o widespread were the
ravages of the Saracenic light cavalry throughout Gaul that it must have
been impossible to restrain for any length of time the indignant ardor
of the Franks. And, even if Charles could have persuaded his men to look
tamely on while the Arabs stormed more towns and desolated more
districts, he could not have kept an army together when the usual period
of a military expedition had expired. If, indeed, the Arab account of
the disorganization of the Moslem forces be correct, the battle was as
well timed on the part of Charles as it was, beyond all question, well
fought.

The monkish chroniclers, from whom we are obliged to glean a narrative
of this memorable campaign, bear full evidence to the terror which the
Saracen invasion inspired, and to the agony of that great struggle. The
Saracens, say they, and their King, who was called Abdirames, came out
of Spain, with all their wives, and their children, and their substance,
in such great multitudes that no man could reckon or estimate them. They
brought with them all their armor, and whatever they had, as if they
were thenceforth always to dwell in France.

"Then Abderrahman, seeing the land filled with the multitude of his
army, pierces through the mountains, tramples over rough and level
ground, plunders far into the country of the Franks, and smites all with
the sword, insomuch that when Eudes came to battle with him at the river
Garonne, and fled before him, God alone knows the number of the slain.
Then Abderrahman pursued after Count Eudes, and while he strives to
spoil and burn the holy shrine at Tours he encounters the chief of the
Austrasian Franks, Charles, a man of war from his youth up, to whom
Eudes had sent warning. There for nearly seven days they strive
intensely, and at last they set themselves in battle array, and the
nations of the North, standing firm as a wall and impenetrable as a zone
of ice, utterly slay the Arabs with the edge of the sword."

The European writers all concur in speaking of the fall of Abderrahman
as one of the principal causes of the defeat of the Arabs; who,
according to one writer, after finding that their leader was slain,
dispersed in the night, to the agreeable surprise of the Christians, who
expected the next morning to see them issue from their tents and renew
the combat. One monkish chronicler puts the loss of the Arabs at three
hundred and seventy-five thousand men, while he says that only one
thousand