rst
race; or, rather, Charles was the real monarch of the French and German
nations.

Eudes, duke of Aquitania, the possessor of Gascony and Guienne, had
long maintained a quarrel with the French hero. Unable longer, {40}
without assistance, to resist his foe, he sought an alliance with a
Moor named Munuza, who was the governor of Catalonia and the secret
enemy of Abderamus. These two powerful vassals, both discontented with
their respective sovereigns, and inspired as much by fear as dislike,
united themselves in the closest bonds, in despite of the difference in
their religious faith. The Christian duke did not hesitate to give his
daughter in marriage to his Mohammedan ally, and the Princess Numerance
espoused the Moorish Munuza, as Queen Egilona had espoused the Moorish
Abdelazis.

Abderamus, when informed of this alliance, immediately divined the
motives which had induced it. He soon assembled an army, penetrated
with rapidity into Catalonia, and attacked Munuza, who was wounded in a
fruitless endeavour to fly, and afterward perished by his own hand.
His captive wife was conducted into the presence of the victorious
governor Abderamus, struck with her beauty, sent the fair Numerance as
a present to the Caliph Haccham, whose regard she elicited; and thus,
by a singular chance, a princess of Gascony became an inmate of the
seraglio of a sovereign of Damascus.

{41}

Not content with having so signally punished Munuza, Abderamus crossed
the Pyrenees, traversed Navarre, entered Guienne, and besieged and took
the City of Bordeaux. Eudes attempted, at the head of an army, to
arrest his progress, but was repelled in a decisive engagement.
Everything yielded to the Mussulman arms: Abderamus pursued his route,
ravaged Perigord, Saintonge, and Poitou, appeared in triumph in
Touraine, and paused only when within view of the streaming ensigns of
Charles Martel.

Charles came to this rencounter followed by the forces of France,
Asturia, and Bourgogne, and attended by the veteran warriors whom he
was accustomed to lead to victory. The Duke of Aquitania was also in
the camp. Charles forgot his private injuries in the contemplation of
the common danger: this danger was pressing: the fate of France and
Germany--indeed, of the whole of Christendom, depended on the event of
the approaching conflict.

Abderamus was a rival worthy of the son of Pepin. Flushed, like him,
with the proud recollection of numerous victories