Still, Martel’s Franks, dressed only in wolf skins and bear hides, without any armor, would have to stand against an armored, mounted enemy. The trees would further hinder the movements of the Muslim horsemen, while the Franks would stand unmoving, awaiting the attack in their defensive square.
The ground Charles Martel selected was atop a wooded hill – the enemy would have to come to him, laboring up a slope. He traveled with his army along paths not normally taken, avoiding the usual roads for sake of secrecy, and when he reached his destination, he found a place that was advantageous to him. Wildly outnumbered, Charles also knew that success depended upon the element of surprise, and on being able to choose the ground on which he would make his stand. North Africa itself had only recently been an entirely Catholic civilization, but by now the inhabitants found themselves dispossessed of their lands and oppressed and persecuted as infidels.Ĭharles Martel knew what he was up against, for Odo the Great had fled to the Franks after his disastrous defeat. The Christian Visigoths soon found that their churches were desecrated and made into mosques as the conquest proceeded along the lines of the classic jihad – with massive pillaging, slavery, deportations and killings. To be conquered by the Muslims was not a desirable condition. They had wrested the city of Jerusalem, and the entire Holy Land, away from Christendom. In the Far East other Muslim armies were attacking India and threatening the emperor of China to his face. At this same time in history, over a thousand miles away across Europe, the Muslims were warring against Constantinople in what would conclude with the destruction of the ancient Byzantine Empire. It had taken the Muslims only three years to do, a feat the ancient Romans, Hannibal of Carthage, and Napoleon could not equal or accomplish. All of Spain had once been a Visigothic kingdom, but the land had been completely conquered in 714 by Musa, son of Nusair, the Muslim governor of Africa.
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