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Europe; but in the West, on the side of the Py- CHA P. renees, the provinces of Gaul were threatened and invaded by the conquerors of Spain *. The decline of the French monarchy invited the attack of these insatiate fanatics. The descendants of Clovis had lost the inheritance of his martial and ferocious spirit; and their misfortune or demerit has affixed the epithet of lazy to the last kings of the Merovingian race t. They ascended the throne without power, and sunk into the grave without a name. A country palace, in the neighbourhood of Compiegne ‡, was allotted for their residence or prison; but each year, in the month

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* For the invasion of France, and the defeat of the Arabs by Charles Martel, see the Historia Arabum (c. 11, 12, 13, 14.) of Roderic Ximenes, archbishop of Toledo, who had before him the Christian chronicle of Isidore Pacensis, and the Mahometan history of Novairi. The Moslems are silent or concise in the account of their losses; but M. Cardonne (tom. i. p. 129, 130, 131.) has given a pure and simple account of all that he could collect from Ibn Halikan, Hidjazi, and an anonymous writer. The texts of the chronicles of France, and lives of saints, are inserted in the Collection of Bouquet (tom. iii.) and the Annals of Pagi, who (tom. iii. under the proper years) has restored the chronology, which is anticipated six years in the Annals of Baronius. The Dictionary of Bayle (Abderame and Munuza) has more merit for lively reflection than original research.

Eginhart, de Vita Caroli Magni, c. ii. p. 13-18. edit. Schmink, Utrecht, 1711. Some modern critics accuse the minister of Charlemagne of exaggerating the weakness of the Merovingians; but the general outline is just, and the French reader will for ever repeat the beautiful lines of Boileau's Lutrin.

Mamacce on the Oyse, between Compiegne and Noyon, which Eginhart calls perparvi reditus villam, (see the notes, and the map of ancient France for Dom. Bouquet's Collection.) Compendium, or Compiegne, was a palace of more dignity, (Hadrian Valesii Notitia Galliarum, p. 152.) and that laughing philosopher, the Abbé Galliani, (Dialogues sur le Commerce des Bleds,) may truly affirm, that it was the residence of the rois très Chretiens et très chevelus.

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CHA P. month of March or May, they were conducted in a waggon drawn by oxen to the assembly of the Franks, to give audience to foreign ambassadors, and to ratify the acts of the mayor of the palace. That domestic officer was become the minister of the nation, and the master of the prince. A public employment was converted into the patrimony of a private family; the elder Pepin left a king of mature years under the guardianship of his own widow and her child; and these feeble regents were forcibly dispossessed by the most active of his bastards. A government, half savage and half corrupt, was almost dissolved; and the tributary dukes, the provincial counts, and the territorial lords, were tempted to despise the weakness of the monarch, and to imitate the ambition of the mayor. Among these independent chiefs, one of the boldest and most successful was Eudes, duke of Aquitain, who, in the southern provinces of Gaul, usurped the authority and even the title of king. The Goths, the Gascons, and the Franks, assembled under the standard of this Christian hero; he repelled the first invasion of the Saracens; and Zama, lieutenant of the caliph, lost his army and his life under the walls of Tholouse. The ambition of his successors was stimulated by revenge; they repassed the Pyrenees with the means and the resolution of conquest. The advantageous situation which had recommended Narbonne * as the

first

Even before that colony, A. U. C. 630, (Velleius Patercul. i. 15.) in the time of Polybius, (Hist. 1. i. p. 265. edit.

Gronov.)

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first Roman colony, was again chosen by the c H a p. Moslems They claimed the province of Septemania, or Languedoc, as a just dependence of the Spanish monarchy: The vineyards of Gascony and the city of Bourdeaux were possessed by the sovereign of Damascus and Samarcand; and the south of France, from the mouth of the Garonne to that of the Rhone, assumed the manners and religion of Arabia.

tion and

rame,

But these narrow limits were scorned by the Expedispirit of Abdalrahman, or Abderame, who had victories been restored by the caliph Hashem to the wishes of Abdeof the soldiers and people of Spain. That veteran A. D.731. and daring commander adjudged to the obedience of the prophet whatever yet remained of France or of Europe; and prepared to execute the sentence, at the head of a formidable host, in the full confidence of surmounting all opposition, either of nature or of man. His first care was to suppress a domestic rebel, who commanded the most important passes of the Pyrenees: Munuza, a Moorish chief, had accepted the alliance of the duke of Aquitain; and Eudes, from a motive of private or public interest, devoted his beauteous daughter to the embraces of the African misbeliever. But the strongest fortresses of Cerdagne were invested by a superior force; the rebel was overtaken and slain in the mountains; and his widow was sent a captive to Damascus, to gratify the desires, or more probably the vanity, of the C 3 commander

Gronov.) Narbonne was a Celtic town of the first eminence, and one of the most northern places of the known world; (d'Anville, Notice de l'Ancienne Gaule, p. 473)

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CHA P. Commander of the faithful. From the Pyrenees, Abderame proceeded without delay to the passage of the Rhone and the siege of Arles. An army of Christians attempted the relief of the city; the tombs of their leaders were yet visible in the thirteenth century; and many thousands of their dead bodies were carried down the rapid stream into the Mediterranean sea. The arms of Abderame were not less successful on the side of the ocean. He passed without opposition the Garonne and Dordogne, which unite their waters in the gulf of Bourdeaux; but he found, beyond those rivers, the camp of the intrepid Eudes, who had formed a second army, and sustained a second defeat, so fatal to the Christians, that, according to their sad confession, God alone could reckon the number of the slain. The victorious Saracen overran the provinces of Aquitain, whose Gallic names are disguised, rather than lost, in the modern appellations of Perigord, Saintogne, and Poitou His standards were planted on the walls, or at least before the gates, of Tours and of Sens; and his detachments overspread the kingdom of Burgundy, as far as the well-known cities of Lyons and Besançon. The memory of these devastations, for Abderame did not spare the country or the people, was long preserved by tradition; and the invasion of France by the Moors or Mahometans, affords the ground-work of those fables, which have been so wildly disfigured in the romances of chivalry, and so elegantly adorned by the Italian muse. In the decline of society and art, the deserted cities could supply a slender

booty

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booty to the Saracens; their richest spoil was CHA P. found in the churches and monasteries, which they stripped of their ornaments and delivered to the flames; and the tutelar saints, both Hilary of Poitiers and Martin of Tours, forgot their miraculous powers in the defence of their own sepulchres *. A victorious line of march had been prolonged above a thousand miles from the rock of Gibraltar to the banks of the Loire; the repetition of an equal space would have carried the Saracens to the confines of Poland and the Highlands of Scotland: The Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames. Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet †.

From such calamities was Christendom deliver- Defeat of the Saraed by the genius and fortune of one man. Charles, cens by the illegitimate son of the elder Pepin, was content Charles Martel, with A. D.732.

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* With regard to the sanctuary of St Martin of Tours, Roderic Ximenes accuses the Saracens of the deed. Turonis civitatem, ecclesiam et palatia vastatione et incendio simili diruit et consumpsit. The continuator of Fredegarius imputes to them no more than the intention. Ad domum beatissimi Martini evertendam destinant. At Carolus, &c. The French annalist was more jealous of the honour of the saint.

Yet I sincerely doubt whether the Oxford mosch would have produced a volume of controversy so elegant and ingenious as the sermons lately preached by Mr White, the Arabic professor, at Mr Bampton's lecture. His observations on the character and religion of Mahomet, are always adapted to his argument, and generally founded in truth and reason. He sustains the part of a lively and eloquent advocate; and sometimes rises to the merit of an historian and philosopher.