ed France and
Christendom from the invading Saracens. On his Franks, and on the
Lombards of Italy, rest, for the moment, the destinies of Europe.

For meanwhile another portent has appeared, this time out of the far
East. Another swarm of destroyers has swept over the earth. The wild
Arabs of the desert, awakening into sudden life and civilization under
the influence of a new creed, have overwhelmed the whole East, the whole
north of Africa, destroying the last relics of Roman and Greek
civilization, and with them the effete and semi-idolatrous Christianity
of the Empire. All the work of Narses and Belisarius is undone. Arab
Emirs rule in the old kingdom of the Vandals. The new human deluge has
crossed the Straits into Europe. The Visigoths, enervated by the
luxurious climate of Spain, have recoiled before the Mussulman invaders.
Roderick, the last king of the Goths, is wandering as an unknown penitent
in expiation of his sin against the fair Cava, which brought down (so
legends and ballads tell) the scourge of God upon the hapless land; and
the remnants of the old Visigoths and Sueves are crushed together into
the mountain fastnesses of Asturias and Gallicia, thence to reissue,
after long centuries, as the noble Spanish nation, wrought in the forges
of adversity into the likeness of tempered steel; and destined to
reconquer, foot by foot, their native land from the Moslem invader.

But at present the Crescent was master of the Cross; and beyond the
Pyrenees all was slavery and 'miscreance.' The Arabs, invading France in
732, in countless thousands, had been driven back at the great fight of
Tours, with a slaughter so great, that the excited imagination of Paulus
Diaconus sees 375,000 miscreants dead upon the field, while only 1500
Franks had perished. But home troubles had prevented 'the Hammer of the
Moors' from following up his victory. The Saracens had returned in force
in 737, and again in 739. They still held Narbonne. The danger was
imminent. There was no reason why they should not attempt a third
invasion. Why should they not spread along the shores of the
Mediterranean, establishing themselves there, as they were already doing
in Sicily, and menacing Rome from north as well as south? To unite,
therefore, the two great Catholic Teutonic powers, the Frank and the
Lombard, for the defence of Christendom, should have been the policy of
him who called himself the Chief Pontiff in Christendom. Yet the