522. Warlords of the West: A Clash of Ice and Fire (Part 3)
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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 Quran 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 Muhammad. From such calamities was Christendom delivered, by the genius and fortune of one man. Charles, the illegitimate son of the elder Pepin, was content with the titles of Mayor or Duke of the Franks, but he deserved to become the father of a line of kings. That was Edward Gibbon in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most famous passages of historical prose ever written.
He is describing the legacy of the Battle of Tor, which was fought on the 10th of October 732, or perhaps 733, nobody is entirely sure. between the Franks and what he called an invading force of Saracens. So Tom, great passage, great book, great subject. Just bring some of it alive for us. So who is Charles? Who are the Saracens? Where are we and what's going on?
Okay, so we are still in our series on the Franks, and Charles, who Gibbon in that passage is very careful to specify, is not a king, but a mayor or a duke of the Franks. He is perhaps... the greatest of all the Frankish warlords since the time of Clovis, the king who founds the great kingdom of the Franks as the Roman Empire is falling. But we're now in the early 8th century and Charles will be known from the following century onwards as Charles Martel, the Hammer. So a tremendous name for a guy who has a very mailed fist. The Saracens are an army in the service of the Umayyad Caliphate. So that is the first great Arab empire, the first great empire of Islam. And this is why Gibbon is casting it as a peculiarly decisive clash
He's framing it as a battle between Christianity and Islam. And he's suggesting that had it gone the other way, had the Franks lost to the Saracens, to the Muslims, to the Arabs, then perhaps we might have seen the interpretation of the Quran taught in Oxford. And there's a bit of a joke here because Gibbon had been a student at Oxford and had absolutely hated it. He despised all the dons. who at the time were Anglican priests. And so I think he's slightly tweaking the noses of his old teachers and suggesting that they might have been circumcised followers of Muhammad. But it's obviously, it's not just a joke because Gibbon has a genius for, well, Byron referred to his solemn sneer. When he makes a joke, there's often a kind of very serious purpose.
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