did not regard themselves, now nearly twelve centuries ago, as called upon to decide, near Poitiers, such future question; but vaguely, instinctively they felt the grandeur of the part they were playing, and they mutually scanned one another with that grave curiosity which precedes a formidable encounter between valiant warriors.  At length, at the breaking of the seventh or eighth day, Abdel-Rhaman, at the head of his cavalry, ordered a general attack; and the Franks received it with serried ranks, astounding their enemies by their tall stature, stout armor, and their stern immobility.  “They stood there,” says Isidore of Beja, “like solid walls or icebergs.”  During the fight, a body of Franks penetrated into the enemy’s camp, either for pillage or to take the Arabs in the rear.  The horsemen of Abdel-Rhaman at once left the general attack, and turned back to defend their camp or the booty deposited there.  Disorder set in amongst them, and, before long, throughout their whole army; and the battle became a confused melley, wherein the lofty stature and stout armor of the Franks had the advantage.  A great number of Arabs and Abdel-Rhaman himself were slain.  At the approach of night both armies retired to their camps.  The next day, at dawn, the Franks moved out of theirs, to renew the engagement.  In front of them was no stir, no noise, no Arabs out of their tents and reassembling in their ranks.  Some Franks were sent to reconnoitre, entered the enemy’s camp, and penetrated into their tents; but they were deserted.  “The Arabs had decamped silently in the night, leaving the bulk of their booty, and by this precipitate retreat acknowledging a more severe defeat than they had really sustained in the fight.”

[Illustration:  “The Arabs had decamped silently in the night.”——­195]

Foreseeing the effect which would be produced by their reverse in the country they had but lately traversed as conquerors, they halted nowhere, but hastened to reenter Septimania and their stronghold Narbonne, where they might await reenforcements from Spain.  Duke Eudes, on his side, after having, as vassal, taken the oath of allegiance to Charles, who will be henceforth called Charles Martel (Hammer), that glorious name which he won by the great blow he dealt the Arabs, reentered his dominions of Aquitania and Vasconia, and applied himself to the reestablishment there of security and of his own power.  As for Charles Martel, indefatigable alike after and before victory, he did not consider his work in Southern Gaul as accomplished.  He wished to recover and reconstitute in its entirety the Frankish dominion; and he at once proceeded to reunite to it Provence and the portions of the old kingdom of Burgundy situated between the Alps and the Rhone, starting from Lyons.  His first campaign with this object, in 733, was successful; he retook Lyons, Vienne, and Valence, without any stoppage up to the Durance, and charged chosen “leudes” to govern these provinces with a view especially to