Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)

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  A victorious line of march had been prolonged above a thousand thousand miles from the Rock of Gibraltar to the banks of the Loire.

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  The repetition of an equal space would have carried the Saracens to the confines of Poland and the Highlands of Scotland.

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  The Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or Euphrates.

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  And the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames.

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  Perhaps the interpretation of the Quran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford.

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  And her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet.

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  From such calamities was Christendom delivered by the genius and fortune of one man.

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  Charles, the illegitimate son of the elder Pepin, was content with the titles of mayor or Duke of the Franks, but he deserved to become the father of a line of kings.

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  That was Edward Gibbon in the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most famous passages of historical prose ever written.

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  He is describing the legacy of the Battle of Tours, which was fought on 10th October, 732, or perhaps 733.

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  Nobody is entirely sure between the Franks and what he called an invading force of Saracens.

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  So, Tom, great passage, great book, great subject.

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  Yeah, just bring some of it alive for us.

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  So who is Charles?

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  Who are the Saracens, where are we and what's going on?

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  Okay, so we are still in our series on the Franks, and Charles, who Gibbon, in that passage is very careful to specify, is not a king, but a mayor or a duke of the Franks.

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  He is perhaps the greatest of all the Frankish warlords since the time of Clovis, the king who founds the great kingdom of the Franks as the Roman Empire is falling.

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  But we're now in the early 8th century and Charles, Charles will be known from the following century onwards as Charles Martel the Hammer.

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