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Charles Martel And A Cast of Thousands
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by Linda White
or as long as humankind has communicated by means of language, nicknames have settled on interesting characters, good and evil. Santa Claus, for instance, is the familiar “Old Saint Nick.” A Jewish revolutionary named Judah Maccabee was a controversial agitator and pot-stirrer of the second century B.C.E. With his brothers, Maccabee eventually recaptured Jerusalem from the first of many armies of invaders that would claim it. For his sometimes doubtful, yet larger-than-life efforts, Maccabee was forever after called Judah “The Hammerer.” Even Satan, the ultimate bad guy, was nicknamed the more digestible “Prince of Darkness” by some ancient soothsayer. Such colorful figures, real or mythical, and the events surrounding them, seem to be especially vulnerable to error and misinterpretation.
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e hesitate to add to the foregoing satanic reference, but other, milder nicknames could include “The Spider King,” Louis XI of France, who was so dubbed for his love of things political, around which he would spin a spider’s web of intrigue and manipulation. His descendant, Louis XIV, nicknamed himself “The Sun King,” and insisted that everyone else think of him in that light (no pun intended). A less self-absorbed hero was John Chapman, a wandering, 19th century eccentric who became known to generations of children as “Johnny Appleseed” (with special thanks to Walt Disney). The brief, sordid career, dubious exploits, and death of a 19th century teenage thug, born William F. Bonney and nicknamed “Billy the Kid,” has somehow become the stuff of legend. Not much changes, because misinformation and misinterpretation are rife today. Take the endless 2008 U.S. presidential primaries, and tedious speculation about the upcoming election, now congesting every information medium. Within minutes of each candidate’s speech or remarks, political pundits leap in, feverishly analyzing and re-analyzing what he or she really meant, and the true implications of their every statement. As happens in the whimsical children’s game called “telephone,” each retelling of the story bears less and less resemblance to the original. The Battle of Poitiers, a.k.a. Tours, which took place in 732 A.D., was an incident that became an often-told, increasingly heroic tale of conflict
Pepin of Herstal, the father of Charles Martel.
between Frankish Christian forces and Muslim invaders, whose religious and political sights were fixed on land-grabbing and widespread conversions to Islam. Medieval historians would interpret that battle’s outcome as a divine judgment, clearly favoring Christianity over Islam. The Franks’ victory also earned an opportunistic Frankish noble and onetime political prisoner named Charles the sobriquet “Martel,” from the Latin word for hammer. Fortunately for him, Charles “The Hammer” Martel’s genius lay in his ability to conceive and carry out devastatingly effective military tactics. For Christianity, his gifts in the art of warfare shone brightly, albeit intermittently, at Tours. Overstatement of the battle’s historical importance notwithstanding, Martel’s victory at Tours was probably a crucial factor in the emergence of Christian Europe. Charles was the illegitimate son of Pepin of Herstal, mayor of palaces of the last of the Merovingian kings. Through the timely deaths of various important personages, a series of military victories, and a large helping of serendipity, Charles rose to undisputed military leadership of all the Franks. As Isidore of Beja, a Christian Spanish bishop of the period, wrote in lavish praise of Charles’ battlefield prowess, “By the grace of Our Lord, he wrought a great slaughter upon the enemies of our Christian faith, so that ... he slew in that battle 300,000 men, and likewise their king, by name Abderrahman. “Then was he [Charles] first called ‘Martel,’ for as a hammer of iron, of steel, and of every other metal, even so he dashed: and smote in the battle
Charles "The Hammer" Martel.
Charles Martel's son, Pepin the Short, who was the father of the influential ruler Charlemagne.
all his enemies,” continued Isidore. His Chronicle continued one begun by St. Isidore of Seville, and covered the years from 610 A.D. to 754 A.D. While Isidore’s estimates of combatant numbers and numbers slain may be immoderate, the Chronicle’s florid language and passionate excess had wide appeal for readers of the period, both secular and religious. Isidore of Beja helped put Charles “The Hammer” Martel on the map. Such early Christian victories over Islam, and vice-versa, were critical elements in the emergence of western civilization, but the period (c.476 A.D. to 1000 A.D.) is also rightly remembered as the Dark Ages. The dwindling of Greece and Rome’s highlydeveloped civilizations meant that those grand earlier archetypes were no longer around to lead the charge toward ever more enlightened cultural, political, scientific and literary development. Centuries before the bubonic plague dealt its deathblow, Europe fell into ignorance and superstition. Thus, our early and later chroniclers’ observations, both ignorant and
enlightened, are factors to weigh in the accuracy of the very real historical events they describe. Sometime within the third century, the Goths, later divided into the Visigoths (western Goths) and Ostrogoths (eastern Goths), a wandering, warlike Germanic tribe, drifted into the region that would later be called Europe. Their barbarian culture, pagan lifestyle, and aggressive contempt for higher learning soon imposed themselves on Europe’s vulnerable, submissive population. In sharp contrast, early Muslim culture rivaled the Greeks and Romans in many respects. Literature, art and architecture, music, and a high level of scientific understanding flourished, as did the science of war. “In the Days of Ignorance, before Muhammad rose to preach Islam,” Judith Forbis begins Chapter 4 of The Classic Arabian Horse, “the Arab was a free man, a poet and a warrior. Poetry was the Public Register of the people .... Ibn Rashiq of Kairouan, a great poet of his era, once said, ‘The Arabs congratulate each other on three things: the birth of a boy, the emergence
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Charles Martel leading his forces at the Battle of Tours in 732 A.D.
of a poet, and the foaling of a mare.’ The tie that bound the Arab to his horse was not material, but spiritual,” Forbis continues, “for the bedouin, like the American Indian ... realized his kinship with all life.” Warlike tribes of ancient Arabs were many, and each considered their horses their greatest asset. By the fifth and sixth centuries, pre-Islamic desert warriors were passionately and poetically extolling the virtues of their Arabian war horses. The Umayyads, a.k.a. Omniade, were an early seventh century Islamic dynasty founded by the emir Muawwiyah. (“Umayyad” was a corruption of Muawwiyah.) From their Damascus headquarters, Muawwiyah and his descendants ruled Syria for 89 years. Not surprisingly, Umayyad horsemen spread their religion by the sword, first establishing solid footing in Northern Africa, from whence they headed across the Mediterranean to the Iberian Peninsula. By 713, they had overrun Spain and Portugal. (The Portuguese language still bears unique evidence of Moorish influence.) Within eight years, an Umayyad caliph, Abd-er-Rahman, was named Spain’s emir, or governor. Abd-er-Rahman was recognized, and revered by the faithful, as a spiritual, if not literal,
“Yea, each one fleet, when the sweat soaks through the saddle-pad, clear of skin, smoothcheeked, bright of hair, a galloper tireless of pace. Not thin his forelock, nor humped his nose, no weakling of limb; preferred is he ... and well nurtured at home.” —Salamah ibn-Jandal
descendant of Muhammad. He is spoken of by eighth century and later chroniclers to have been a just governor, and a shrewd, eminently capable general. In 731 A.D., to reinforce some semblance of peace in the Spanish territories he governed, Abder-Rahman killed in battle a Moslem troublemaker named Othmar, who controlled an area of the northern Pyrenees. Emboldened by his dispatching of Othmar, the ambitious Umayyad leader listed the aid of the naive Aquitanians in subduing and converting their own country to Islam. Abd-er-Rahman and his wellmounted cavalry headed into Frankish territory. They laid waste to many towns and villages in France’s southern districts, decimating the citizenry and making off with as much swag as they could carry. One chronicler of that dark time lamented their immoderate plunder of Bordeaux, noting that Abd-er-Rahman and his henchmen grabbed so much loot that every soldier “was loaded down with golden vases and cups, and emeralds, and other precious stones.” The Prophet Muhammad, architect of Islam and its zealous followers’ ambitious outreach, rose to prominence around 600 A.D. He had been born in 570 A.D., in the village of Mecca, in what is now Saudi Arabia. Orphaned as a young child, Muhammad developed and comforted himself with an increasingly intense interest in religion. As his religious fervor grew, he filled his life with fasting, lengthy meditations, and revelations, one of which was a visitation by the Angel Gabriel, the same archangel who earlier gave a teenaged Jewish lass named Mary portentous news about a child she would bear. Muhammad’s monotheism, and his incessant preaching against Mecca’s polytheism, made the old guard nervous. The city’s leading citizens correctly perceived his presence a threat to their wealth and stature. In September 622, Muhammad was forced to flee Mecca, to escape persecution and what would surely be death. In the city of Medina, to which he had fled, he founded his first real community of believers, which included the faithful who abandoned Mecca with him. “Mohammed rode a camel on this journey,” historian Gladys Brown Edwards reminds readers on page 18 of her The Arabian: War Horse to Show Horse. “Some writers, rather out of touch with reality (or with research) are positive that the Arabs did not have horses until after the time of Mohammad …
which inexplicably overlooks the ‘troop of horse’ (200 horsemen) that set out on Mohammad’s trail when he fled to Medina from Mecca. Yet, some American breeders have claimed descent of their stock from ‘the horse Mohammad rode from Mecca to Medina.’ This shows how gullible people can be, also that they never read history. “In addition to the horses of the troops opposed to the Moslems, the presence of horses in Arabia is proven in the poems of the pre-Islamic ‘suspended books’ in the Kaaba at Mecca, in which horses are often mentioned … ,” Edwards continues. “This would indicate that horses had been bred in Arabia and environs by the Bedouins for many generations by that date: the seventh century A.D.” (For examples of this written evidence, see The Classic Arabian Horse by Judith Forbis. In Chapter 4, “The Age of Poetry,” there are excerpts and complete versions of poems by pre-Islamic poets and warriors.)
“Yea, each one fleet, when the sweat soaks through the saddle-pad, clear of skin, smooth-cheeked, bright of hair, a galloper tireless of pace. Not thin his forelock, nor humped his nose, no weakling of limb; preferred is he ... and well nurtured at home.” —Salamah ibn-Jandal Muhammad’s flight from Mecca to Medina ignited the expansion of Islam’s influence across North Africa and the Middle East. Inspired and fresh from conversion, Muslim warriors rode forth, mounted on their fine Arabian horses, bent on converting all of Europe, and whatever lay beyond, to their marvelous new faith. They reached Spain in 711 A.D., and soon controlled most of the Iberian peninsula; their Spanish rule would last 700 years. The influence of
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Charles Martel's army ransacking the enemy's camp after the Battle of Tours.
the Arabian war horses they brought with them also spread widely, during which time “Arabian” became recognized as a distinct breed of horse. Arabian influence continues in the Iberian peninsula, and not only in Spanish breeders’ purebred Arabian herds, whose impact is felt worldwide. Several Spanish breeds of light horses popular today, such as Andalusians and Lusitanos, have considerable Arabian and Barb blood, and have been highly regarded since the Middle Ages. Arabian horses would also continue to
play a significant role in Middle East and European history, both in war and in peacetime, and would strongly influence the development of every other light horse breed on earth. Judaism, Christianity and the Muslim religion all were essentially founded on doctrines taken from the Old Testament. Some Muslims, ardently embracing their new faith, interpreted certain sections of the Koran, written after Muhammad’s rise to power, to suggest that Judaism and Christianity were rival political and religious groups, against which Islam should vigorously defend itself. Many early followers’ passionate allegiance to their new prophet led them to despise Christians and Jews. Harsh efforts to convert the peoples they regarded as infidels followed. In the midst of persistent Islamic versus Christian hostilities surrounding him, Charles the Frank was far from idle. Islam’s encroaching threat prompted him to put together, as quickly as he could manage, an army, with which he sallied forth against Muslim troops. At the same time, Abd-er-Rahman, fresh from his triumph over the troublesome Othmar, led infantry and cavalry across the Western Pyrenees and toward the Loire River. Estimates of their numbers, including Isidore of Beja’s, have varied from 60,000 to 400,000. Reaching Tours in early October, the tenacious Umayyad general and his mounted troopers unexpectedly came upon Charles and his Frankish army. According to second-hand accounts, the two armies met only in occasional skirmishes for the first five days. When they finally came together in real combat on the morning of the sixth day, their engagement was frighteningly violent. Bodies of the fallen, Muslim and Christian alike—infantry, cavalry and their horses, dead and mortally injured— soon littered the field. Late in the afternoon, Abd-erRahman was killed. As evening’s shadows lengthened, warriors on both sides retired to their camps, their morale and their numbers significantly reduced. Both sides had suffered heavy casualties, but neither had won a real, decisive victory. Charles was sure that the fighting would be renewed in the morning.
At sunrise, however, when he and his Christian soldiers appeared on the battlefield, they found themselves alone. The Muslims, deflated without their fearless leader, had slipped away in the night. To the Franks’ grim pleasure, they had relieved themselves of a cumbersome escape by abandoning their valuable spoils from earlier successes. As his troops eagerly gathered the rich booty, it seemed to Charles that his army had won, by default, the battle of Poitiers, or Tours. Included in the riches Frankish troops would appropriate were the Arabian and Barb horses the Muslims had left behind. Charles awarded the animals, many of them stallions, among his Frankish soldiers, probably guessing correctly that the exhausted men would take the huge-eyed, fiery, beautiful war horses home with them. He could little have imagined what their impact would be on local horse populations—the later development of French light and warmblood breeds, the Vendeen, Normand, Breton du Leon, and Tarbais. The Vendeen were bred for speed and agility. The Tarbais were named after the city of Tarbes in the Pyrenees, and they were developed for the Emperor Napoleon as a cavalry mount. These French breeds owe much of their excellence to long-ago infusions of Arabian blood. Arabians also added lightness of foot to the heavier draft animals, influencing particularly the development of the Percheron, a breed also named for the region of its birth. According to modern research, and reinforced by old paintings and crude drawings from the Middle Ages, Medieval knights rode an agile horse, heavy enough to carry armor and weapons, but not coarse; an animal with extravagant style, and great courage. Light-colored greys and whites were preferred because of their visibility at night. Returning to the eighth century, Charles Martel’s 732 A.D. victory-by-default at Tours would, then and later, be regarded (with some embellishing of the facts) as one of the world’s most decisive battles— the pivotal victory that thwarted the spread of Islam in Europe. Thus, did the redoubtable Charles, wily schemer and brilliant tactician, become “The Hammer,” the valiant hero who saved Christendom, albeit only temporarily. Some old wounds, like the schism between Islam and Christianity, apparently never heal. By the year 800 A.D., Charlemagne, who was Charles Martel’s grandson, was building a formidable religious and political following. His military exploits would be likened to those of the mythical King Arthur. From Emperor Justinian’s time, the Roman Empire supported large breeding farms, their demand for horses never satisfied. After
Rome’s decline, France’s Merovingian kings inherited those estates, then did the Carolingians (named after Charles), their successors. The Carolingians’ were the first Medieval armies to use a well-mounted, well-armed cavalry as their central weapon. As a matter of fact, and not legend, Charlemagne and his successors’ military successes were a direct result of an effective cavalry. The Carolingians’ light cavalry also carried out innumerable search-and-destroy missions, surprising and easily overcoming their surprised, poorly prepared opponents. We could legitimately have titled this story, “Children of Abraham Squabble Endlessly,” or “Brutish Franks Derail Noble Moslem Crusade,” because no matter how objective historians attempt to be, the information available at the time, and each writer’s priorities, political and religious perspectives inevitably color the end product. Nevertheless, there is unanimous agreement that warfare and strife have
The tomb of Charles Martel, located at the Basilica of Saint Denis, located in Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris, France.
been constants since—and possibly long before— those early hominids evolved into Homo habilis (nicknamed “Handy Man” by Louis Leakey and the other archaeologists who discovered his 2.5 millionyear-old remains in Kenya). Religious, ethnic, racial and political violence continues, almost unabated, in our world today. Amazingly, certain healthier, more hopeful comings together have also persisted. Despite humanity’s eternal follies and foibles, one earthly, and spiritual, alliance has remained steadfast. For more than 5,000 years, the Arabian horse has been our ally, companion and confederate.