Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/32

 12 THE DECLINE AND FALL Invasion of France by the Arabs. A.D. 721, writers. It came flying through the air, says Joinville,""' like a winged long-tailed dragon, about the thickness of an hogshead, with the report of thunder and the velocity of lightning ; and the darkness of the night was dispelled by this deadly illumina- tion. The use of the Greek or, as it might now be called, of the Saracen fire was continued to the middle of the fourteenth centuiy,^^ when the scientific or casual compound of nitre, sul- phur, and charcoal effected a new revolution in the art of war and the history of mankind. -'' Constantinople and the Greek fire might exclude the Arabs from the Eastern entrance of Europe ; but in the West, on the side of the Pyrenees, the provinces of Gaul were threatened and invaded by the conquerors of Spain.-" The decline of the French monarchy invited the attack of these insatiate fanatics. The descendants of Clovis had lost the inheritance of his martial and ferocious spirit ; and their misfortune or demerit has affixed the epithet of lazy to the last kings of the Mero- ^ Histoire de St. Louis, p. 39, Paris, 1668 ; p. 44, Paris, de Timprimerie Royale, 1761 [xliii., § 203 sqq. in the text of N. de Waillyl. The former of these editions is precious for the observations of Ducange ; the latter, for the pure and original text of JoinviUe. We must have recourse to the text to discover that the feu Gregeois was shot with a pile or javelin, from an engine that acted like a sling. ^ The vanity, or envy, of shaking the established property of Fame has tempted some moderns to carry gunpowder above the fourteenth (see Sir William Temple, Dutens, &c. ), and the Greek fire above the |seventh, century (see the Saluste du Pr&ident des Brosses, torn. ii. p. 381); but their evidence, which precedes the vulgar cera of the invention, is seldom clear or satisfactory, and subsequent writers may be suspected of fraud or credulity. In the earliest sieges some combustibles of oil and sulphur have been used, and the Greek fire has sotne affinities with gun- powder both in nature and effects : for the antiquity of the first, a passage of Procopius (de Bell. Goth. 1. iv. c. 11), for that of the second, some facts in the Arabic history of Spain (A. D. 1249, 1312, 1332, Bibliot. Arab. Hisp. tom. ii. p. 6, 7, 8), are the most difficult to elude. ^That extraordinary man, Friar Bacon, reveals two of the ingredients, saltpetre and sulphur, and conceals the third in a sentence of mysterious gibberish, as if he dreaded the consequences of his own discovery (Biographia Britannica, vol. i. p. 430, new edition). ^ For the invasion of France, and the defeat of the Arabs by Charles Martel, see the Historia Arabum (c. 11, 12, 13, 14) of Roderic Ximenes, archbishop of Toledo, who had before him the Christian chronicle of Isidore Pacensis, and the Mahometan history of Sovairi. [And Chron. Moissiac. ad. ann. 732 (in Pertz, Mon. vol. i. ).] The Moslems are silent or concise in the account of their losses; but M. Cardonne (tom. i. p. 129, 130, 131) has given 2i pure and simple account of all that he could collect from Ibn Halikan, Hidjasi, and an anonymous writer. The texts of the chronicles of France, and lives of saints, are inserted in the Collection of Bouquet (tom. iii.) and the Annals ofPagi, who(tom. iii. under the proper years) has restored the chronology, which is anticipated six years in the -Annals of Baronius. The Dictionary of Bayle {Abderamc and Munuza) has more merit for lively reflection than original research.