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Rh years after the conquest of Spain, the Saracens crossed the Pyrenees, and established themselves upon the plains of Gaul. This advance of the Moslem hosts beyond the northern wall of Spain was viewed with the greatest alarm by all Christendom. It looked as though the followers of Mohammed would soon possess all the continent. As Draper pictures it, the Crescent, lying in a vast semi-circle upon the northern shore of Africa and the curving coast of Asia, with one horn touching the Bosporus and the other the Straits of Gibraltar, seemed about to round to the full and overspread all Europe.

In the year 732, exactly one hundred years after the death of the great Prophet, the Franks, under their renowned chieftain, Charles, and their allies met the Moslems upon the plains of Tours in the centre of Gaul, and committed to the issue of a single battle the fate of Christendom and the future course of history. The desperate valor displayed by the warriors of both armies was worthy of the prize at stake. Abderrahman, the Mohammedan leader, fell in the thick of the fight, and night saw the complete discomfiture of the Moslem hordes. The loss that the sturdy blows of the Germans had inflicted upon them was enormous, the accounts of that age swelling the number killed to the impossible figures of 375,000. The disaster at all events was too overwhelming to permit the Saracens ever to recover from the blow, and they soon retreated behind the Pyrenees.

The young civilization of Europe was thus delivered from an appalling danger, such as had not threatened it since the fearful days of Attila and the Huns. The heroic Duke Charles who had led the warriors of Christendom to the glorious victory was given the surname Martel, the " Hammer," in commemoration of the mighty blows of his huge battle-axe.

Changes in the Caliphate.—During the century of conquests we have traced, there were many changes in the caliphate. Abubekr was followed by Omar (634–644), Othman (644–655), and Ali (655–661), all of whom fell by the hands of assassins, for from the very first dissensions were rife among the followers of