“The one rule we had on Charles in Charge is Charles must always be in charge.” – The Simpsons
Islamic suicide bombers aren’t so bad, but the Buddhist ones? They keep coming back until they get it right.
Europe in the early 700s was a patchwork of squabbling kingdoms still picking up the pieces from Rome’s grand collapse. When the Empire fell and the Legions retired and moved to Florida, Europe was a hammered mess. Barbarians had even turned Rome into a tourist trap for Vandals and Goths where you could get great bargains: half off togas, and all the gold you could eat.
A new wave of chaos crashed in from the south: The Umayyad (U-Mad) Caliphate was fresh off conquering Spain during a short decade of conquest. After that, they began eyeing the rest of the continent like Whoopi Goldberg eyes a dozen chocolate éclairs after a hard day of being wrong.
It occurred to the U-Mads: why stop with Spain when they could go on to France (then Francia for some reason) for cigarettes and baguettes and brunettes and marmosets and intangible assets?
Enter Charles, the Frankish warlord who was the illegitimate son of that hobbit®, Pepin. Being a bastard (like me Charles was born one, and didn’t have to work at it like most people) Charles wasn’t in the line of succession for all that Frankish Hobbit® power. Scared of him, Pepin’s wife had Charles tossed in the clink so Charles wouldn’t become the boss when Pepin died.
“Hand. Hand. River. Dirt. Gollum. Hobbits. Pockets. Pockets. Finger. Envelope. Fire. Hand. Neck. Neck. Finger. Hobbits. Neck. Neck. Neck. Pocket. Finger. Lava! The Lord of the Rings, from the perspective of the Ring.
Well, prisons were made for breaking out of, and Charles did exactly that. A lot of others decided they were king instead when Pepin died, so Charles had to defeat the humorously named Chilperic II, Raganfrid, and Radbod. Okay, Radbod would probably be a good professional wrestling name, so Radbod get a pass but the rest of them are just bad D&D® names from a drunk DM.
The Funny Name Gang fought with Charles at Cologne, and Charles lost.
Charles didn’t give up, and instead regrouped and trained in a movie montage in the hills, and then attacked his silly-named foes at Malmedy, and they scurried like schoolchildren and Charles got all their stuff, plus the reputation of a guy who could win battles against people who were utterly unprepared for it, them being asleep on siesta and all.
One battle doesn’t win a kingdom, though.
Charles waited a year and trained his army in yet another movie montage for the sequel, Charles II, complete with 1980s theme music, something telling him he was the best or something. Regardless, Charles invaded Chilperic’s place in Northern France, and won.
How do squid go into battle? Well armed.
And he kept winning. Charles essentially spent the next fifteen years fighting battles and winning ever single one of them in his bid to secure power. After that, he selected the title he wanted. It was mayor. So, after all of that, it was time for peace, right?
No. Charles had just beaten the other French. But as I mentioned, he was being invaded from the south.
That brings us to 732 AD and the town of Tours.
Let’s frame it this way: Charles’ victory at the Battle of Tours in 732 AD stands as one of those rare moments where the West dodged a civilization-ending bullet. Think Thermopylae, where a handful of Spartans bought time against Persian hordes; the Battle of Vienna in 1683, halting the Ottoman tide at Europe’s gates; or the sack of Carthage in 146 BC, when Rome finally crushed its African rival and secured Mediterranean dominance, or John Wilder’s Divorce of 1995.
Tours fits right in – a pivotal civilizational clash that crushed a major threat to the struggling West like it was a telemarketer.
Salt makes everything taste better. Sodi-yummmm! (meme as-found)
Let us set the scene properly, because context is king (or mayor as in Charles’ case).
By the 8th century, Islam had exploded out of Arabia, swallowing Persia, North Africa, and Spain in under a century. The U-mads crossed the Pyrenees in 720, gobbling up Septimania (southern France) and launching raids deeper into the Frankish lands.
Their leader, Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, governor of Al-Andalus (moslim Spain), was no slouch. He had spent years in active command of an army taking over Spain. His army, perhaps 20,000 to 80,000 strong (historians bicker like barroom philosophers on numbers), consisted mostly of Berber and Arab cavalry, light and fast, perfect for hit-and-run plunder.
They had sacked Bordeaux and were loaded with loot, but this was no mere smash-and-grab; the Arabs smelled yet more conquest, and were testing the waters for a full push into Frankish heartlands. They outnumbered the Frankish armies.
On the other side? Charles, the Mayor of the Palace the real boss of the Franks.
Why Charles? No one else stood ready to protect Europe; the Byzantines were busy fending off Arabs in the east, the Lombards in Italy were too fragmented and hadn’t even invented spaghetti yet, and the Anglo-Saxons across the Channel were still figuring out the magic secret of bathing that disappeared when the Romans left. If Charles failed, the road to Paris, and beyond to the Rhine, lay open.
Stakes? Imagine a Europe where minarets dot the Seine instead of cathedrals.
Oh, wait . . . .
Why are the French depressed? Because the light at the end of the tunnel is England. (meme as-found)
Now, the battle itself:
October 10, 732, near Tours. Charles, with about 15,000 to 30,000 infantry-heavy Franks, chose high ground in a wooded area, forming a tight phalanx of armored foot soldiers, a tactic used successfully by everyone from Sumerians to Greeks to Romans to Vikings.
This was a human wall of axes and swords and shields and pikes, disciplined like Roman legions but with beards that could hide small animals. They set up on top of a lightly-forested hill, and waited. And waited. Abdul Rahman wanted Charles to attack. Charles wanted Abdul to attack.
As the Arabs didn’t have warm clothes suitable for the winter, they finally blinked, and attacked.
Abdul Rahman’s cavalry charged uphill at this mass of men, lumber and steel, repeatedly, expecting to shatter the line like they had against the Visigoths they had defeated in Spain.
But Charles’ men held, their heavy infantry absorbing the impacts like Rockey Balboa in, well, like every Rockey movie. And with good reason: Charles had seen this battle coming and had the largest standing army, well trained and ready to go, fierce and with faith in their nearly undefeated leader.
I think shields are a concept I can really get behind.
As the day wore on, the Muslims tired. Their horses foaming, their riders frustrated. It was now hammer time. Charles’ scouts raided the enemy camp, sparking rumors that Abdul Rahman was dead and the loot vulnerable.
Panic spread among the U-mads.
The governor himself charged into the fray to rally his troops and got cut down, probably by a Frankish axe to the skull, because why not go out dramatically? Night fell, and the invaders melted away, leaving tents, treasure, and thousands of dead.
Casualties? Franks lost maybe a thousand; Muslims, up to 12,000, including their leader.
It was not pretty, with bodies piled like cordwood, blood soaking the fields and Charles standing tall. Charles got his nickname at this point. In old Frankish, it’s “Martel” but it translates to “The Hammer”.
Aftermath hit like a hangover after a wild raid.
The U-mads retreated south of the Pyrenees, their momentum broken. Internal revolts soon toppled their dynasty, replaced by the Abbasids who shifted focus eastward.
In Spain, Christian kingdoms in the north took heart. This sparked the Reconquista, a 700-year grind where indigenous Iberians overthrew their colonial moslim overlords.
My friend has an intricate tattoo and I was surprised when he told me he got it in Iberia. I guess no one expects Spanish ink precision.
No “noble savage” myth here; it was gritty reprisal, castle by castle, until 1492 when Ferdinand and Isabella booted the last emir from Granada and started Spain’s golden age. Tours proved resistance worked, and turned the tide from defense to offense.
Yet Charles Martel remains poorly remembered today, a footnote in textbooks while his grandson, Charlemagne, gets the statues.
Why? Charles never crowned himself king, deeming the title too puny for a man who ruled de facto over Franks, Aquitainians, and more. “Mayor of the Palace” suited him. It was understated power, like a mob boss who wears sweats instead of Armani®. Martel laid the foundations for post-Roman Europe: professional armies funded by land grants, essentially the birth of the feudal system. Martel also left a unified Frankish state, and was the salvation of Christianity.
After the victory at Tours, Charles granted large portions of Church land to his followers, on the condition they help him militarily. The Church wasn’t happy, but the Pope later begged Charles’ aid against Lombards, dubbing him a “defender of the faith.”
Irony? Delicious, especially with fava beans and a nice Chianti.
Most crucially, Martel set the stage for his grandson, Charlemagne. Martel’s son, Pepin the Short, finally ditched the Merovingians and became king with papal blessing.
Charlemagne then forged the Carolingian Empire, crowning himself Holy Roman Emperor in 800 A.D., defining medieval Europe with laws, learning, and conquests from Saxony to Italy.
Never challenge Death to a pillow fight unless you’re prepared for the Reaper cushions. (meme as-found)
Without the Hammer’s stand at Tours, there is no Charlemagne and perhaps no unified West to change the world.
Martel reminds us that history turns on hammers, not hashtags. He was no saint. He was ruthless, pragmatic, a bit of a land-thief, but he saved the West from a fate it might not have survived. Next time you think that we can’t win, tip your hat to the Hammer, who showed us the way because he was too illegit to quit.
