and seven Christians fell; a disparity of loss which he feels
bound to account for by a special interposition of Providence. I have
translated above some of the most spirited passages of these writers;
but it is impossible to collect from them anything like a full or
authentic description of the great battle itself, or of the operations
which preceded and followed it.

Though, however, we may have cause to regret the meagreness and doubtful
character of these narratives, we have the great advantage of being able
to compare the accounts given of Abderrahman's expedition by the
national writers of each side. This is a benefit which the inquirer into
antiquity so seldom can obtain that the fact of possessing it, in the
case of the battle of Tours, makes us think the historical testimony
respecting that great event more certain and satisfactory than is the
case in many other instances, where we possess abundant details
respecting military exploits, but where those details come to us from
the annalist of one nation only, and where we have, consequently, no
safeguard against the exaggerations, the distortions, and the fictions
which national vanity has so often put forth in the garb and under the
title of history. The Arabian writers who recorded the conquests and
wars of their countrymen in Spain have narrated also the expedition into
Gaul of their great Emir, and his defeat and death near Tours, in battle
with the host of the Franks under "King Caldus," the name into which
they metamorphose Charles Martel.

They tell us how there was war between the count of the Frankish
frontier and the Moslems, and how the count gathered together all his
people, and fought for a time with doubtful success. "But," say the
Arabian chroniclers, "Abderrahman drove them back; and the men of
Abderrahman were puffed up in spirit by their repeated successes, and
they were full of trust in the valor and the practice in war of their
Emir. So the Moslems smote their enemies, and passed the river Garonne,
and laid waste the country, and took captives without number. And that
army went through all places like a desolating storm. Prosperity made
these warriors insatiable. At the passage of the river Abderrahman
overthrew the count, and the count retired into his stronghold, but the
Moslems fought against it, and entered it by force and slew the count;
for everything gave way to their cimeters, which were the robbers of
lives.

"All the nations of t