222 Darwinism and Other Essays. 



Koran in Oxford as one of the consequences that 

 might have ensued had Charles the Hammer been 

 overthrown at Tours by the Arabs. Under the 

 grandson of this doughty hero Charles the 

 Great the entire strength of Germany became 

 enlisted in the service of the Christianized Em- 

 pire, and among the results of this were the con- 

 version of the newly-arriving Magyars, Poles, and 

 Bohemians, and the conquest of Prussia by the 

 Teutonic knights. By the thirteenth century the 

 fabric of European civilization had become so 

 solid that a barbaric power not inferior to Attila's 

 was hardly able to make any impression upon it. 

 Batu, with his fifteen hundred thousand Mongols, 

 gained a victory at Liegnitz in 1241, such as 

 Attila had fought for in vain at Chalons ; but it 

 came some centuries too late, for the contest be- 

 tween stable nationality and nomadic barbarism 

 was by this time settled forever. The most the 

 greasy Mongol could accomplish was to check for 

 a few generations the growth of a national life 

 among the Slavic tribes of Russia. 



But though Chalons and Tours demonstrated 

 that Christian civilization could hold its own, 

 whether against the barbarian or the infidel, the 

 latter nevertheless twice succeeded in marking 

 serious encroachments on Roman territory. 



