a Mahometan emir, he rashly began an intercourse with the Ishmaelites, one of whose favourite projects was to plant a formidable colony of their faith in France.  An army of four hundred thousand combatants, as the chroniclers of the time affirm, were seen descending into Guienne, possessing themselves in one day of his domains; and Eude soon discovered what sort of workmen he had called, to do that of which he himself was so incapable.  Charles, with equal courage and prudence, beheld this heavy tempest bursting over his whole country; and to remove the first cause of this national evil, he reconciled the discontented Eude, and detached the duke from his fatal alliance.  But the Saracens were fast advancing through Touraine, and had reached Tours by the river Loire:  Abderam, the chief of the Saracens, anticipated a triumph in the multitude of his infantry, his cavalry, and his camels, exhibiting a military warfare unknown in France; he spread out his mighty army to surround the French, and to take them, as it were in a net.  The appearance terrified, and the magnificence astonished.  Charles, collecting his far inferior forces, assured them that they had no other France than the spot they covered.  He had ordered that the city of Tours should be closed on every Frenchman, unless he entered it victorious; and he took care that every fugitive should be treated as an enemy by bodies of gens d’armes, whom he placed to watch at the wings of his army.  The combat was furious.  The astonished Mahometan beheld his battalions defeated as he urged them on singly to the French, who on that day had resolved to offer their lives as an immolation to their mother-country.  Eude on that day, ardent to clear himself from the odium which he had incurred, with desperate valour, taking a wide compass, attacked his new allies in the rear.  The camp of the Mahometan was forced:  the shrieks of his women and children reached him from amidst the massacre; terrified he saw his multitude shaken.  Charles, who beheld the light breaking through this dark cloud of men, exclaimed to his countrymen, “My friends, God has raised his banner, and the unbelievers perish!” The mass of the Saracens, though broken, could not fly; their own multitude pressed themselves together, and the Christian sword mowed down the Mahometans.  Abderam was found dead in a vast heap, unwounded, stifled by his own multitude.  Historians record that three hundred and sixty thousand Saracens perished on la journee de Tours; but their fears and their joy probably magnified their enemies.  Thus Charles saved his own country, and, at that moment, all the rest of Europe, from this deluge of people, which had poured down from Asia and Africa.  Every Christian people returned a solemn thanksgiving, and saluted their deliverer as “the Hammer” of France.  But the Saracens were not conquered; Charles did not even venture on their pursuit; and a second invasion proved almost as terrifying; army still poured down