What Was the Battle of Tours?
The Battle of Tours (732) was fought in central France between Charles Martel's Franks and an Umayyad army, halting Muslim expansion into western Europe.
The Battle of Tours, fought in October 732 in central France between a Frankish army under the mayor of the palace Charles Martel and an Umayyad raiding force from al-Andalus, halted the further Muslim expansion into western Europe. The battle, which is also known as the Battle of Poitiers, marked the practical limit of Muslim conquest in Francia. Within a few years of Tours, the Umayyad governors of al-Andalus would be forced back across the Pyrenees, and the Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula would begin the long struggle known as the Reconquista, which would not be completed until 1492.
The battle has been a touchstone of medieval and early modern historiography. The eighteenth-century historian Edward Gibbon famously described it as a battle that “retarded for a thousand years the fall of Christendom” and credited the Frankish victory with preserving the Latin Christian West from the fate of North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula. Modern historians have tended to be more cautious: the Umayyad armies of al-Andalus were probably not, in 732, in a position to conquer Francia, and the long-term significance of the battle has been debated. There is no doubt, however, that the battle marked a turning point in the political history of the early medieval West.
Background: The Arab Conquest of Gaul
The battle of 732 was the culmination of the Umayyad expansion into Gaul, which had begun with the Arab conquest of the Spain in 711. Within a few years of the Arab and Berber invasion, the Visigothic kingdom had collapsed, and most of the Iberian Peninsula was in Muslim hands. In 719, the Arab armies crossed the Pyrenees and began the conquest of Septimania, the region of southern France between the Pyrenees and the Rhone. Narbonne fell in 720, and the Arab governors of al-Andalus began to project power into the southern Frankish kingdom of Aquitaine.
The duke of Aquitaine, Odo the Great, was unable to stem the Arab advance. In 721, an Arab force attempting to take Toulouse was defeated by Odo, but the following year, an Arab and Berber army under al-Samh ibn Malik al-Khawlani, the governor of al-Andalus, captured Bordeaux, burned the cathedral, and advanced northward as far as the Loire. In 725, an Arab force was repulsed in its attempt to take Autun, and in 730, another Arab raid reached the Rhone and threatened Burgundy.
The decisive Arab incursion into the heart of Gaul was the expedition of 732. The Muslim force, commanded by Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi, the governor of al-Andalus, advanced through Aquitaine, plundering the countryside and defeating the forces of Duke Odo at the Battle of the Garonne. The Frankish sources tell of the burning of churches and monasteries, the destruction of palaces, and the capture of prisoners. Odo fled northward and appealed to Charles Martel, the mayor of the palace of the Merovingian king, for assistance.
The Battle
The battle was fought in October 732, in a location usually identified as somewhere between Tours and Poitiers in central France. The Frankish army, commanded by Charles Martel, took up a strong defensive position, probably on high ground, and the Umayyad army, after a few days of skirmishing, attacked. The sources describe a long, hard-fought engagement, with the Franks holding their formation and the Arab cavalry unable to break it. In the course of the battle, Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi was killed, and the Muslim army, with night falling, withdrew. The chronicler Fredegar, writing in the mid-eighth century, reports that the Muslims returned to their camps, “consulted upon the matter, and unanimously decided to return to Septimania,” a region of southern France that remained in Muslim hands until the Frankish conquest of 759.
The Frankish victory was decisive in its political consequences, even if its military significance has been debated. The Arab armies did not return to central Gaul in any force, and the advance into Francia was effectively halted. Charles Martel was hailed as the savior of Christendom, a reputation that he and his Carolingian descendants would cultivate for centuries.
Charles Martel and the Carolingian Legacy
Charles Martel, “the Hammer,” was the de facto ruler of the Frankish kingdoms. The Merovingian kings of the period were largely ceremonial figureheads, and the real power lay with the mayors of the palace, the chief officers of the royal household. Charles was the illegitimate son of Pippin of Herstal and the founder of what would become the Carolingian dynasty. His victory at Tours established his military reputation and gave him the prestige to consolidate his hold on the Frankish kingdoms.
The Carolingian dynasty, of which Charles was the founding figure, would dominate the Frankish kingdoms for the next century and would culminate in the empire of his grandson the Charlemagne, crowned emperor by the pope in 800. The dynasty’s claim to legitimacy rested, in part, on Charles’s victory at Tours, and the memory of the battle would be invoked by later Carolingian rulers as the founding moment of their political identity. The Carolingian Empire of the late eighth and ninth centuries was, in a sense, a continuation of the political work that Charles Martel began with his victory at Tours.
The Significance of Tours
The significance of the Battle of Tours has been a subject of historical debate. The older view, exemplified by Gibbon and the nineteenth-century historians, was that the battle had been a decisive turning point: had the Arabs won at Tours, all of western Europe would have been Muslim, and Latin Christendom would have been confined to a few mountainous refuges. The modern view has tended to be more skeptical. The Umayyad armies of al-Andalus, in 732, were probably not in a position to conquer the Frankish heartland. The Muslim force that fought at Tours was a raiding army, not an army of conquest, and the death of the commander and the depletion of the raiders forced a withdrawal.
Whatever the case, the battle was a turning point in the political history of the early medieval West. The Arab advance into Gaul was halted, and the Frankish kingdoms were preserved as the principal power of Latin Christendom. The long history of Muslim-Christian coexistence in al-Andalus, in Septimania, and in Sicily began. The Iberian Peninsula was divided into the Muslim south and the Christian north, and the centuries-long Reconquista of the Iberian Peninsula was set in motion. The battle, in short, was one of those moments at which the political map of Europe was, for a time, decided.