Battle of Tours (732): Charles Martel Halts the Umayyad Advance

The Battle of Tours, also called the Battle of Poitiers, was fought in October 732 between the Franks under Charles Martel and an Umayyad army led by Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi, the governor of al-Andalus. The Franks held their ground, Abd al-Rahman was killed, and his army withdrew south. Long celebrated as the battle that “saved Europe”, it is now seen by historians as an important but less decisive moment in a longer struggle for southern Gaul.

Background

The Umayyads beyond the Pyrenees

In 711 Arab and Berber forces crossed from North Africa into Spain, and within a few years the Umayyad conquest of Hispania brought most of the Iberian Peninsula under the rule of the Umayyad Caliphate in Damascus. Only small Christian territories survived in the north, such as the lordship of Pelagius after the Battle of Covadonga.

The governors of al-Andalus soon pushed north of the Pyrenees into Septimania, the former Visigothic province on the Mediterranean coast of Gaul. Narbonne fell around 719-720 and became their main base. In 721 the governor al-Samh besieged Toulouse but was defeated and killed by Odo (also called Eudo), the duke of Aquitaine. Raids continued during the 720s, reaching as far as Burgundy and Autun in 725.

The Franks and Aquitaine

The Frankish kingdom was nominally ruled by the Merovingian kings, descendants of Clovis, but real power lay with the mayors of the palace. Charles Martel, an illegitimate son of the mayor Pippin of Herstal, had fought his way to control of both Austrasia and Neustria, the eastern and western Frankish heartlands, by around 718-719.

Aquitaine, in the south-west, was effectively independent under Duke Odo, who resented Charles’s ambitions. To secure his southern border, Odo made an alliance with a Berber commander in the Pyrenees, Uthman ibn Naissa, known in Latin sources as Munuza, who had rebelled against the governor of al-Andalus. According to the Chronicle of 754, Odo gave Munuza his daughter in marriage. In 731 Charles raided Aquitaine twice, and in the same period Munuza’s revolt was crushed and he was killed.

Causes of the campaign

In 730 or 731 Abd al-Rahman ibn Abd Allah al-Ghafiqi was appointed governor of al-Andalus by the Umayyad authorities in North Africa. A veteran of the Toulouse campaign, he had led the survivors home in 721. Having eliminated Munuza, he turned against Odo, his ally.

The aims of the expedition are debated. Some historians see it as a punitive raid against Aquitaine that grew more ambitious when it met little resistance; others see it as a deliberate attempt to expand Muslim rule in Gaul. Plunder was certainly central: the army’s target in its final phase was the wealthy abbey of St Martin at Tours, the most important shrine in Gaul.

The campaign of 732

In 732 Abd al-Rahman crossed the western Pyrenees, probably by way of Pamplona and the pass of Roncesvalles. He defeated Odo near the river Garonne or Dordogne, close to Bordeaux, with heavy losses to the Aquitanians, and sacked Bordeaux. His army then advanced north, burning the church of Saint-Hilaire outside Poitiers, and moved along the old Roman road towards Tours.

Odo, defeated, fled north and appealed to Charles Martel for help. This meant accepting Frankish overlordship. Charles gathered an army from across his territories and marched south, crossing the Loire and meeting the Umayyad army somewhere between Tours and Poitiers. A site near Moussais-la-Bataille, in the commune of Vouneuil-sur-Vienne north of Poitiers, is often suggested, but there is no archaeological proof.

The battle

According to the Chronicle of 754, a Latin chronicle written in Spain about twenty years later, the two armies faced each other for about seven days, skirmishing while they waited for battle. The Arab tradition preserves the same idea of a prolonged stand-off. The decisive engagement took place in October, traditionally on 10 October.

The Frankish army fought mainly on foot. The Chronicle of 754 describes the northern warriors standing close together like a wall, or a mass of ice, and cutting down the Arabs with their swords. The Umayyad army, with a strong element of cavalry, repeatedly attacked but failed to break the Frankish line.

During the fighting Abd al-Rahman was killed. Some later accounts say the Muslim army was disturbed by a Frankish attack on its camp, where the plunder was kept, but this detail may be a later embellishment. At nightfall the armies separated. The next morning the Franks prepared for renewed battle, only to find the enemy’s tents empty: the Umayyad army had withdrawn south during the night, leaving much of its booty.

Sources for the battle

The battle is poorly documented. The two main Christian sources are the Chronicle of 754, written by a Christian living under Muslim rule in Spain, and the Continuations of the Chronicle of Fredegar, written under the patronage of Charles’s family and eager to glorify him. Arab accounts survive only in much later histories compiled in the 9th to 17th centuries. Even the date is uncertain: most historians accept October 732, but a few have argued for 733 on the basis of other chronicles.

Numbers and losses

No contemporary figures are reliable. The Lombard historian Paul the Deacon, writing in the late 8th century, credited Charles and Odo with killing some 375,000 Saracens for the loss of only 1,500 Franks. The same figures appear earlier in the papal Liber Pontificalis for Odo’s victory at Toulouse in 721, so they were probably borrowed, and they are in any case impossible. Arab sources mention heavy losses, and the battle is remembered as Balat al-Shuhada, “the Court (or Pavement) of the Martyrs”.

Key people

• Charles Martel (c. 688-741): mayor of the palace and effective ruler of the Franks. Tours was the most famous of many campaigns that rebuilt Frankish power.
• Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi (died 732): Umayyad governor of al-Andalus, an experienced commander killed in the battle.
• Odo the Great of Aquitaine (died 735): duke of Aquitaine, earlier victor at Toulouse, who was forced to seek Charles’s help after his defeat near Bordeaux.

Consequences

The immediate result was the end of the 732 expedition. Umayyad forces did not again penetrate so deep into western Gaul. Charles gained great prestige, and Odo’s appeal brought Aquitaine closer to Frankish control. After Odo died in 735, Charles forced his son Hunald to swear loyalty.

The struggle in the south was far from over. Arab forces took Avignon in 735 and raided the Rhône valley. Charles campaigned in Provence and Septimania in 736-737, retook Avignon, defeated an Arab relief army at the River Berre near Narbonne in 737, but failed to capture Narbonne itself. The city remained in Muslim hands until Charles’s son Pepin took it in 759.

The battle also strengthened Charles’s dynasty. His military reputation and the loyalty of his warriors, rewarded in part with church lands, helped his son Pepin replace the Merovingians when Pepin the Short was crowned king in 751. Charles’s grandson Charlemagne later became emperor.

The debate over significance

From the 18th century onwards, writers presented Tours as one of the decisive battles of world history. Edward Gibbon, in The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, suggested that without Charles’s victory the Qur’an might have been taught at Oxford, though the remark was partly ironic. In the 19th century the battle became a symbol for French and wider European identity.

Many modern historians are more cautious. They point out that the Umayyad army was probably a raiding force and that Muslim rule in Gaul never extended far beyond Septimania. The great Berber revolt that began in North Africa in 740, civil wars in al-Andalus, and the fall of the Umayyad dynasty in Damascus in 750 did more to halt expansion than a single battle. Others still regard Tours as a turning point, because it confirmed Frankish military strength and the rise of the Carolingians who would dominate western Europe.

Myths and facts

• Myth: Tours stopped a Muslim conquest of all Europe. The scale of Umayyad ambitions in 732 is unknown, and expansion into Gaul faced many other obstacles.
• Myth: the battle created the medieval knight. A 19th-century theory linked Tours to the rise of heavy cavalry and feudalism, but historians have largely rejected it; the Franks fought mainly on foot.
• Fact: the battlefield is unknown. Several sites between Poitiers and Tours have been proposed, but none has been confirmed.

Timeline

• 711: Umayyad forces invade the Iberian Peninsula.
• c. 719-720: Narbonne is captured and becomes the Umayyad base in Gaul.
• 721: Odo of Aquitaine defeats and kills the governor al-Samh at Toulouse.
• 730-731: Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi becomes governor of al-Andalus.
• 731: Munuza’s revolt is crushed; Charles Martel raids Aquitaine.
• 732, summer: Abd al-Rahman invades Aquitaine, defeats Odo and sacks Bordeaux.
• 732, October: Battle between Poitiers and Tours; Abd al-Rahman is killed.
• 737: Charles defeats an Arab army at the River Berre but fails to take Narbonne.
• 759: Pepin the Short captures Narbonne, ending Muslim rule in Septimania.

Why it matters

The Battle of Tours checked the furthest Umayyad advance into western Europe and made Charles Martel the dominant figure of the Frankish world. Whether or not it “saved Europe”, it helped launch the Carolingian dynasty that shaped medieval Europe, and it remains one of the most debated battles of the Middle Ages.