But, although their conversion and other civilizing influences operated powerfully upon the Germans in Gaul, and although the Franks—­who were originally a confederation of the Teutonic tribes that dwelt between the Rhine, the Maine, and the Weser—­established a decisive superiority over the other conquerors of the province, as well as over the conquered provincials, the country long remained a chaos of uncombined and shifting elements.  The early princes of the Merovingian dynasty were generally occupied in wars against other princes of their house, occasioned by the frequent subdivisions of the Frank monarchy; and the ablest and best of them had found all their energies tasked to the utmost to defend the barrier of the Rhine against the pagan Germans who strove to pass that river and gather their share of the spoils of the Empire.

The conquests which the Saracens effected over the southern and eastern provinces of Rome were far more rapid than those achieved by the Germans in the North, and the new organizations of society which the Moslems introduced were summarily and uniformly enforced.  Exactly a century passed between the death of Mahomet and the date of the battle of Tours.  During that century the followers of the prophet had torn away half the Roman Empire; and besides their conquests over Persia, the Saracens had overrun Syria, Egypt, Africa, and Spain, in an unchecked and apparently irresistible career of victory.  Nor, at the commencement of the eighth century of our era, was the Mahometan world divided against itself, as it subsequently became.  All these vast regions obeyed the Caliph; throughout them all, from the Pyrenees to the Oxus, the name of Mahomet was invoked in prayer and the Koran revered as the book of the law.

It was under one of their ablest and most renowned commanders, with a veteran army, and with every apparent advantage of time, place, and circumstance, that the Arabs made their great effort at the conquest of Europe north of the Pyrenees.  The victorious Moslem soldiery in Spain,

                 “A countless multitude,

Syrian, Moor, Saracen, Greek renegade,
Persian, and Copt, and Tartar, in one bond
Of erring faith conjoined—­strong in the youth
And heat of zeal—­a dreadful brotherhood,”

were eager for the plunder of more Christian cities and shrines, and full of fanatic confidence in the invincibility of their arms.

                        “Nor were the chiefs

Of victory less assured, by long success
Elate, and proud of that o’erwhelming strength
Which, surely they believed, as it had rolled
Thus far unchecked, would roll victorious on,
Till, like the Orient, the subjected West
Should bow in reverence at Mahomet’s name;
And pilgrims from remotest arctic shores
Tread with religious feet the burning sands
Of Araby and Mecca’s stony soil.”