Though, however, we may have cause to regret the meagreness and doubtful character of these narratives, we have the great advantage of being able to compare the accounts given of Abderrahman’s expedition by the national writers of each side.  This is a benefit which the inquirer into antiquity so seldom can obtain that the fact of possessing it, in the case of the battle of Tours, makes us think the historical testimony respecting that great event more certain and satisfactory than is the case in many other instances, where we possess abundant details respecting military exploits, but where those details come to us from the annalist of one nation only, and where we have, consequently, no safeguard against the exaggerations, the distortions, and the fictions which national vanity has so often put forth in the garb and under the title of history.  The Arabian writers who recorded the conquests and wars of their countrymen in Spain have narrated also the expedition into Gaul of their great Emir, and his defeat and death near Tours, in battle with the host of the Franks under “King Caldus,” the name into which they metamorphose Charles Martel.

They tell us how there was war between the count of the Frankish frontier and the Moslems, and how the count gathered together all his people, and fought for a time with doubtful success.  “But,” say the Arabian chroniclers, “Abderrahman drove them back; and the men of Abderrahman were puffed up in spirit by their repeated successes, and they were full of trust in the valor and the practice in war of their Emir.  So the Moslems smote their enemies, and passed the river Garonne, and laid waste the country, and took captives without number.  And that army went through all places like a desolating storm.  Prosperity made these warriors insatiable.  At the passage of the river Abderrahman overthrew the count, and the count retired into his stronghold, but the Moslems fought against it, and entered it by force and slew the count; for everything gave way to their cimeters, which were the robbers of lives.

“All the nations of the Franks trembled at that terrible army, and they betook them to their king ‘Caldus,’ and told him of the havoc made by the Moslem horsemen, and how they rode at their will through all the land of Narbonne, Toulouse, and Bordeaux, and they told the King of the death of their count.  Then the King bade them be of good cheer, and offered to aid them.  And in the 114th year[70] he mounted his horse, and he took with him a host that could not be numbered, and went against the Moslems.  And he came upon them at the great city of Tours.  And Abderrahman and other prudent cavaliers saw the disorder of the Moslem troops, who were loaded with spoil; but they did not venture to displease the soldiers by ordering them to abandon everything except their arms and war-horses.  And Abderrahman trusted in the valor of his soldiers, and in the good fortune which had ever attended him.  But, the Arab writer remarks, such defect of discipline always is fatal to armies.