CONQUEST OF AFRICA AND SPAIN. 407 



cities could afford but a slender booty to the Moslems ; 

 their richest spoil was found in the churches and 

 monasteries, wliich they stripped of their ornaments, 

 and delivered to the flames. 



A victorious line of march had been prolonged 

 above 1000 miles, from the Rock of Gibraltar to the 

 banks of the Loire. The repetition of an equal 

 space would have carried the Saracens to the con- 

 fines of Poland and the Highlands of Scotland. The 

 Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or the 

 Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have sailed 

 without a naval combat into the mouth of the 

 Thames. The seven Saxon kingdoms of Britain, 

 torn by wars and factions, must have presented hut 

 a feeble barrier to the Eastern invaders, whose 

 hardy frames seemed equally adapted to all climes 

 and all countries. The Heptarchy, which the vic- 

 torious arms and judicious policy of Egbert had 

 united, might have passed into the hands of a vice- 

 roy from the court of Bagdad. Perhaps the inter- 

 pretation of the Koran might have become the 

 scholastic divinity in the halls of Oxford and Edin, 

 burgh. Our cathedrals might have been supplanted 

 by the gorgeous mosque ; and our pulpits employed 

 in demonstrating to a circumcised people the truth 

 of the apostleship and revelations of Mohammed. 

 Such was the destiny that seemed to impend over all 

 Europe, from the Baltic to the Cyclades, when the 

 standard of Islam floated over the walls of Tonrs.* 



From these probable calamities was Christendom 

 delivered by the genius and fortune of one man. 

 Charles Martel was the illegitimate son of the elder 

 Pepin, and enjoyed the title of Mayor or Duke of the 

 Franks. In a laborious administration of twenty-. 



* Les Arabes vainqueurs auraient plants les ^standardes de 

 rislamisme surles rivages de la Baltique. — De MarWs Hist, de 

 la Domin. des Arab, en Espagne, tome l. p. 141. Heeren, Essci 

 sur V Influence des Croisades, p. 265. Turner's Hist, of Eng. n)!, 

 ». p. 314, and iv. p. 40!X Gibbon, chap. 51. 



