"Charles Martel Wields His Battle Axe At The Battle Of Tours"
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| "I am an American fighting man. I serve in the forces guarding our country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense." |
Posted on 11/13/2015 7:38:21 PM PST by markomalley
“A victorious line of march had been prolonged above a thousand miles from the rock of Gibraltar in Spain to the banks of the Loire in France; 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 River Thames. Perhaps the interpretation of the Qur’an 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 Muhammed.”
Edward Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
(In light of the attacks in Paris this evening I am re-running this post. Charles Martel has never been canonized, but surely saving Europe from Islam must have counted much in his favor when he stood before God for his judgment. In any case, we will need much of his spirit to survive the coming years and much less of the pacifist bilge that has turned the Church Militant to often into the Church Delusional.)
The slogan Je Suis Charles Martel is beginning to make its way around Saint Blogs. Here is some information on the grandfather of Charlemagne who stopped the advance of Islam into what became France in 732 at the battle of Tours.
Charles Martel, “The Hammer”, led a life of conflict. An illegitimate son of Pepin of Herstal, Mayor of the Palace and the true power behind the Merovingian puppet kings, after the death of his father he had to fight his father’s legitimate offspring who sought to deprive him of any share in his father’s inheritance. Fortunately for Charles a streak of military genius ran through him, and he won battles against the odds, using force multiplying stratagems, including feigned retreats, and attacking in the middle of the day when armies of his time normally took a siesta. By 717 he was in control of Neustria, showing mercy unusual for his day in letting his defeated adversaries live and treating them with kindness.
The 28 year old ruler now entered a round of endless wars with neighboring kingdoms, gradually extending his power, and building up a professional force of infantry to supplement the peasant levies that made up the vast bulk of most Frankish armies.
A friend and patron of Saint Boniface, he also began the alliance between the rulers of the Franks and the Popes. He contributed much land to the Church, but roused ecclesiastical ire when he took some back to support his troops. He might have been excommunicated if both Church and State had not suddenly confronted a common foe.
In 711 the forces of Islam began the conquest of Spain, helped along by Christian traitors. Within a decade almost all of Spain had fallen, with small proto-kingdoms of Spaniards clinging to a precarious independence in the mountains of northern Spain. Mohammed had died less than a century before in 632, and in that intervening period Islam had conquered the Middle East, northern Africa and seemed poised to do the same in Europe against the petty Christian kingdoms that specialized in ceaseless internecine war, seemingly weakening themselves before their Islamic foes lifted a finger.
With Spain subdued, Muslim raids into what is now France became common. In 732 Abd-al-Raḥmân, governor of Muslim Spain, led a predominantly cavalry army of 25,000 men north on a great raid beyond the Pyrenees, perhaps the prelude to a war of conquest.
Charles Martel rallied together an infantry army of 15,000, and in early October 732 his army and that of Abd-al-Raḥmân confronted each other for seven days outside of Tours, Martel making certain to occupy the high ground. Martel had his army drawn up in a huge phalanx. Tiring of the stalemate, on October 10, 732 Abd-al-Raḥmân launched cavalry charge after cavalry charge against the Franks. A Muslim chronicler tells us what happened next:
And in the shock of the battle the men of the North seemed like 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].
Martel launched an attack on the enemy camp, causing Abd-al-Raḥmân to order a retreat to his camp. The retreat became a rout after Abd-al-Raḥmân was killed in the fighting.
A Christian chronicle sums up the outcome of Tours:
Prince Charles boldly drew up his battle lines against them [the Arabs] and the warrior rushed in against them. With Christ’s help he overturned their tents, and hastened to battle to grind them small in slaughter. The king Abdirama having been killed, he destroyed [them], driving forth the army, he fought and won. Thus did the victor triumph over his enemies.
After Tours, Charles spent the rest of his life fighting off Islamic invasions from Spain. Much hard fighting remained ahead, but Tours was the turning point. The Franks would remain Christians and they ensured that Europe would remain Christian, thanks to God and the hard fighting Charles Martel and his Frankish infantry.
Oui! Vive le ham MARE!
What ever happened to l’esprit ancien?
I am proud to say that I am a lineal descendant of Charles Martel and Charlemagne.
Bookmarked.
The Franks definitely were *not* cheese-eating surrender monkeys. Maybe the spirit of Charles Martel will awaken in the French, they toss out the Communist currently in power and replace him with Marine Le Pen, and drive out the totality of the filthy Mohammedans from their country.
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| "I am an American fighting man. I serve in the forces guarding our country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defense." |
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God Bless you good, Mac. *HUGS* Good night and rest well.
Thanks for helping honor our troops, past and present.
Thank you for your service to our country.
bttt
Most Americans can trace at least one line in their family tree to Martel. That includes me.
Do you think Martel worried about racism? /s
“I am proud to say that I am a lineal descendant of Charles Martel and Charlemagne.”
So am I cousin.
John Quincy Adams wrote (reacting to the Russo-Turkish wars):
“In the seventh century of the Christian era, a wandering Arab of the lineage of Hagar, the Egyptian, combining the powers of transcendent genius, with the preternatural energy of a fanatic, and the fraudulent spirit of an impostor, proclaimed himself as a messenger from Heaven, and spread desolation and delusion over an extensive portion of the earth. Adopting from the sublime conception of the Mosaic law, the doctrine of one omnipotent God; he connected indissolubly with it, the audacious falsehood, that he was himself his prophet and apostle. Adopting from the new Revelation of Jesus, the faith and hope of immortal life, and of future retribution, he humbled it to the dust, by adapting all the rewards and sanctions of his religion to the gratification of the sexual passion. He poisoned the sources of human felicity at the fountain, by degrading the condition of the female sex, and the allowance of polygamy; and he declared undistinguishing and exterminating war, as a part of his religion, against all the rest of mankind. THE ESSENCE OF HIS DOCTRINE WAS VIOLENCE AND LUST: TO EXALT THE BRUTAL OVER THE SPIRITUAL PART OF HUMAN NATURE.”
“Between these two religions, thus contrasted in their characters, a war of twelve hundred years has already raged. That war is yet flagrant; nor can it cease but by the extinction of that imposture, which has been permitted by Providence to prolong the degeneracy of man. While the merciless and dissolute dogmas of the false prophet shall furnish motives to human action, there can never be peace upon earth, and good will towards men. The hand of Ishmael will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him. It is, indeed, amongst the mysterious dealings of God, that this delusion should have been suffered for so many ages, and during so many generations of human kind, to prevail over the doctrines of the meek and peaceful and benevolent Jesus” (Blunt, 1830, 29:269, capitals in orig.).
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