Charles Martel and Pepin: The Hammer Who Stopped Islam in Europe and the Son Who Became France's First Real King

In October 732 AD, somewhere between Tours and Poitiers in what is now central France, a Frankish force commanded by a man who was not technically the king stopped an Islamic army that had spent two years burning its way through Spain and southern Gaul. The battle lasted one day. The Saracen commander was killed. By dawn the next morning, the Islamic army had vanished into the night, leaving their spoils behind. Historians call it one of the decisive battles of the world. Charles Martel called it a good day's work. His son Pepin used the aftermath to make the family officially royal.

The Frankish kings of the early 8th century had a nickname that says everything about their era: the Do-Nothings. They sat on ornate thrones. They were dressed in fine clothes and paraded through Paris in gilded chariots once a year, waving to cheering crowds and making short speeches that their own administrators had written for them. At the end of the ceremony, each Do-Nothing king retired to his country house for another twelve months and was not heard from again until the next parade. All the actual work of government was done by officials called mayors of the palace — men who had started as household managers and gradually accumulated every real power the king was too uninterested to exercise. They made war. They led armies. They raised and spent money. They ruled. The most important mayor of the palace who ever lived was a man named Charles, son of the previous mayor Pepin. He became mayor in 714 at twenty-five years old. He had been his father's soldier since he was a teenager and knew exactly how to fight. His men were devoted to him. History knows him as Charles Martel. Martel means hammer. He earned the name.

The Battle of Tours (or Poitiers) in October 732 AD stopped the northward advance of Islamic armies into Europe. Charles earned the nickname Martel — the Hammer — for his role in breaking the Saracen force.

The Army That Had Already Burned Bordeaux

By 711 AD, the Saracens — Mohammedans, as contemporary Christian writers called them — had conquered nearly all of Spain. It had taken them less than a decade. They intended to take Gaul next, and then all of Europe. The Frankish king at the time of the invasion was one of the Do-Nothings. The Saracens thought this made the conquest easy. They were wrong about who was actually running things. Abd-er-Rahman, the Saracen governor of Spain, led his army across the Pyrenees into southern Gaul. He burned towns and villages. He killed inhabitants. He plundered Bordeaux — one of the richest cities in the region — so thoroughly that ancient accounts say every soldier in his army was weighed down with golden vases and cups and precious stones. He was driving north toward the monastery of Tours, which was enormously wealthy and an obvious target. Charles Martel was assembling an army as fast as he could. He pulled together Franks and Germans and marched south. The two forces met in October 732, between Tours and Poitiers.