dopted a scheme which
threw Christianity itself, as well as Europe, into a crisis of peril
which has never since occurred. By marrying a daughter with a Mahometan
emir, he rashly began an intercourse with the Ishmaelites, one of whose
favourite projects was to plant a formidable colony of their faith in
France. An army of four hundred thousand combatants, as the chroniclers
of the time affirm, were seen descending into Guienne, possessing
themselves in one day of his domains; and Eude soon discovered what sort
of workmen he had called, to do that of which he himself was so
incapable. Charles, with equal courage and prudence, beheld this heavy
tempest bursting over his whole country; and to remove the first cause
of this national evil, he reconciled the discontented Eude, and detached
the duke from his fatal alliance. But the Saracens were fast advancing
through Touraine, and had reached Tours by the river Loire: Abderam,
the chief of the Saracens, anticipated a triumph in the multitude of his
infantry, his cavalry, and his camels, exhibiting a military warfare
unknown in France; he spread out his mighty army to surround the French,
and to take them, as it were in a net. The appearance terrified, and the
magnificence astonished. Charles, collecting his far inferior forces,
assured them that they had no other France than the spot they covered.
He had ordered that the city of Tours should be closed on every
Frenchman, unless he entered it victorious; and he took care that every
fugitive should be treated as an enemy by bodies of _gens d'armes_, whom
he placed to watch at the wings of his army. The combat was furious. The
astonished Mahometan beheld his battalions defeated as he urged them on
singly to the French, who on that day had resolved to offer their lives
as an immolation to their mother-country. Eude on that day, ardent to
clear himself from the odium which he had incurred, with desperate
valour, taking a wide compass, attacked his new allies in the rear. The
camp of the Mahometan was forced: the shrieks of his women and children
reached him from amidst the massacre; terrified he saw his multitude
shaken. Charles, who beheld the light breaking through this dark cloud
of men, exclaimed to his countrymen, "My friends, God has raised his
banner, and the unbelievers perish!" The mass of the Saracens, though
broken, could not fly; their own multitude pressed themselves together,
and the Christian sword mowed down the Maho