Constantinople and Tours. 718 and 732. Victory over the Muslim Jihad.

Most people don’t understand that the ‘West’ simply refers to the rump and remnant which remained of what was once a vast Christian-based collection of states, empires and cultures around the Mediterranean.  The battle of Tours in 732 and the subsequent campaigns in the 730s by Charles Martel and the Franks, ended the Muslim threat of complete domination of Europe.  This signal fact, this great accomplishment is of course under attack by post-modern ‘academics’ who write, without looking at primary sources or understanding the nature of medieval warfare that an invasion of 2 armies composing some 80.000 men was a ‘raid’.  Yet Claudius conquered Britain with a fraction of that total, with William of Normandy repeating it a 1.000 years later with 10.000 men.  The objective of the Muslim invasion of Provence and Burgundy was the destruction of Christianity in Frankish Gaul.

The Frankish eradication of the Muslim threat at Tours used to be celebrated.  Historian Godefroid Kurth in the early 20^th century proclaimed Tours as, ‘one of the greatest events in the history of the world, as upon its issue depended whether Christian Civilisation should continue or Islam prevail throughout Europe.’  In 718 the Roman-Christian Byzantines defeated the Muslim hordes at Constantinople.  This victory stopped the Muslim takeover of the Byzantine empire.  Fourteen years at Tours, a similar event occurred.  The Muslim Jihad was mortally wounded at Tours and the Reconquista of Spain and parts of the Mediterranean could now commence. 

The two-pronged Jihad from the Muslim masses were thus arrested at both ends of Europe.

Yet both victories at Constantinople in 718 and at Tours in 732 are linked.  Leo the Lion who led the Christian forces at Constantinople had to suffer a year of siege warfare, with the Muslims besieging his capital with a force comprising no fewer than 100.000 men.  The Muslims suffered through one of the harshest winters in that period, the raids of the Bulgars paid by Leo to attack the Muslim supply lines and depots, disease, starvation, and constant sallies by the defenders of the nigh impregnable city.  Only 20.000 or so Arab Jihadis survived the siege of Constantinople.  By contrast the 80.000 or so Berber-Arab Jihadis at Tours fled, routed and ruined, after a single day of combat.  Their losses were enormous probably half were killed or injured.  But if the Muslim Jihad against Constantinople had succeeded very likely the Franks would have been engaged on two fronts, against 2 enormous Muslim hordes and the outcome may have been different.

Spain’s first Muslim dictator or emir, bin Nusayr, is recorded as stating that he wanted the Muslim Jihad to conquer all of Europe, and he would begin in the Pyrenees and end in Constantinople.  This circuit though ambitious was certainly plausible given the disunited state of Christendom and the fact that most of Germany and large tracts of Central and Eastern Europe were pagan, not Christian, and unreliable in the extreme as allies against a Muslim Jihad.  The Muslims had destroyed Christianity from Arabia to the Pyrenees, conquering the eastern and southern parts of Christendom, and Spain.  Why not the rest of the ‘West’ and North and East of what remained?  When the Muslims under Rahman invaded France and headed for Tours in 732 AD, they brought with them their many wives, children, pack animals, moving as it were, ‘lock stock and barrel’, to colonise a new land. 

This gives lie to the current ‘academic’ fascination that an 80.000 man force, composed of 2 armies, was a ‘raid’.  French medievalist Dufourcq stated that the patten of Jihad was always the same, first reconnaissance, raid for booty and slaves, assess the strength of the target land in question, than launch an all-out attack with a view to conquering and colonising.  So it was with Syria, North Africa, Spain and France.  It is quite obvious that had Rahman defeated Charles at Tours, the Arab and Berber Muslims would have plundered the wealthy abbey at Tours, settled, expanded and proceeded to conquer the rest of Frankish Gaul.