14 DAY TRIAL // October 10, 732 marks the conclusion of the Battle of Tours, also known as the Battle of Poitiers - one of the most decisive battles in all history - which took place near the city of Tours, close to the border between the Frankish realm and the independent region of Aquitaine (now in South West France). The Frankish and Burgundian forces, united under Frank ruler Charles Martel (The Hammer) fought against an army of the Umayyad Caliphate led by Abderrahman, Governor of the recently conquered Spain.
Many modern historians see this Frankish victory as the one responsible for saving Christianity and halting the conquest of Europe by Islam. The battle helped Frankish domination of Europe for the next century.
Twenty years after the beginning of the Islamic conquest of Europe, with the invasion of the Visigoth Christian Spain in 711, the Arabs entered into the Frankish territories of Gaul (modern France).
The Umayyad Caliphate - at that time - was perhaps the world's foremost military power. Muslim armies, through the late 600s, expanded the borders of the empire from the Iberian Peninsula, in the west, to what is today Pakistan, in the east. It had destroyed what were the two former foremost military powers, the Persian Empire, completely absorbed into it, and the Byzantine Empire, most of which it had absorbed.
The Frankish realm under Charles Martel was the foremost military power of Western Europe. It consisted of what is today most of Germany, Benelux, and part of France. The Frankish realm had begun to progress towards becoming the first real imperial power in Europe since the fall of Rome, as it struggled against the hordes of barbarians on its borders, and internal opponents such as the Dukes of Aquitaine.
The Arabs overran South East Gaul, following their conquest of Spain. The Muslim campaign into Aquitaine suffered a temporary setback at the Battle of Toulouse (721), when Duke Eudes of Aquitaine broke the siege of the city, taking Arabs' forces by surprise. This defeat did not stop the incursions of the Arabs.
In 732, a huge force of Arab heavy cavalry and Berber light cavalry attempted the Arab conquest of Europe's north of the Pyrenees. After smashing Eudes at Bordeaux and River Garonne and devastating the south, the Muslim Cavalry advanced north, deep into Aquitaine and Burgundy.
The reason why Eudes was defeated so easily at Bordeaux and at the River Garronne, after having won 11 years earlier at the Toulouse, has to do with the Muslim cavalry. At Toulouse, Eudes managed a basic surprise attack against an overconfident and unprepared enemy, whose entire forces were aimed to the siege, while he attacked from the outside. The Arab cavalry never got a chance to mobilize and meet him in open battle, which resulted in a chaotic slaughter of the Muslim cavalry.
At Bordeaux and River Garonne, the Arab cavalry were not taken by surprise, and were given a chance to mass for battle; this led to the devastation of Eudes's army, almost all of whom were killed with minimal losses for the Muslims. Eudes's forces, like other European troops of that era, lacked stirrups, and therefore had no armored cavalry. Virtually all of their troops were infantry. The Muslim heavy cavalry broke the Christian infantry in their first charge, and then slaughtered them at will, as they broke and ran.
Eudes appealed to the Franks for help. It appears as if the Muslims were not aware of the true strength of the Franks. The Muslim forces were not particularly concerned about any Germanic tribe and they didn't count with the force of Martel's army.
Martel marched south, avoiding the old Roman roads to take the Muslims by surprise. Because he intended to use a phalanx, it was essential for him to choose the battlefield. His plan - to find a high wooded plain, form his men and force the Muslims to come to him - depended on the element of surprise.
The invading forces were caught by surprise to find a large, organized force and prepared for battle, with high ground, directly opposing their attack. The Franks drew up in a large square, with the trees and upward slope to break any cavalry charge.
For seven days, the two armies watched each other with minor skirmishes. Modern military historians believe both armies were of roughly the same size, about 30,000 men. Martel gambled everything that Abderrahman would in the end feel compelled to battle.
The Franks, in their animal pelts were well dressed for the cold, and had the terrain advantage. The Arabs were not as prepared for the intense cold of an oncoming northern European winter, despite having tents, which the Franks did not. Essentially, the Arabs wanted the Franks to come out in the open, while the Franks - formed in a tightly packed defensive formation - wanted them to come uphill, diminishing the advantage of their cavalry. In this waiting game Martel won.
Abderrahman trusted the tactical superiority of his heavy cavalry, armed with long lances and scimitars, and had them charge repeatedly. The Franks, without stirrups in wide use, had to depend on unarmored foot soldiers.
In one of the instances where medieval infantry stood up against cavalry charges, the disciplined Frankish soldiers withstood the assaults. It appears that the years of training paid off. His soldiery accomplished what was not thought possible at that time: unarmored infantry withstood the fierce Muslim cavalry. At close contact combat, the Franks slaughtered the Arab knights with their long swords and axes.
Those Muslims who had broken into the square had tried to kill Martel, but his guard men surrounded him and would not be broken. Charles had sent scouts to cause chaos in the Muslim base camp. This succeeded, as many of the Muslim cavalry returned to their camp, while the battle was still in flux. To the rest of the Muslim army, this appeared to be a full-scale retreat, and soon it was. While trying to stop the retreat, Abdelrrahman was surrounded and killed, and the Muslims then withdrew to their camp altogether.
The next day, when the Muslims did not renew the battle, the Franks feared an ambush. At first, Charles believed that the Muslims were trying to lure into the open. In fact, he had disciplined his troops for years, so that - under no circumstances - to break formation and come out in the open, as it happened later in the Battle of Hastings (The conquest of England by the Normans) where infantry was lured into the open by armored cavalry. In fact, in their hasted retreat, the Arabs left their tents intact.
In a place and time of his choosing, Martel met a far superior force, and defeated it. Had he failed, there was no remaining force to protect a Europe divided in weak kingdoms. The entire Western world would have been Muslim, putting an end to Christian Europe.
The specter of Islamic conquest was closing, as the Caliphate would collapse into civil war and dismemberment after 750. The threat posed by the Arab heavy cavalry also receded, as the Christians copied the Arab model in developing similar forces of their own, giving rise to the familiar figure of the western European medieval armored knight.
John H. Haaren says in 'Famous Men of the Middle Ages' that "The battle of Tours is regarded as one of the decisive battles of the world. It decided that Christians, and not Muslims, should be the ruling power in Europe."
As Edward Gibbon, a 18th century English historian, said "A victorious line of march had been prolonged above a thousand miles from the rock of Gibraltar to the banks of the Loire; the repetition of an equal space would have carried the Saracens to the confines of Poland and the Highlands of Scotland; the Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames. Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet".
Stirrup was invented by the people of Eurasian steppes. Probably the Huns were the first to bring it to Europe, but the historians don't agree on the subject. Others credit the Avars (a Turkic people related to the Huns) to have introduced it in Europe in the 6th century. There are also evidences that the Scythians used it, but the Romans and the Greeks largely ignored it.
Stirrup was the advantage of the Muslim troops that, in the past, secured their victories. Stirrup also was the power point of the Huns' success earlier and of the Mongols' success later. It provided the means of using heavy cavalry with a huge shock impact in the medieval battles or greatly increased the impact force and effectiveness of mounted bowmen. Martel's genius consisted in resisting this advantage.
