France · The foundations
Poitiers 732, the battle that grew in the telling
Poitiers 732: the nearest chronicle runs to fifteen lines, with no date, no place, no figures. The 375,000 dead, the Europe saved, the painting at Versailles? All of it came afterwards.
The start of the lesson
The next 7 cards, the four questions and the review are in the app.
A king, and a boss who isn’t him. The 730s: the king is Thierry IV. The boss is Charles, mayor of the palace — the household steward, on paper. But the chronicle writes: “he then gave himself a king”.
Beyond the Loire, another strongman. Further south, al-Andalus: Spain, conquered since 711 by the Umayyad caliphate. Three powers. Between them, war is seasonal work: you cross a river, you plunder, you go home. Look at who holds what.
- CharlesMayor of the palace, north of the LoireIn 731 he ravages Eudes’s Aquitaine. Twice.
- EudesDuke of AquitaineCharles’s enemies hail him with the title of king. In 721 he stopped the Saracens under the walls of Toulouse.
- Abd al-Rahmân al-GhâfiqîEmir of al-Andalus, for the Umayyad caliphateHis troops have held Narbonne since 719.
732. The emir crosses the Pyrenees, beats Eudes on the Garonne, heads north. Target: Saint-Martin at Tours. Eudes goes to fetch Charles. The two armies meet somewhere between Poitiers and Tours. The road, the field, the numbers? Nobody knows.
The next 7 cards, the four questions and the review are in the app.
What you will be able to answer
- 375,000 Saracens killed: where does that figure come from?
- The chronicle nearest to the events gives the day and the exact place of the battle.
- Put these accounts in the order they were written.
- Gibbon, in 1788: “Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of ___.”
Sources
Every date, every figure and every quote in this lesson was verified in these sources.
- Chronique de Frédégaire et de ses continuateurs, traduction Guizot (Wikisource)
- Sur le lieu et la date de la bataille dite de Poitiers de 732, Bibliothèque de l'École des chartes, 1938 (Persée)
- Bibliothèque de l'École des chartes, collection intégrale (Persée)
- FranceArchives, portail national des archives
- Gibbon, Histoire de la décadence et de la chute de l’Empire romain, trad. Guizot, tome X, chap. LII (Wikisource)
- Gibbon, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 5, ch. LII (Project Gutenberg)
- Paul Diacre, Historia Langobardorum, liber VI (Wikisource, texte latin)
- William E. Watson, The Battle of Tours-Poitiers Revisited, 1993 (De Re Militari)
- EHNE, La bataille de Poitiers : 732 (Sorbonne Université)
- EHNE, « La bataille de Poitiers » par Charles de Steuben (1837)
- Notice Joconde MV 2671, Bataille de Poitiers, octobre 732, Steuben (POP, ministère de la Culture)
Two minutes of quiz, and your first lesson is waiting.
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