of one man. Charles, the illegitimate son of the elder Pepin, was
content with the titles of mayor or duke of the Franks; but he deserved
to become the father of a line of kings. In a laborious administration
of twenty-four years, he restored and supported the dignity of the
throne, and the rebels of Germany and Gaul were successively crushed by
the activity of a warrior, who, in the same campaign, could display
his banner on the Elbe, the Rhone, and the shores of the ocean. In
the public danger he was summoned by the voice of his country; and his
rival, the duke of Aquitain, was reduced to appear among the fugitives
and suppliants. "Alas!" exclaimed the Franks, "what a misfortune! what
an indignity! We have long heard of the name and conquests of the
Arabs: we were apprehensive of their attack from the East; they have
now conquered Spain, and invade our country on the side of the West. Yet
their numbers, and (since they have no buckler) their arms, are inferior
to our own." "If you follow my advice," replied the prudent mayor of
the palace, "you will not interrupt their march, nor precipitate your
attack. They are like a torrent, which it is dangerous to stem in its
career. The thirst of riches, and the consciousness of success, redouble
their valor, and valor is of more avail than arms or numbers. Be patient
till they have loaded themselves with the encumbrance of wealth.
The possession of wealth will divide their councils and assure your
victory." This subtile policy is perhaps a refinement of the Arabian
writers; and the situation of Charles will suggest a more narrow and
selfish motive of procrastination--the secret desire of humbling the
pride and wasting the provinces of the rebel duke of Aquitain. It is yet
more probable, that the delays of Charles were inevitable and reluctant.
A standing army was unknown under the first and second race; more than
half the kingdom was now in the hands of the Saracens: according to
their respective situation, the Franks of Neustria and Austrasia were
to conscious or too careless of the impending danger; and the voluntary
aids of the GepidÊ and Germans were separated by a long interval from
the standard of the Christian general. No sooner had he collected his
forces, than he sought and found the enemy in the centre of France,
between Tours and Poitiers. His well-conducted march was covered with
a range of hills, and Abderame appears to have been surprised by his
unexpected presence. The nations of Asia, Africa, and Europe, advanced
with equal ardor to an encounter which would change the history of
the world. In the six first days of desultory combat, the horsemen and
archers of the East maintained their advantage: but in the closer onset
of the seventh day, the Orientals were oppressed by the strength
and stature of the Germans, who, with stout hearts and _iron_ hands,
asserted the civil and religious freedom of their posterity. The epithet
of _Martel_, the _Hammer_, which has been added to the name of Charles,
is expressive of his weighty and irresistible strokes: the valor of
Eudes was excited by resentment and emulation; and their companions, in
the eye of history, are the true Peers and Paladins of French chivalry.
After a bloody field, in which Abderame was slain, the Saracens, in the
close of the evening, retired to their camp. In the disorder and despair
of the night, the various tribes of Yemen and Damascus, of Africa and
Spain, were provoked to turn their arms against each other: the remains
of their host were suddenly dissolved, and each _emir_ consulted his
safety by a hasty and separate retreat. At the dawn of the day, the
stillness of a hostile camp was suspected by the victorious Christians:
on the report of their spies, they ventured to explore the riches of the
vacant tents; but if we except some celebrated relics, a small portion
of the spoil was restored to the innocent and lawful owners. The joyful
tidings were soon diffused over the Catholic world, and the monks of
Italy could affirm and believe that three hundred and fifty, or three
hundred and seventy-five, thousand of the Mahometans had been crushed
by the hammer of Charles, while no more than fifteen hundred Christians
were slain in the field of Tours. But this incredible tale is
sufficiently disproved by the caution of the French general, who
apprehended the snares and accidents of a pursuit, and dismissed his
German allies to their native forests. The inactivity of a conqueror
betrays the loss of strength and blood, and the most cruel execution
is inflicted, not in the ranks of battle, but on the backs of a flying
enemy. Yet the victory of the Franks was complete and final; Aquitain
was recovered by the arms of Eudes; the Arabs never resumed the conquest
of Gaul, and they were soon driven beyond the Pyrenees by Charles Martel
and his valiant race. It might have been expected that the savior of
Christendom would have been canonized, or at least applauded, by the
gratitude of the clergy, who are indebted to his sword for their present
existence. But in the public distress, the mayor of the palace had been
compelled to apply the riches, or at least the revenues, of the bishops
and abbots, to the relief of the state and the reward of the soldiers.
His merits were forgotten, his sacrilege alone was remembered, and, in
an epistle to a Carlovingian prince, a Gallic synod presumes to declare
that his ancestor was damned; that on the opening of his tomb, the
spectators were affrighted by a smell of fire and the aspect of a horrid
dragon; and that a saint of the times was indulged with a pleasant
vision of the soul and body of Charles Martel, burning, to all eternity,
in the abyss of hell.
The loss of an army, or a province, in the Western world, was less
painful to the court of Damascus, than the rise and progress of a
domestic competitor. Except among the Syrians, the caliphs of the house
of Ommiyah had never been the objects of the public favor. The life of
Mahomet recorded their perseverance in idolatry and rebellion: their
conversion had been reluctant, their elevation irregular and factious,
and their throne was cemented with the most holy and noble blood of
Arabia. The best of their race, the pious Omar, was dissatisfied with
his own title: their personal virtues were insufficient to justify a
departure from the order of succession; and the eyes and wishes of the
faithful were turned towards the line of Hashem, and the kindred of
the apostle of God. Of these the Fatimites were either rash or
pusillanimous; but the descendants of Abbas cherished, with courage
and discretion, the hopes of their rising fortunes. From an obscure
residence in Syria, they secretly despatched their agents and
missionaries, who preached in the Eastern provinces their hereditary
indefeasible right; and Mohammed, the son of Ali, the son of Abdallah,
the son of Abbas, the uncle of the prophet, gave audience to the
deputies of Chorasan, and accepted their free gift of four hundred
thousand pieces of gold. After the death of Mohammed, the oath of
allegiance was administered in the name of his son Ibrahim to a numerous
band of votaries, who expected only a signal and a leader; and the
governor of Chorasan continued to deplore his fruitless admonitions and
the deadly slumber of the caliphs of Damascus, till he himself, with
all his adherents, was driven from the city and palace of Meru, by the
rebellious arms of Abu Moslem. That maker of kings, the author, as he is
named, of the _call_ of the Abbassides, was at length rewarded for his
presumption of merit with the usual gratitude of courts. A mean, perhaps
a foreign, extraction could not repress the aspiring energy of Abu
Moslem. Jealous of his wives, liberal of his wealth, prodigal of his own
blood and of that of others, he could boast with pleasure, and possibly
with truth, that he had destroyed six hundred thousand of his enemies;
and such was the intrepid gravity of his mind and countenance, that
he was never seen to smile except on a day of battle. In the visible
separation of parties, the _green_ was consecrated to the Fatimites; the
Ommiades were distinguished by the _white_; and the _black_, as the
most adverse, was naturally adopted by the Abbassides. Their turbans and
garments were stained with that gloomy color: two black standards, on
pike staves nine cubits long, were borne aloft in the van of Abu Moslem;
and their allegorical names of the night and the shadow obscurely
represented the indissoluble union and perpetual succession of the line
of Hashem. From the Indus to the Euphrates, the East was convulsed by
the quarrel of the white and the black factions: the Abbassides were
most frequently victorious; but their public success was clouded by the
personal misfortune of their chief. The court of Damascus, awakening
from a long slumber, resolved to prevent the pilgrimage of Mecca, which
Ibrahim had undertaken with a splendid retinue, to recommend himself
at once to the favor of the prophet and of the people. A detachment of
cavalry intercepted his march and arrested his person; and the unhappy
Ibrahim, snatched away from the promise of untasted royalty, expired in
iron fetters in the dungeons of Haran. His two younger brothers, Saffah
* and Almansor, eluded the search of the tyrant, and lay concealed
at Cufa, till the zeal of the people and the approach of his Eastern
friends allowed them to expose their persons to the impatient public.
On Friday, in the dress of a caliph, in the colors of the sect, Saffah
proceeded with religious and military pomp to the mosch: ascending the
pulpit, he prayed and preached as the lawful successor of Mahomet; and
after his departure, his kinsmen bound a willing people by an oath of
fidelity. But it was on the banks of the Zab, and not in the mosch of
Cufa, that this important controversy was determined. Every advantage
appeared to be on the side of the white faction: the authority of
established government; an army of a hundred and twenty thousand
soldiers, against a sixth part of that number; and the presence and
merit of the caliph Mervan, the fourteenth and last of the house of
Ommiyah. Before his accession to the throne, he had deserved, by his
Georgian warfare, the honorable epithet of the ass of Mesopotamia; and
he might have been ranked amongst the greatest princes, had not, says
Abulfeda, the eternal order decreed that moment for the ruin of his
family; a decree against which all human fortitude and prudence must
struggle in vain. The orders of Mervan were mistaken, or disobeyed:
the return of his horse, from which he had dismounted on a necessary
occasion, impressed the belief of his death; and the enthusiasm of
the black squadrons was ably conducted by Abdallah, the uncle of his
competitor. After an irretrievable defeat, the caliph escaped to Mosul;
but the colors of the Abbassides were displayed from the rampart; he
suddenly repassed the Tigris, cast a melancholy look on his palace of
Haran, crossed the Euphrates, abandoned the fortifications of Damascus,
and, without halting in Palestine, pitched his last and fatal camp at
Busir, on the banks of the Nile. His speed was urged by the incessant
diligence of Abdallah, who in every step of the pursuit acquired
strength and reputation: the remains of the white faction were finally
vanquished in Egypt; and the lance, which terminated the life and
anxiety of Mervan, was not less welcome perhaps to the unfortunate than
to the victorious chief. The merciless inquisition of the conqueror
eradicated the most distant branches of the hostile race: their bones
were scattered, their memory was accursed, and the martyrdom of Hossein
was abundantly revenged on the posterity of his tyrants. Fourscore of
the Ommiades, who had yielded to the faith or clemency of their foes,
were invited to a banquet at Damascus. The laws of hospitality were
violated by a promiscuous massacre: the board was spread over their
fallen bodies; and the festivity of the guests was enlivened by the
music of their dying groans. By the event of the civil war, the dynasty
of the Abbassides was firmly established; but the Christians only
could triumph in the mutual hatred and common loss of the disciples of
Mahomet.
Yet the thousands who were swept away by the sword of war might
have been speedily retrieved in the succeeding generation, if the
consequences of the revolution had not tended to dissolve the power
and unity of the empire of the Saracens. In the proscription of the
Ommiades, a royal youth of the name of Abdalrahman alone escaped the
rage of his enemies, who hunted the wandering exile from the banks
of the Euphrates to the valleys of Mount Atlas. His presence in the
neighborhood of Spain revived the zeal of the white faction. The name
and cause of the Abbassides had been first vindicated by the Persians:
the West had been pure from civil arms; and the servants of the
abdicated family still held, by a precarious tenure, the inheritance
of their lands and the offices of government. Strongly prompted by
gratitude, indignation, and fear, they invited the grandson of the
caliph Hashem to ascend the throne of his ancestors; and, in his
desperate condition, the extremes of rashness and prudence were almost
the same. The acclamations of the people saluted his landing on the
coast of Andalusia: and, after a successful struggle, Abdalrahman
established the throne of Cordova, and was the father of the Ommiades of
Spain, who reigned above two hundred and fifty years from the Atlantic
to the Pyrenees. He slew in battle a lieutenant of the Abbassides, who
had invaded his dominions with a fleet and army: the head of Ala, in
salt and camphire, was suspended by a daring messenger before the palace
of Mecca; and the caliph Almansor rejoiced in his safety, that he was
removed by seas and lands from such a formidable adversary. Their mutual
designs or declarations of offensive war evaporated without effect;
but instead of opening a door to the conquest of Europe, Spain was
dissevered from the trunk of the monarchy, engaged in perpetual
hostility with the East, and inclined to peace and friendship with the
Christian sovereigns of Constantinople and France. The example of the
Ommiades was imitated by the real or fictitious progeny of Ali, the
Edrissites of Mauritania, and the more powerful Fatimites of Africa and
Egypt. In the tenth century, the chair of Mahomet was disputed by three
caliphs or commanders of the faithful, who reigned at Bagdad, Cairoan,
and Cordova, excommunicating each other, and agreed only in a principle
of discord, that a sectary is more odious and criminal than an
unbeliever.
Mecca was the patrimony of the line of Hashem, yet the Abbassides were
never tempted to reside either in the birthplace or the city of the
prophet. Damascus was disgraced by the choice, and polluted with the
blood, of the Ommiades; and, after some hesitation, Almansor, the
brother and successor of Saffah, laid the foundations of Bagdad, the
Imperial seat of his posterity during a reign of five hundred years. The
chosen spot is on the eastern bank of the Tigris, about fifteen miles
above the ruins of Modain: the double wall was of a circular form; and
such was the rapid increase of a capital, now dwindled to a provincial
town, that the funeral of a popular saint might be attended by eight
hundred thousand men and sixty thousand women of Bagdad and the adjacent
villages. In this _city of peace_, amidst the riches of the East, the
Abbassides soon disdained the abstinence and frugality of the first
caliphs, and aspired to emulate the magnificence of the Persian kings.
After his wars and buildings, Almansor left behind him in gold and
silver about thirty millions sterling: and this treasure was exhausted
in a few years by the vices or virtues of his children. His son Mahadi,
in a single pilgrimage to Mecca, expended six millions of dinars of
gold. A pious and charitable motive may sanctify the foundation of
cisterns and caravanseras, which he distributed along a measured road
of seven hundred miles; but his train of camels, laden with snow, could
serve only to astonish the natives of Arabia, and to refresh the fruits
and liquors of the royal banquet. The courtiers would surely praise the
liberality of his grandson Almamon, who gave away four fifths of the
income of a province, a sum of two millions four hundred thousand gold
dinars, before he drew his foot from the stirrup. At the nuptials of the
same prince, a thousand pearls of the largest size were showered on
the head of the bride, and a lottery of lands and houses displayed the
capricious bounty of fortune. The glories of the court were brightened,
rather than impaired, in the decline of the empire, and a Greek
ambassador might admire, or pity, the magnificence of the feeble
Moctader. "The caliph's whole army," says the historian Abulfeda,
"both horse and foot, was under arms, which together made a body of one
hundred and sixty thousand men. His state officers, the favorite slaves,
stood near him in splendid apparel, their belts glittering with gold
and gems. Near them were seven thousand eunuchs, four thousand of them
white, the remainder black. The porters or door-keepers were in number
seven hundred. Barges and boats, with the most superb decorations, were
seen swimming upon the Tigris. Nor was the palace itself less splendid,
in which were hung up thirty-eight thousand pieces of tapestry, twelve
thousand five hundred of which were of silk embroidered with gold. The
carpets on the floor were twenty-two thousand. A hundred lions were
brought out, with a keeper to each lion. Among the other spectacles of
rare and stupendous luxury was a tree of gold and silver spreading
into eighteen large branches, on which, and on the lesser boughs, sat a
variety of birds made of the same precious metals, as well as the leaves
of the tree. While the machinery affected spontaneous motions, the
several birds warbled their natural harmony. Through this scene of
magnificence, the Greek ambassador was led by the vizier to the foot of
the caliph's throne." In the West, the Ommiades of Spain supported, with
equal pomp, the title of commander of the faithful. Three miles from
Cordova, in honor of his favorite sultana, the third and greatest of
the Abdalrahmans constructed the city, palace, and gardens of Zehra.
Twenty-five years, and above three millions sterling, were employed by
the founder: his liberal taste invited the artists of Constantinople,
the most skilful sculptors and architects of the age; and the buildings
were sustained or adorned by twelve hundred columns of Spanish and
African, of Greek and Italian marble. The hall of audience was incrusted
with gold and pearls, and a great basin in the centre was surrounded
with the curious and costly figures of birds and quadrupeds. In a
lofty pavilion of the gardens, one of these basins and fountains, so
delightful in a sultry climate, was replenished not with water, but
with the purest quicksilver. The seraglio of Abdalrahman, his wives,
concubines, and black eunuchs, amounted to six thousand three hundred
persons: and he was attended to the field by a guard of twelve thousand
horse, whose belts and cimeters were studded with gold.
Chapter LII: More Conquests By The Arabs.--Part III.
In a private condition, our desires are perpetually repressed by poverty
and subordination; but the lives and labors of millions are devoted to
the service of a despotic prince, whose laws are blindly obeyed, and
whose wishes are instantly gratified. Our imagination is dazzled by the
splendid picture; and whatever may be the cool dictates of reason, there
are few among us who would obstinately refuse a trial of the comforts
and the cares of royalty. It may therefore be of some use to borrow
the experience of the same Abdalrahman, whose magnificence has perhaps
excited our admiration and envy, and to transcribe an authentic memorial
which was found in the closet of the deceased caliph. "I have now
reigned above fifty years in victory or peace; beloved by my subjects,
dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honors,
power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly
blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In this situation,
I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which
have fallen to my lot: they amount to Fourteen:--O man! place not thy
confidence in this present world!" The luxury of the caliphs, so useless
to their private happiness, relaxed the nerves, and terminated the
progress, of the Arabian empire. Temporal and spiritual conquest had
been the sole occupation of the first successors of Mahomet; and after
supplying themselves with the necessaries of life, the whole revenue
was scrupulously devoted to that salutary work. The Abbassides were
impoverished by the multitude of their wants, and their contempt of
economy. Instead of pursuing the great object of ambition, their leisure,
their affections, the powers of their mind, were diverted by pomp and
pleasure: the rewards of valor were embezzled by women and eunuchs, and
the royal camp was encumbered by the luxury of the palace. A similar
temper was diffused among the subjects of the caliph. Their stern
enthusiasm was softened by time and prosperity. They sought riches in
the occupations of industry, fame in the pursuits of literature, and
happiness in the tranquillity of domestic life. War was no longer the
passion of the Saracens; and the increase of pay, the repetition of
donatives, were insufficient to allure the posterity of those voluntary
champions who had crowded to the standard of Abubeker and Omar for the
hopes of spoil and of paradise.