Moors in the Iberian Peninsula, hoping that their combined strength might check Frankish expansion. They also worked to exploit divisions among the Frankish tribes, and as a result the Franks were unable to conquer Aquitaine. They thus turned their attention to the east, waging war for many decades against the Saxon tribes of northern Germany, giving Aquitaine a respite from war on their northern and eastern borders. Aquitaine did, however, repel many raids by Moorish tribes in Spain in the south, and Duke Odo earned his sobriquet of “Great” in battle at Toulouse in 721.

By the 8th century, the Merovingian kings were puppets of their mayors, who continued to expand the Kingdom of the Franks by the sword. Pepin of Herstal, mayor of the palace from 680 to 714, conquered the remaining Frankish tribes in Burgundy and Neustria and took the title “Duke and Prince of the Franks” after his victories. He ruled in the name of four different Merovingian kings, controlled their finances, formed feudal alliances with powerful tribal chieftains, and consolidated his own power behind the throne. When he died in 714, a brief civil war ensued between various claimants for the title of mayor, and in the end it was his ruthless son Charles who seized control of the country after disposing of rival claimants to the office.

King Dagobert III died the following year, sparking another civil war. The legitimate heir to the throne was the 43-year-old former monk Chilperic II, who was a brave warrior but had little interest in ruling but who hated and feared Duke Charles. He tried to form an alliance with Odo of Aquitaine during his war against Charles, but in 718 Odo and Chilperic were defeated in battle at Soissons. Odo then betrayed Chilperic and surrendered him to Charles in exchange for the mayor’s recognition of his rule in Aquitaine. Charles took the king to Paris, where he took the throne but gave up all political power to Charles in exchange for his life.

Now ruling the kingdom in all but name, Charles set his eyes on the Saxons in modern-day Germany, who had been raiding Frankish lands along the Rhine River. He waged a long and brutal war against his enemies, finally breaking their backs in 731. The Saxon lands were then absorbed into the Frankish kingdom in the name of Charles’ “master,” Theuderic IV (who had succeeded Chilperic II in 721). Charles then turned his attention back to Aquitaine, breaking his agreement with Odo the Great and crossing the Loire River. Odo, now more than eighty years old, fought the Franks as best he could, but his country was devastated in two successive campaign summers. Despite these losses, he swore never to make peace with the Franks. Then, as the fighting season wound down, Odo learned that an army under Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi had crossed the Pyrenees and was marching toward the wealthy city of Tours in the north of his country, pillaging every village they entered along the way. The duke now faced a serious problem: he could not withdraw troops from the borders with the Franks, but he could not face Rahman alone. With his war council at his side, he drafted a message asking Charles and the Franks for help.

The Battle of Tours

The Franks marched with their allies from Aquitaine to a position between the cities of Tours and Poitiers (which is why some accounts refer to the engagement as the Battle of Poitiers). The army formed a defensive square on a hill behind some trees along the road Rahman would have to take to reach Tours, where they waited the enemy’s arrival. Odo’s forces formed the left flank of Charles’ army, showing that the two rulers had set aside their differences, at least for the moment. Rahman’s army arrived, and most accounts state that he was surprised to find such a large force opposing him. The Muslims relied on their heavy cavalry as the primary striking force in battle, and Charles had no cavalry but only heavily-armored infantry in his ranks.

Rahman was confident that his horsemen would break the Franks’ lines with ease; it was rare in the annals of military history to that point that soldiers on foot had stood successfully against men on horseback. The Moors and Franks skirmished against one another for seven days in the late fall of 732. Contemporary accounts stated that Charles was outnumbered at least two to one, but modern historians and battlefield archaeologists believe the two sides had roughly the same number of soldiers, between twenty and thirty thousand. Charles had two great advantages in the battle.

First, he had selected the ground, and his position on the hill meant that the Muslim cavalry would have to charge uphill and through trees, thus breaking up their forces before they reached the Frankish lines. Second, his men were dressed for the weather—winter was coming, and the Franks were wearing heavy garments beneath their armor while the Moors’ clothing was lighter and offered little protection from falling temperatures. Eventually, Rahman had to attack so he could get his army into a city before the first snows fell.

The Moors charged the Frankish lines with their cavalry, which roared up the hill and through the forests. History records that the ground shook beneath the feet of the Frankish soldiers, but Charles stood his ground in the midst of his men and held them together. He carried with him a large war hammer which had shattered the spears (and skulls) of many an enemy in his lifetime. As the enemy cavalry emerged from the woods and approached the Franks, the few archers in Charles’ army fired, dropping a few Moorish riders from their steeds. The Franks lowered their spears and locked their shields moments before the horses crashed into the line. Accounts differ as to the effectiveness of this first charge, but most say that the Moors did manage to get through the Franks’ infantry square. But the Frankish line never broke. Duke Charles fought alongside his bannermen in the center of the army, as did Duke Odo, and both men struck down many enemy soldiers during the melee. The Chronicle of 754 records that Charles placed himself in danger several times and was nearly killed, and that his bannermen had to pull him back or risk losing their patron and leader.

The battle’s turning point is the subject of some debate. What is certain is that several groups of Moorish cavalry turned back from the assault and rode for their camp, and that this sparked a general retreat among the Muslim troops. Frankish accounts state that a rumor had spread among Rahman’s men that their camp was threatened and that Frankish soldiers were stealing their loot acquired in the march north. Muslim records differ, stating that Charles had actually sent scouts around the battlefield and raided the camp. It is now generally accepted that Duke Odo had led his light horse in a raid on the enemy camp and thus played a decisive role in the outcome at Tours. The Moorish lines collapsed into a full-scale retreat, but Rahman tried to stand his ground and rally his men. The Franks then advanced into the Muslim lines, and Rahman was killed. Once the enemy had been pushed away, Charles’ men returned to the hill and reformed their square, expecting a second attack. This did not come, but Charles remained in position for a full day until his scouts reported that the Moors were pulling back to the south.

The Muslims had abandoned their camp so quickly that the tests were still erect and they had simply stopped to gather as much loot as they could carry before fleeing back to Iberia. The Battle of Tours is still the subject of much discussion among historians. Early modern historians like Edward Gibbon rank it as one of the most decisive events in history because Charles had saved Europe from a Muslim invasion. In The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Gibbon writes: 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 [Moors] to the confines of Poland and the Highlands of Scotland; the Rhine is not more passable 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 at Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.

Other more recent scholars have supported Gibbon’s general claims (though often without the anti-Muslim rhetoric) and espoused the general belief that had Charles failed at Tours, Islam might have become the dominant religion in medieval Europe rather than Christianity. However, most current military historians suggest that the Battle of Tours was not the world historical event Gibbon and his acolytes suggest. To give just one example, Robert Cowley and Geoffrey Parker, both giants in the field of military history, wrote in their Reader’s Companion to Military History that: 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 solely to battles and campaigns and casualty counts...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 1851 book The 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.

Turning Point: The “Father of Europe”

While historians continue to debate the long-term importance of the Battle of Tours, the events of 732 were a turning point in history in at least one important way. Charles, who earned the nickname “the Hammer” or Martel, became the most powerful man in the Kingdom of the Franks. When he died nine years later, his son Pepin II deposed the last of the Merovingian kings and took power as the new King of the Franks himself. Charles Martel’s grandson, also named Charles, would one day forge an empire that united all of Western Europe outside Spain and Great Britain. He was crowned “Emperor of the Romans” by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day in 800 AD and became known as “Charles the Great” or “Charlemagne.” It was Charlemagne’s empire, and the kingdoms it spawned in the Treaty of Verdun after the death of his son Louis the Pious, that gave birth to the modern nations of France and Germany, setting Europe on the course of history it took and earning Charlemagne the title “Father of Europe.”

Of course, none of this was foreordained. Perhaps Charles Martel could have founded a dynasty that overthrew the Merovingians and united Europe under a single ruler without his victory at Tours. The Muslims might have conquered Europe even though they lost at Tours. Nothing in history is predestined. But the fact is that with his victory at Tours, Charles Martel gave us the modern world, and for that he deserves the place he now holds as one of the most important leaders in European, and world, history.