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[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
This week in October marks the anniversary of an epic event that is not widely known in America except among history buffs, but which nonetheless dramatically shaped the future of the Western world, and which may still hold inspiration for us in the West today.
After the death of the Muslim prophet Muhammad in 632, Islam spread like a bloody tide throughout the Arabian peninsula, north to the Caspian Sea and east through Persia and beyond, westward through Egypt and across North Africa all the way to the Atlantic Ocean. From there it crossed the Straits of Gibraltar and consumed virtually all of the Iberian peninsula, or al-Andalus as the Saracens called it. In a mere one hundred years, the warlord Muhammad’s imperialist legacy was an empire larger than Rome’s had ever been.
By 732 that fallen Roman empire had devolved into a patchwork of warring barbarian tribes across what is now continental Europe. When Abd-al-Rahman al-Ghafiki, the governor of al-Andalus, crossed the Pyrenees with the world’s most successful fighting force and began pillaging through the south of what would become France toward Paris, there was no nation, no central power, no professional army capable of stopping them.
No army except one – led by the Frankish duke Charles, the eventual grandfather of Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne. His infantrymen, as historian Victor Davis Hanson puts it in a fascinating chapter of Carnage and Culture, were “hardened veterans of nearly twenty years of constant combat against a variety of Frankish, German, and Islamic enemies.” Hanson writes that the Roman legions had crumbled “because of the dearth of free citizens who were willing to fight for their own freedom and the values of their civilization.” But the seasoned warrior Charles had gathered spirited, free fighters under his command who were willing to defend their Christian society, and he led them to intercept the marauding infidels leaving a ravaged trail toward the ultimate prize, Paris.
In October 732 (the exact date is disputed, but it is commonly held to be the 10th), the two armies met on a wooded field between Poitiers and Tours (and so the ensuing confrontation is sometimes called the Battle of Poitiers), barely 175 miles from Paris as the crow flies. Abd-al-Rahman arrayed his cavalry against Charles’ solid block of Frankish footsoldiers, which at 30,000 was by some estimates not even half the size of the Arab and Berber army (Hanson speculates that the armies were more evenly matched, but the Franks were unquestionably outnumbered).
The opposing forces sized each other up for a full week before Abd-al-Rahman ordered the charge that October morning. But his cavalry, which normally counted on speed, mobility, and terror to lay waste to undisciplined tribes, could not penetrate the highly disciplined, heavily armed Frankish phalanx. In his must-read book Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War Between Islam and the West, my friend, historian Raymond Ibrahim, quotes a contemporary chronicler who described that the Franks “stood as motionless as a wall, they were like a belt of ice frozen together, and not to be dissolved, as they slew the Arab with the sword.”
At the end of the day’s carnage, both sides regrouped for the next day’s assault. But at dawn, Charles and his men discovered that the Muslim army had vanished, beginning their retreat toward the Pyrenees, leaving the booty stolen from ransacked churches and abbeys behind, as well as at least 10,000 of their dead – including Abd-al-Rahman himself. Exact figures in historical sources are questionable, but Arab chroniclers, Ibrahim reports, “refer to the engagement as the ‘Pavement of Martyrs,’ suggesting that the earth was littered with Muslim corpses.”
It was not the last Muslim incursion into Europe – Charles racked up subsequent victories against the Saracens for a few years afterward – but it was the beginning of the end, and Islam never again penetrated militarily as far into European territory. The victory at Tours helped solidify Charles’ standing among the Franks as a great leader and defender of Christendom (he was afterward dubbed Martel, or “the Hammer”; the Pope reportedly labeled him “the Hammer of God”). He became ruler over all the Franks, essentially unifying all the fragmented territory of western Europe and paving the way for the rise of his grandson Charlemagne to become “the Father of Europe,” the first great ruler of Christendom.
Some historians today downplay the magnitude of the Muslim threat that Martel countered, claiming that Abd-al-Rahman’s force was only a raiding party with no grander designs on seizing the whole of the European continent. They minimize the significance of the Battle of Tours’ outcome, too; at least one historian even claims that Europe would have been better off if Islam had conquered it.
But Hanson notes that “most of the renowned historians of the 18th and 19th centuries… saw Poitiers as a landmark battle that signaled the high-water mark of Islamic advance into Europe.” Edward Creasey included it among the fifteen most decisive battles of world history. Many – myself included – believe that if Charles had not stopped Abd-al-Rahman at Tours, there would have been nothing to prevent the Islamic tide from sweeping across the continent and making Europe Islamic. Edward Gibbon called Charles “the savior of Christendom” and wrote in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in 1776 that if not for Charles’ victory, “perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford.”
If only Gibbon could see Oxford now. Not only is the interpretation of the Koran taught there, but Islam thrives in Oxford, thanks partly to the patronage of the UK’s current dhimmi king. In his essay “Islam in Oxford,” faux moderate Muslim scholar Muqtedar Khan wrote that “Gibbon would have been surprised to learn the lesson that military defeats do not stop the advance of civilizations and the globalization of Islam is unimpeded by the material and military weaknesses of the Muslim world.”
Apart from his dubious suggestion that Islam has anything to do with the advance of civilization, Khan is right: today the Islamic incursion into Europe is of the demographic, not military, sort. The continent faces an immigration crisis due in no small part to at least one generation of young Muslims, many of whom not only are willfully unassimilated, but who are waging cultural and physical aggression against their hosts, establishing “no-go” zones ruled by sharia and in which infidels are unwelcome, to put it mildly. “Nothing can stop the spread of Islam,” insisted Islamic apologist Reza Aslan. “There are those who would try, but it simply will not happen. Absolutely nothing can stop the spread of Islam.”
In 732, Charles Martel begged to differ. What it took was the will, the discipline and training, and a warrior spirit and righteous faith.
Note: The painting above is French Romantic Charles de Steuben’s “Bataille de Poitiers en octobre 732,” which depicts a mounted Charles Martel facing Abd-al Rahman Al Ghafiki at the Battle of Tours.
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior.
Who will be the new Charles Martel to save Western civilization? Or our wevto far gone and entering a period of darkness?
Israel, but only if the Samson doctrine (see Wikipedia) is triggered by Israel being an imminent danger of destruction or overrun by Islamic hordes.
Israel has 400 nuclear warheads and a triad delivery system consisting of missiles (the Jericho III ICBM can easily reach Toronto), jets (flown by the Best military pilots in the world), and six submarines (German constructed) that carry torpedoes and nuclear-tipped cruise missiles).
Israel could, in the space of a few hours, utterly destroy Mecca, Medina, Riyadh, Jiddah, Doha, Istanbul, and Tehran, just for starters. Two of the five pillars of Islam would be moot, facing Mecca during prayer and making Hajj at least once, since Mecca would be gone.
Israel would have plenty of warheads, if desired, left over for its worst European enemies, like Spain and Ireland.
It may come to all that someday. After the smoke cleared and the radiation became manageable, the world would be a much better place.
President Trump and us!
Except that Trump has stopped Israel from defeating Hamas.
Couldn’t find a place to start my comment, however believe the writer is partially wrong. Less than a thousand years later the Ottoman muslims were eating Europe piecemeal. In 1690 they were at the gates at Vienna. The Hapsburgs and other European royalty took off out of danger. Had the moslems won, we’d not have Mozart, Beethoven, numerous examples of outstanding art and science and our way of life. It wasn’t Charles that stopped this….he merely postponed it….but Polish King Jan Sobieski, who beat them at the gates of Vienna and who has never received the gratitude and respect from the two- faced Western Europeans. Today, Vienna and other countries in its area are welcoming those destroyers of western society with open arms. Perhaps those earlier attempts to save Europe were a waste of time.
You make a good point, which is actually at the heart of understanding Islam. Islam is permanently at war with all non-Muslims. It’s the core of their religion. They have never stopped in their attempts at world domination and never will. Their religion not only allows them to do what is necessary to win in the long term, but obligates them to do so, even if what they do seems to violate what the West understands as moral and honest.
P.S.: The Battle of Vienna was 1683.
The word ‘Western’ is a redundancy. Civilization period.
Every Christian should also read about the siege of Szigetvar. It is among the grittiest, most heroic and costly last stands in history.
The question is, “what will you do for money”? Start by inquiring of Angie Merkel and her EU friends and then move to DC. Islam stands for depopulation by hunger and genetic intellectual primitivism.
Actually it is already too late.
We could really use a latter day Charles Martel who would be willing to defy the pansy Islam loving Left and drive the Muslim hordes out of Europe and out of this country.
Of course Martel “de Nouveau” would have to first sweep and defeat the dhimmi E.U. that is wrecking Western Europe.
Next up, getting rid of the Muslims in N. America. Shouldn’t be as hard here. We have guns. The E.U. has nothing. What does the American Left really have?
For one thing, a number of stupid supporters. Don’t forget there is a group called queers for palestine.
As a commentator on the New Culture Forum show opined, what is happening in England and Europe is not immigration, it is colonization. When you say “we have our own laws, and you cannot interfere with them,” that is colonization.
It’s true that “Roman legions had crumbled ‘because of the dearth of free citizens who were willing to fight’”. But it’s also true that Rome fell because of a dearth of citizens. They simply didn’t have the population. Rodney Stark pointed out that it was rare for a Roman family to raise more than two daughters to adulthood. You can’t make population without females. Rome had abortion, but the preferred form of infant murder was exposure to the elements, wolves, and crows.
As a result what defense Rome had was with an army of barbarian immigrants, who eventually turned against them.
Excellent article. Thank you.
Civilization, as we know it in the West, is undergoing a slow and painful death. Who knows how much longer it can survive.
Genetically, virtually all Western Europeans are descended from Charlemagne. And thus from Charles Martel. It is high time we showed the bravery of our ancestors and stood up to these wankers.
Don’t forget that Jan Sobieski was the one who stopped Islam at the ‘Gates of Vienna’ and saved Christianity from Mehmed IV and the Ottomans.
The saddest aspect of this is that the culture of Islam is depleted and tired.
Rome fell because the people were tired of running the world and had lost their will to lead similar to what seems to be happening in the West at this time.
The thought of being overrun by a depleted primitivism is very embarrassing.
remember the battle of Vienna. I believe because they lost which was on 9/11 they never forgot and tried again on 9/11. Until the WESTERN Civilazation releases that there will never be peace because if you are a true follower of mohamad we all must convert or die.. I for one will NEVER give in to this insanity..
The Polish horseman saved Vienna and Europe in 1683
and of course from the Islamic hordes from the south.
So here’s a horrible thought… Had Martel not been victorious at Tours, there would have been no Mozart, no Haydn… No Beethoven. No Schubert. Get some good earphones, and listen to Schubert’s 9th Symphony… then tell me there’s no God or higher purpose! My Bible, and yours too, if you read it, says all Muslims are going to Hell! That’s not P.C., that’s B.C. Biblically Correct.
Read more about Polish king Jan Sobieski. It was his victory that totally stopped the Moslem invasion. Charles’ victory, great as it was, was a temporary one. The moslems returned several centuries later and were on the door step of the most significant representative of western culture, Vienna, when Sobieski stopped them permanently……well almost. Today’s European leaders are giving the Moslems full victory without firing a shot
The actions required of Martel and Sobieski and the current tide of incursion of uncontrollable young men of military age into the west speak to relentless expansion of that death cult. The only way stop it is to fight and push it back. Otherwise it devour Western Civilization. Although to be frank, the dilution of our civilization seems to make it unlikely that we will ever hear another expression of it the likes of a Beethoven or a Mozart or a Puccini.
I assume you mean the New Testament. Unfortunately the original Bible was penned long before the Muslims even existed. Pretty much the same with the new Testament.
Muslims came along in the late 4th C. and early 5th C. By then Christianity was firmly established by then and the New Testament was the foundation of the Church. Pope Gregory finally decided to do something about them and sent a Christian army to take back Jerusalem and the conquered parts of Judea. And we have been at war with Islam since.
I am all for another round of Crusades. but I don’t think we will get anything with this new pope. He is a total dhimmi weeny.
Netanyahu and Trump are about all we can expect for now. The real question is what we do we as Americans when Europe blows up and then they make their move out of Dearbornistan., Brooklyn and Texas.
Keep your ARs loaded with full mags.
Certainly that is a “New Testament” pronouncement, but the Elephant in the room is John 3:16, and John 14:6. Muslims are having no part of those, so they ALL are going to Hell. To those who say, “You bigot…”, the answer, is Muslim is a Religion, not an ethnicity. Muslims who accept John 3:16 are no longer Muslims.
What a facinating view of a pivotal event in world history. And a harbinger of things to come. I pray leaders in this nation will not let what happenedin Europe to happen here. I know Mr. Trump will stop this. But the other side – heaven help us!
What Reza Aswipe meant to say is that ‘nothing can stop the spread of totalitarianism’. Caesar, Napoleon, and Hitler would beg to differ. And so will Muhammad.
Time to stop Islam from going Global and from taking over America we can start by pulling out of the UN and Building that Border Wall ASAP