courage of the Aquitanians; he spread amongst
his troops a rumor that he had but lately received as a present from Pope
Gregory II. three sponges that had served to wipe down the table at which
the sovereign pontiffs were accustomed to celebrate the communion; he had
them cut into little strips which he had distributed to all those of the
combatants who wished for them, and thereupon gave the sword to sound the
charge. The victory of the Aquitanians was complete; the Arab army was
cut in pieces; El-Samah was slain, and with him, according to the
victors' accounts, full three hundred and seventy-five thousand of his
troops. The most truth-like testimonies and calculations do not put down
at more than from fifty to seventy thousand men, in fighting trim, the
number of Arabs that entered Spain eight or ten years previously, even
with the additions it must have received by means of the emigrations from
Africa; and undoubtedly El-Samah could not have led into Aquitania more
than from forty to forty-five thousand. However that may be, the defeat
of the Arabs before Toulouse was so serious that, four or five centuries
afterwards, Ibn-Hayan, the best of their historians, still spoke of it as
the object of solemn commemoration, and affirmed that the Arab army had
entirely perished there, without the escape of a single man. The spot in
the Roman road, between Carcassonne and Toulouse, where the battle was
fought, was one heap of dead bodies, and continued to be mentioned in the
Arab chronicles under the name of Martyrs' Causeway. But the Arabs of
Spain were then in that unstable social condition and in that heyday of
impulsive youthfulness as a people, when men are more apt to be excited
and attracted by the prospect of bold adventures than discouraged by
reverses. El-Samah, on crossing the Pyrenees to go plundering and
conquering in the country of the Frandj, had left as his lieutenant in
the Iberian peninsula Anbessa-ben-Sohim, one of the most able, most
pious, most just, and most humane chieftains, say the Arab chronicles,
that Islamism ever produced in Europe. He, being informed of El-Samah's
death before Toulouse, resolved to resume his enterprise and avenge his
defeat. In 725, he entered Gaul with a strong army; took Carcassonne;
reduced, either by force or by treaty, the principal towns of Septimania
to submission; and even carried the Arab arms, for the first time, beyond
the Rhone into Provence. At the news of this