Charles martel biography wikipedia

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The Battle of Tours-Poitiers Revisited. His grandson, Charlemagne, actually established the Marca Hispanica across the Pyrenees in part of what today is Catalonia, reconquering Girona in 785 and Barcelona in 801. Creasy argues that the Martel victory "preserved the relics of ancient and the germs of modern civilizations." Gibbon called those eight days in 732, the week leading up to Tours, and the battle itself, "the events that rescued our ancestors of Britain, and our neighbours of Gaul [France], from the civil and religious yoke of the Koran." Paul Akers, in his editorial on Charles Martel, says for those who value life and freedom "you might spare a minute sometime today, and every October, to say a silent 'thank you' to a gang of half-savage Germans and especially to their leader, Charles 'The Hammer' Martel."^[25]

Martel analysed what would be necessary for him to withstand a larger force and superior technology (the Muslim horsemen had adopted the armour and accoutrements of heavy cavalry from the Sassanid warrior class, which made the armored mounted knight possible).

Hanson emphasizes that Martel's greatest accomplishment as a general may have been his ability to keep his troops under control. He was buried at Saint Denis Basilica in Paris. William E. Watson, one of the most respected historians of this era, strongly supports Tours as a macrohistorical event, but distances himself from the rhetoric of Gibbon and Drubeck, writing, for example, of the battle's importance in Frankish and world history in 1993:

There is clearly some justification for ranking Tours-Poitiers among the most significant events in Frankish history when one considers the result of the battle in light of the remarkable record of the successful establishment by Muslims of Islamic political and cultural dominance along the entire eastern and southern rim of the former Christian, Roman world.

His life and legacy offer a fascinating window into a pivotal era that saw the clash of civilizations, the remaking of the Western world, and the emergence of a new kind of warrior elite that would dominate Europe for centuries to come.

The Twilight of the Merovingians

To understand the significance of Charles Martel‘s achievements, we must first look at the world into which he was born.

Schlegel speaks of this "mighty victory" in terms of fervent gratitude, and tells how " the arm of Charles Martel saved and delivered the Christian nations of the West from the deadly grasp of all-destroying Islam", and Ranke points out,

as one of the most important epochs in the history of the world, the commencement of the eighth century, when on the one side Mohammedanism threatened to overspread Italy and Gaul, and on the other the ancient idolatry of Saxony and Friesland once more forced its way across the Rhine.

For good or ill, it was a lesson that would echo down the centuries, shaping the course of European history in ways that we are still untangling today.

Figure 1: Expansion of Frankish territory under Charles Martel (714-741 AD)

[^1]: Fouracre, Paul. In essence, he changed Europe from a horde of barbarians fighting with one another, to an organized state.

Beginning of the Reconquista

Although it took another two decades for the Franks to drive all the Arab garrisons out of Septimania and across the Pyrenees, Charles Martel's halt of the invasion of French soil turned the tide of Islamic advances, and the unification of the Frankish kingdoms under Martel, his son Pippin the Younger, and his grandson Charlemagne created a western power which prevented the Emirate of Córdoba from expanding over the Pyrenees.

Providence: Studies in Western Civilization v.2 n.1.

^ Barbero, 2004, p. Unusually for the times, he was merciful to the pair, who were allowed to live out the rest of their lives in comfort.

His greatest struggle

With his kingdom secured, Charles turned his genius to foreign affairs. It was Martel's creation of a system whereby he could call on troops year round that gave the Carolingians the first standing and permanent army since Rome's fall in the west.

Charles Martel's most important military achievement was the victory at Tours.

U of Minnesota Press, 1972, p. 44.