Misplaced Pages

Charles Martel

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by ThePedanticPrick (talk | contribs) at 21:28, 29 March 2006 (→Leadup and importance: spelling and grammar). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 21:28, 29 March 2006 by ThePedanticPrick (talk | contribs) (→Leadup and importance: spelling and grammar)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Charles Martel
File:Carlosmartelempoitiers.JPEGCharles Martel is primarily famous for his victory at the Battle of Tours.
Nickname(s)"the Hammer"
Campaigns of Charles Martel
For the 13th century titular King of Hungary, see Charles Martel d'Anjou.

Charles Martel (or, in English, Charles the Hammer) (August 23, 686 – October 22 741) was Mayor of the Palace of the three kingdoms of the Franks. He is best remembered for winning the Battle of Tours in 732, which has traditionally been characterised as saving Europe from the Emirate of Cordoba's expansion beyond the Iberian Peninsula. Martel's Frankish army defeated an Arab army that had crushed all resistance before it.

Martel was born in Herstal, in what is now Wallonia, Belgium, the illegitimate son of Pippin the Middle (635 or 640 – December 16, 714) and his concubine Alpaida (or Chalpaida).

Consolidation of power

In December 714, Pippin the Middle died. He had, at his wife Plectrude's urging, designated Theudoald, his grandson by Plectrude's son Grimoald, his heir in the entire realm. This, however was immediately opposed by the nobles, for Theudoald was a child of eight years. Plectrude, however, was a vigorous woman and she immediately seized Charles Martel, her husband's eldest surviving son, a bastard, and put him in prison in Cologne, the city which was destined to be her capital. This prevented an uprising on his behalf in Austrasia, but not in Neustria.

Civil war of 715-718

In 715, the Neustrian noblesse proclaimed one Ragenfrid mayor of their palace on behalf of, and apparently with the support of, Dagobert III, the young king, who in fact had the legal authority to select a mayor, though by this time the Merovingian dynasty had lost most such regal powers.

The Austrasians were not to be left supporting a woman and her young boy for long. Before the end of the year, Charles Martel had escaped from prison and been acclaimed mayor by the nobles of that kingdom. The Neustrians had been attacking Austrasia and the nobles were waiting for a strong man to lead them against their invading countrymen. That year, Dagobert died and the Neustrians proclaimed Chilperic II king without the support of the rest of the Frankish people.

In 716, Chilperic and Ragenfrid together led an army into Austrasia. The Neustrians allied with another invading force under Radbod, King of the Frisians and met Charles in battle near Cologne, still held by Plectrude. Chilperic and Ragenfrid were victorious and Charles fled to the mountains of the Eifel. The king and his mayor then turned to besiege their other rival in the city and took it, the treasury, and received the recognition of both Chilperic as king and Ragenfrid as mayor.

At this juncture, events turned in favour of Charles. Charles fell upon the triumphant army, as it returned to its own province, near Malmédy and, in the ensuing Battle of Amblève, routed them and they fled. Hereafter, Charles remained virtually undefeated until his death.

In Spring 717, Charles returned to Neustria with an army and confirmed his supremacy with a victory at Vincy, near Cambrai. He chased the fleeing king and mayor to Paris before turning back to deal with Plectrude and Cologne. He took the city and dispersed her adherents. On this success, he proclaimed one Clotaire IV king of Austrasia in opposition to Chilperic and deposed the archbishop of Rheims, Rigobert, replacing him with one Milo.

Carolingian dynasty
Pippinids
Arnulfings
Carolingians
After the Treaty of Verdun (843)

After subjugating all Austrasia to his hand, he marched against Radbod and pushed him back into his territory, even forcing the concession of West Frisia (later Holland). He also sent the Saxons back over the Weser and thus secured his realms borders — in the name of the new king, of course. More than any other prior mayor of the palace, however, absolute power lay with Charles Martel, though he never cared about titles; his son did, and finally asked the Pope "who should be King, he who has the title, or he who has the power?" The Pope, highly dependent on Frankish armies for his independence from Lombard and Bzyantine power (the Byzantine emperor still considered himself to be the only legitimate "Roman" Emperor, and thus, ruler of all of the provinces of the ancient empire, whether recognised or not), declared for "he who had the power" and immediately crowned Pippin. Decades later, in 800, Pippin's son, Charlemagne, was crowned emperor by the pope, further extending the "he who had the power" principle by delegitimising the nominal authority of the Byzantine emperor in the Italian peninsula (which had, by then, shrunk to little more than Apulia and Calabria at best) and ancient Roman Gaul, including the Iberian outposts Charlmagne had established in the Marca Hispanica across the Pyrenees, what today forms Catalonia. In short, though the Byzantine Emperor claimed authority over all the old Roman Empire, as the legitimate "Roman" Emperor, and this may have been legally true, it was simply not reality. The bulk of the Western Roman Empire had come under Carolingian rule, the Bzyantine Emperor having had almost no authority in the West since the sixth century, though Charlemagne, a consummate politican, preferred to avoid an open breach with Constantinople. What was occurring was the birth of an institution unique in history: the Holy Roman Empire. Though the sardonic Voltaire ridiculed its nomenclature, saying that the Holy Roman Empire was "neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire," it constitued an enormous political power for a time, especially under the Saxon and Salian dynasties and, to a lesser, extent, the Hohenstaufen. It lasted until 1806, by then a nonentity. Though his grandson became it's first emperor, the "empire" such as it was, was largely born during the reign of Charles Martel.

In 718, Chilperic, in response to Charles new ascendancy, allied with Odo the Great (or Eudes, as he is sometimes known), the duke of Aquitaine who had made himself independent during the civil war in 715, but was again defeated, at Soissons, by Charles. The king fled with his ducal ally to the land south of the Loire and Ragenfrid fled to Angers. Soon Clotaire IV died and Odo gave up on Chilperic and, in exchange for recognising his kingship over all the Franks, the king surrendered his kingdom to the mayoralty of Charles over all the kingdoms (718).

Foreign wars from 718-732

The ensuing years were full of strife. Between 718 and 723, Charles secured his power through a series of victories: he won the loyalty of several important bishops and abbots (by donating lands and money for the foundation of abbeys such as Echternach), he subjugated Bavaria and Alemannia, and he defeated the pagan Saxons.

Having unified the Franks under his banner, Charles was determined to punish the Saxons who had invaded Austrasia. Therefore, late in 718, he laid waste their country to the banks of the Weser, the Lippe, and the Ruhr, and the Teutoburg Forest. In 719, Charles seized West Frisia without any great resistance on the part of the Frisians, who had been subjects of the Franks but had seized control upon the death of Pippin. Charles did not trust the pagans, but their ruler, Aldegisel, accepted Christianity in his realm and Willibrord, bishop of Utrecht, the famous Apostle to the Frisians, went to convert them at Charles behest. Charles also did much to support Winfrid, later Saint Boniface, the Apostle of the Germans.

When Chilperic II died the following year (720), Charles appointed as his successor the son of Dagobert III, Theuderic IV, who was still a minor, and who occupied the throne from 720 to 737. Charles was now appointing the kings whom he supposedly served, these rois fainéants were mere puppets in his hands and by the end of his reign, they were so useless, he didn't even bother appointing one. At this time, Charles again marched against the Saxons. Then, the Neustrians rebelled under Ragenfrid, who had been left the county of Anjou. They were easily defeated (724), but Ragenfrid gave up his sons as hostages in turn for keeping his county. This ended the civil wars of Charles' reign.

The next six years were devoted in their entirity to assuring Frankish authority over the dependent Germanic tribes. Between 720 and 723, Charles was fighting in Bavaria, where the Agilolfing dukes had gradually evolved into independent rulers, recently in alliance with Liutprand the Lombard. He forced the Alemanni to accompany him, and Duke Hugbert submitted to Frankish suzerainty. In 725 and 728, he again entered Bavaria and the ties of lordship seemed strong. From his first campaign, he brought back the Agilolfing princess Swanachild, who apparently became his concubine. In 730, he marched against Lantfrid, duke of Alemannia, who had also become independent, and killed him in battle. He forced the Alemanni capitulation to Frankish suzerainty and did not appoint a successor to Lantfrid. Thus, southern Germany once more became part of the Frankish kingdom, as had northern Germany during the first years of the reign.

But by 730, his own realm secure, Charles began to prepare exclusively for the coming storm from the west. In 721, the emir of Córdoba had built up a strong army from Morocco, Yemen, and Syria to conquer Aquitaine, the large duchy in the southwest of Gaul, nominally under Frankish sovereignty, but in practice almost independent in the hands of the Odo the Great since the Merovingian kings had lost power. The invading Muslims besieged the city of Toulouse, then Aquitaine's most important city, and Odo immediately left to find help. He returned three months later just before the city was about to surrender and defeated the Muslim invaders on June 9, 721, at what is now known as the Battle of Toulouse. The defeat was essentially the result of a classic enveloping movement on Odo's part. After Odo originally fled, the Muslims became overconfident and, instead of maintaining strong outer defenses around their siege camp and continuing scouting, did neither. Thus, when Odo returned, he was able to launch a near complete surprise attack on the besieging force, scattering it at the first attack, and slaughtering units which were resting, or who fled without weapons or armour.

Charles had watched the Iberian situation since Toulouse, convinced the Muslims would return, and while he was securing his own realms, he was also preparing for war against the Umayyads. It is vital to note that Charles had used an extremely — for the time — controversial method of maintaining a standing army, one he could train as a core of veterans to add to the usual conscripts the Franks called up in time of war. During the Dark Ages, troops were only available after the crops had been planted, and before harvesting time. Charles believed he needed a standing army, one he could train, to counter the Muslim heavy cavalry, of which, at the time, he had none. To train the kind of infantry which could withstand heavy cavalry, Charles needed them year-round, and he needed to pay them, so their families could buy the food they would have otherwise grown. To obtain this money, he seized church lands and property, and used the funds to pay his soldiers. The same Charles who had secured the support of the ecclesia by donating land, seized some of it back between 724 and 732. The Church was enraged, and, for a time, it looked as though Charles might even be excommunicated for his actions. But then came a significant invasions . . .

Eve of Tours

It has been noted that Charles Martel could have pursued the wars against the Saxons—but he was determined to prepare for what he thought was a greater danger. Instead of concentrating on conquest to his east, he prepared for the storm gathering in the west. Well aware of the danger posed by the Muslims after the Battle of Toulouse, in 721, it has been explained that he used the intervening years to consolidate his power, and gather and train a veteran army that would stand ready to defend Christianity itself (at Tours). Moreover, after his victory at Tours, Martel continued on in campaigns in 736-737 to drive other Muslim armies from bases in Gaul after they again attempted to get a foothold in Europe beyond al-Andalus. Edward Gibbon calles Martel "the paramount prince of his age."

It is also vital to note that the Muslims were not aware, at that time, of the true strength of the Franks, or the fact that they were building a real army, not the typical barbarian hordes which had infested Europe after Rome's fall. They considered the Germanic tribes, of which the Franks were part, simply barbarians, and were not particularly concerned about them. (the Arab Chronicles, the history of that age, show that awareness of the Franks as a growing military power only came after the Battle of Tours when the Caliph expressed shock at his army's disastrous defeat) Thus, when they launched their great invasion of 732, they were not prepared to confront Charles Martel and his Frankish army. This, in retrospect, was a disastrous mistake. Emir Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi was a good general and should have done two things he utterly failed to do. He assumed that the Franks would not come to the aid of their Aquitanian cousins, and thus failed to assess their strength in advance of invasion. He also failed to scout the movements of the Frankish army. Having done either, he would have curtailed his lighthorse ravaging throughout lower Gaul, and marched at once with his full power against the Franks. This would not have allowed Charles Martel to pick the time and place the two powers would collide, which all historians agree was pivotal to his victory.

Battle of Tours

Main article Battle of Tours.

Leadup and importance

The Cordoban emirate had previously invaded Gaul and had been stopped in its northward sweep at the Battle of Toulouse, in 721. The hero of that less celebrated event had been Odo the Great, Duke of Aquitane, who was not the progenitor of a race of kings and patron of chroniclers. It has previously been explained how Odo defeated the invading Muslims, but when they returned, things were far different. In the interim, the arrival of a new emir of Cordoba, Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, who brought with him a huge force of Arabs and Berber horsemen, triggered a far greater invasion. This time the Muslim horsemen were ready for battle, and the results were horrific for the Aquintanians. Odo, hero of Toulouse, was badly defeated in the Muslim invasion of 732 at the Battle of the River Garonne—where the western chroniclers state, "God alone knows the number of the slain"—and fled to Charles, seeking help. Thus, Odo faded into history, and Charles marched into it.

The Battle of Tours earned Charles the cognomen "Martel", for the merciless way he hammered his enemies. Many historians, including the great military historian Sir Edward Creasy, believe that had he failed at Tours, Islam would probably have overrun Gaul, and perhaps the remainder of western Christian Europe. No power existed, had Martel fallen at Tours, to stop the Muslims from conquering and occupying Italy, and Rome, in addition to all of Western Europe. Certainly, Edward Gibbon made clear he believed the Muslims would have conquered from Rome to the Rhine, and even England, with ease, had Martel not prevailed. Other reputable historians that echo Creasy's belief that this battle was central to the halt of Islamic expansion into Europe include William Watson, and Gibbon believed the fate of Christianity hinged on this battle. This opinion was very popular for most of modern historiography, but it fell somewhat out of style in the twentieth century. Some historians, such as Bernard Lewis, claimed that Arabs had little intention of occupying northern France. This opinion has once more fallen out of style, and the Battle of Tours is usually considered by historians today as a very significant event in the history of Europe and Christianity.

In the modern era, Norwich, the most widely-read authority on the Byzantine Empire, says the Franks halting Muslim Expansion at Tours literally preserved Christianity as we know it. A more realistic viewpoint may be found in Barbarians, Marauders, and Infidels by Antonio Santosuosso, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Western Ontario, and considered an expert historian of the era in question. It was published in 2004, and has quite an interesting modern expert opinion on Charles Martel, Tours, and the subsequent campaigns against Rahman's successor in 736-737. Santosuosso makes a compelling case that these defeats of invading Muslim armies were at least as important as Tours in their defense of western Christianity, and the preservation of those Christian monasteries and centers of learning which ultimately led Europe out of the dark ages. He also makes a compelling case that while Tours was unquestionably of macrohistorical importance, the later battles were at least equally so. Both invading forces defeated in those campaigns had come to set up permanent outposts for expansion, and there can be no doubt that these three defeats combined broke the back of Islamic expansion in Europe while the Caliphate was still united. While some modern assessments of the battle's impact have backed away from the extreme of Gibbon's position, Gibbon's conjecture is supported by other historians such as Edward Shepard Creasy and William E. Watson. Most modern historians such as Norwich and Santosuosso generally support the concept of Tours as a macrohistorical event favoring western civilization and Christianity. Military writers such as Robert W. Martin, "The Battle of Tours is still felt today", also argue that Tours was such a turning point in favor of western civilization and Christianity that its after-effect remains to this day. This is the majority view of the battle today.

Battle

The Battle of Tours probably took place somewhere between Tours and Poitiers (hence its other name: Battle of Poitiers). The Frankish army, under Charles Martel, consisted mostly of veteran infantry, somewhere between 15,000 and 75,000 men. Responding to the Muslim invasion, the Franks had avoided the old Roman roads, hoping to take the invaders by surprise. Martel believed it was absolutely essential that he not only take the Muslims by surprise, but that he be allowed to select the ground on which the battle would be fought, ideally a high, wooded, plain where the Islamic horsemen, already tired from carrying armour, would be further exhausted charging uphill. Further, the woods would aid the Franks in their defensive square by partially impeding the ability of the Muslim horesmen from making a clear charge.

From the Muslim accounts of the battle, they were indeed taken by surprise to find a large force opposing their expected sack of Tours, and they waited for six days, scouting the enemy. They did not like charging uphill, against an unknown number of foe, who seemed well disciplined and well disposed for battle. But the weather was also a factor. The Germanic Franks, in their wolf and bear pelts, were more used the cold, better dressed for it, and despite not having tents, which the Muslims did, were prepared to wait as long as needed, the fall only growing colder.

On the seventh day, the Muslim army, consisting of between 60,000 and 400,000 horsemen and led by Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, attacked. During the battle, the Franks defeated the Islamic army and the emir was killed. While Western accounts are sketchy, Arab accounts are fairly detailed in describing how the Franks formed a large square and fought a brilliant defensive battle. Rahman had doubts before the battle that his men were ready for such a struggle, and should have had them abandon the loot which hindered them, but instead decided to trust his horsemen, who had never failed him. Indeed, it was thought impossible for infantry of that age to withstand armoured mounted warriors. Martel managed to inspire his men to stand firm against a force which must have seemed invincible to them, huge mailed horsemen, who in addition probably badly outnumbered the Franks. In one of the rare instances where medieval infantry stood up against cavalry charges, the disciplined Frankish soldiers withstood the assaults, though according to Arab sources, the Arab cavalry several times broke into the interior of the Frankish square. But despite this, Franks did not break, and it is probably best expressed by a translation of an Arab account of the battle from the Medieval Source Book: "And in the shock of the battle the men of the North seemed like North a sea that cannot be moved. Firmly they stood, one close to another, forming as it were a bulwark of ice; and with great blows of their swords they hewed down the Arabs. Drawn up in a band around their chief, the people of the Austrasians carried all before them. Their tireless hands drove their swords down to the breasts of the foe." Both Western and Muslim accounts of the battle agree that sometime during the height of the fighting, scouts sent by Martel to the Muslim camp began freeing prisoners, and fearing loss of their plunder, a large portion of the Muslim army abandoned the battle, and returned to camp to protect their spoils. In attempting to stop what appeared to be a retreat, Abdul Rahman was surrounded and killed by the Franks, and what started as a ruse ended up a real retreat, as the Muslim army fled the field that day. They could have probably resumed the battle the following morning, but Rahman's death led to bickering between the surviving generals, and the Arabs abandoned the battlefield the day after his death, leaving Martel a unique place in history as the savior of Europe and a brilliant general in an age not known for its generalship. Martel's Franks, virtually all infantry without armour, managed to withstand mailed horsemen, without the aid of bows or firearms, a feat of arms almost unheard of in medieval history.

After Tours

In the subsequent decade, Charles led the Frankish army against the eastern duchies, Bavaria and Alemannia, and the southern duchies, Aquitaine and Provence. He dealt with the ongoing conflict with the Frisians and Saxons to his northeast with some success, but full conquest of the Saxons and their incorporation into the Frankish empire would wait for his grandson Charlemagne, primarily because Martel concentrated the bulk of his efforts against Muslim expansion.

So instead of concentrating on conquest to his east, he continued expanding Frankish authority in the west, and denying the Emirite of Córdoba a foothold in Europe. After his victory at Tours, Martel continued on in campaigns in 736 and 737 to drive other Muslim armies from bases in Gaul after they again attempted to get a foothold in Europe beyond al-Andalus. His victories at Berre and Narbonne again expelled invading Islamic armies.

Wars from 732-737

Between his victory of 732 and 735, Charles reorganised the kingdom of Burgundy, replacing the counts and dukes with his loyal supporters, thus strengthening his hold on power. He was forced, by the ventures of Radbod, duke of the Frisians (719-734), son of the Duke Aldegisel who had accepted the missionaries Willibrord and Boniface, to invade independence-minded Frisia again in 734. In that year, he slew the duke, who had expelled the Christian missionaries, in battle and so wholly subjugated the populace (he destroyed every pagan shrine) that the people were peaceful for twenty years after.

The dynamic changed in 735 because of the death of Odo the Great, who had been forced to acknowledge, albeit reservedly, the suzerainty of Charles in 719. Though Charles wished to unite the duchy directly to himself and went there to elicit the proper homage of the Aquitainians, the nobility proclaimed Odo's son, Hunold, whose dukeship Charles recognised when the Arabs invaded Provence the next year.

This naval Arab invasion was headed by Abdul Rahman's son. It landed in Narbonne in 736 and took Arles. Charles, the conflict with Hunold temporarily put on a back burner, descended on the Provençal strongholds of the Muslims. In 736, he retook Montfrin and Avignon, and Arles and Aix-en-Provence with the help of Liutprand, King of the Lombards. Nîmes, Agde, and Béziers, held by Isalm since 725, fell to him and their fortresses destroyed. He defeated a mighty host outside of Narbonne, but failed to take the city. Provence, however, he successfully rid of its foreign occupiers.

Notable about these campaigns was Charles' incorporation, for the first time, of heavy cavalry with stirrups to augment his phalanx. His ability to coordinate infantry and cavalry veterans was unequaled in that era and enabled him to face superior numbers of invaders, and decisively defeat them again and again. Some historians believe Narbonne in particular was as imporant a victory for Christian Europe as Tours. In Barbarians, Marauders, and Infidels, Antonio Santosuosso, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Western Ontario, and considered an expert historian in the era in dispute, puts forth an interesting modern opinion on Martel, Tours, and the subsequent campaigns against Rahman's son in 736-737. Santosuosso presents a compelling case that these later defeats of invading Muslim armies were at least as important as Tours in their defence of Western Christendom and the preservation of Western monasticism, the monasteries of which were the centers of learning which ultimately led Europe out of her Dark Ages. He also makes a compelling argument, after studying the Arab histories of the period, that these were clearly armies of invasion, sent by the Caliph not just to avenge Tours, but to conquer Christian Europe and bring it into the Caliphate. Thus, Charles again championed Christianity and halted Muslim expansion into Europe, as the window was closing on Islamic ability to do so. These defeats were the last great attempt at expansion by the Umayyad Caliphate before the destruction of the dynasty at the Battle of the Zab, and the rending of the Caliphate forever.

Interregnum

In 737, at the tail end of his campaigning in Provence and Septimania, the king, Theuderic IV, died. Martel, titling himself maior domus and princeps et dux Francorum, did not appoint a new king and nobody acclaimed one. The throne lay vacant until Martel's death. As the historian Charles Oman says (The Dark Ages, pg 297), "he cared not for name or style so long as the real power was in his hands." Echoing Oman, John Julius Norwich has said:

He kept no court, cared not for titles, and the thought of a crown amused him. All that interested him was the true essence of power, and what could be done with it. He believed he had a mission to preserve what his ancestors had struggled so to build after Rome's fall, and intended that it not be destroyed during his stewardship. For a man of such enormous power—the real master of today's Europe at his life's end—he cared naught for show, but only for results.

The interregnum, the final four years of Charles' life, was more peaceful than most of it had been and much of his time was now spent on administrative and organisational plans to create a more efficient state. Though, in 738, he compelled the Saxons of Westphalia to do him homage and pay tribute. Charles set about integrating the outlying realms of his empire into the Frankish church. He erected four diocese in Bavaria (Salzburg, Regensburg, Freising, and Passau) and gave them Boniface as archbishop and metropolitan over all Germany east of the Rhine, with his seat at Mainz. In 739, Pope Gregory III begged Charles for his aid against Liutprand. But Charles was loathe to fight his onetime ally and ignored the papal pleas. Nonetheless, the Papal applications for Frankish protection showed how far Martel had come from the days he was tottering on excommunication, and set the stage for his son and grandson to literally rearrange Italy to suit the Papacy, and protect it.

Death

Charles Martel died on October 22, 741, at Quierzy-sur-Oise in what is today the Aisne département in the Picardy region of France. He was buried at Saint Denis Basilica in Paris. His territories were divided among his adult sons a year earlier: to Carloman he gave Austrasia and Alemannia (with Bavaria as a vassal), to Pippin the Younger Neustria and Burgundy (with Aquitaine as a vassal), and to Grifo nothing, though some sources indicate he intended to give him a strip of land between Neustria and Austrasia.

As noted, Gibbon called him "the paramount prince of his age." A strong argument can be made that Gibbon was correct.

Legacy

At the beginning of Charles Martel's career, he had many internal opponents and felt the need to appoint his own kingly claimant, Clotaire IV. By his end, however, the dynamics of rulership in Francia had changed, no hallowed Meroving was needed, neither for defence nor legitimacy: Charles divided his realm between his sons without opposition (though he ignored his young son Bernard. In between, he strengthened the Frankish state by consistently defeating, through superior generalship, the host of hostile foreign nations which beset it on all sides, including the heathen Saxons, which his grandson Charlemagne would fully subdue, and Moors, which he halted on a path of continental domination.

Charles was that rarest of commodities in the Dark Ages: a brilliant stategic general, who also was a tactical commander par excellance, able in the crush and heat of battle to adapt his plans to his foes forces and movement — and amazingly, defeated them repeatedly, especially when, as at Tours, they were far superior in men and weaponry, and at Berre and Narbonne, when they were superior in numbers of brave fighting men. Charles had the last quality which defines genuine greatness in a military commander: he foresaw the dangers of his foes, and prepared for them with care; he used ground, time, place, and fierce loyalty of his troops to offset his foes superior weaponry and tactics; third, he adapted, again and again, to the enemy on the battlefield, cooly shifting to compensate for the unforeseen and unforeseeable.

Beginning of the Reconquista

It is vital to note that Martel's victory at Tours, and his later campaigns, prevented invasion of Europe while the unified Caliphate was able to do so. In doing so, Martel probably preserved Christianity and western civilisation as we know it. Although it took another two generations 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. Martel, who in 732 was on the verge of excommunication, instead was recognised by the Church as its paramount defender. Pope Gregory II wrote him more than once, asking his protection and aid , and he remained, till his death, fixated on stopping the Muslims. Martel's son kept his father's promise and returned and took Narbonne by siege in 759, and his grandson, Charlamagne, actually established the Marca Hispanica across the Pyrenees in part of what today is Catalonia, reconquering Girona in 785 and Barcelona in 801. This formed a permanent buffer zone against Islam, which became the basis, along with the King of Asturias, named Pelayo (718-737, who started his fight against the Moors in the mountains of Covadonga, 722) and his descendants, for the Reconquista until all of the Muslims were expelled from Iberia.

Military legacy

In his vision of what would be necessary for him to withstand a larger force and superior technology (the Muslim horsemen had the stirrup, which made the first knights possible), he, daring not to send his few horsemen against the Islamic cavalry, trained his army to fight in a formation used by the ancient Greeks to withstand superior numbers and weapons by discipline, courage, and a willingness to die for their cause: a phalanx. After using this infantry force by itself at Tours, he studied the foe's forces, and further adapted to them. After 732, he began the integration of heavy cavalry, using the stirrup, and mailed armour, into his army, and trained his infantry to fight in conjunction with cavalry, a tactic which stood him in good stead during his campaigns of 736-7, especially at the Battle of Narbonne. Martel's ability to use what he had, integrate new ideas and technology, earned him his reputation for brilliant generalship in an age generally bereft of same, and was the reason he was undefeated from 716 to his death, against a wide range of opponents, including the Muslim cavalry, at that time the world's best.

The defeats Martel inflicted on the Muslims were absolutely vital in that the split in the Islamic world left the Caliphate unable to mount an all out attack on Europe via its Iberian stronghold after 750. His ability to meet this challenge, until the Muslims self destructed, is of macrohisorical importance, and is why Dante writes of him in Heaven as one of the "Defenders of the Faith." The struggle between the Umayyads and the Abbasids, which came to a head during this period, left the Arabs unable to mount another massive invasion before they lost the base they needed from which to do it. The door to Europe, the Iberian emirate, was in the hands of the Umayyads, while most of the remainder of the Muslim world came under the control of the Abbasids, making an invasion of Europe a logistical impossibility while the two Muslim empires battled. There was no unified Caliphate to mount an invasion, and no foothold to launch such an invasion from. Instead, al-Andalus (Umayyad Emirate was busy fighting off challenges from the Abbasids in Bagdad to think of invading Europe) and the Abbasid caliphate needed the foothold in Iberia which they lacked. This put off invasion of Europe until the Turkish conquest of the Balkans half a millennium later.

It is also interesting that the Northmen did not begin their horrific raids until after the death of Martel's grandson, Charlemagne. They had the naval capacity to begin those raids at least three generations earlier, but chose not to challenge Martel, his son Pippin, or his grandson, Charlemagne. This was probably fortunate for Martel, who despite his enormous gifts, would probably not have been able to beat off the Vikings in addition to the Muslims.

Family and children

Charles Martel married two times:

  1. Chrotrud or Rotrude (690-724), with children:
    1. Hiltrude (d. 754), married Odilo I of Bavaria, Duke of Bavaria.
    2. Carloman
    3. Landres of Hesbaye, married Sigrand, Count of Hesbania.
    4. Auda or Alane, married Thierry IV, Count of Autun and Toulouse.
    5. Pippin the Younger
  2. Swanachild, with child:
    1. Grifo
    2. Bernard (b. ca. 700)
Charles Martel Arnulfing DynastyBorn: 676 Died: 741
Preceded byPepin II the Middle Mayor of the Palace of Austrasia
714–741 		Succeeded byCarloman
Preceded byRagenfrid Mayor of the Palace of Neustria
717–741 		Succeeded byPepin III the Younger

External links

References

Categories: