Charles Martel

Charles Martel was the effective ruler of the Franks from 718 until his death in 741. He never took the title of king: he governed as mayor of the palace for figurehead Merovingian kings, and for his last four years with no king at all. He reunited the Frankish Kingdom after a civil war, extended its power over its neighbours and defeated an Arab army near Poitiers in 732, and his family, the Carolingians, went on to take the crown and, under his grandson Charlemagne, an empire.

Charles was born around 688, the son of Pepin of Herstal, the most powerful noble in the Frankish lands, and a woman named Alpaida. Older histories call him illegitimate, but the line between wives and concubines among the Frankish elite was blurred, and the label probably owes much to Pepin's senior wife, Plectrude, who wanted her own grandchildren to inherit. The family's base lay in Austrasia, the eastern Frankish lands around the Meuse, Moselle and Rhine.

By this time the Merovingian kings, descendants of Clovis, reigned in name only. Real power lay with the mayors of the palace, who controlled the royal treasury, land grants and patronage. Pepin had made himself master of all three Frankish kingdoms, Austrasia, Neustria and Burgundy, and called himself duke and prince of the Franks.

The surname Martel, meaning "the hammer", is not contemporary. It appears in later chronicles, from the ninth century onwards, and became attached to him as his reputation as a warrior grew.

When Pepin died in December 714, Plectrude tried to rule on behalf of an eight-year-old grandson, Theudoald, and had Charles imprisoned in Cologne. The Neustrian nobles of the west seized the moment to throw off Austrasian control, defeated Plectrude's forces in 715 and set up their own king, Chilperic II, with Raganfrid as mayor. Charles escaped from prison late in 715 and was acclaimed mayor by Austrasian supporters.

His first battle, near Cologne in 716 against the Neustrians and their Frisian allies, was a defeat, the only one recorded in his career. Weeks later he surprised the Neustrian army as it rested at Amblève, near Malmedy, and won. In March 717 he beat Chilperic and Raganfrid at Vinchy near Cambrai, then took Cologne and its treasure from Plectrude, who retired to a convent. A final victory at Soissons in 718 over the Neustrians and Odo, the independent duke of Aquitaine, made him master of the Frankish world. He kept a Merovingian on the throne for legitimacy, but the king was his creature.

For the next two decades Charles was almost constantly on campaign. He raided the pagan Saxons east of the Rhine repeatedly, took West Frisia after the death of its king Radbod in 719, and in 734 killed the Frisian duke Bubo and had the region's pagan shrines destroyed. He forced the dukes of Bavaria and Alemannia, who had grown nearly independent, back under Frankish overlordship. In the south he took control of Burgundy by replacing its counts with loyal men, and in the late 730s campaigned in Provence and Septimania against local rebels and Arab garrisons, though he failed to take Narbonne.

He rewarded his followers with land and offices, including land taken from churches and monasteries, and installed loyal men as bishops. Nineteenth-century historians argued that he seized church lands on a large scale to create a new class of armoured horsemen, and so founded feudalism. Modern historians such as Paul Fouracre find little evidence for any such military revolution, and treat his use of church property as a continuation of normal Frankish practice, magnified later by clerical critics.

In the 720s Arab and Berber forces from al-Andalus, the Iberian province of the Umayyad Caliphate, raided north of the Pyrenees. In 732 an army under the governor Abd al-Rahman al-Ghafiqi defeated Duke Odo of Aquitaine, sacked Bordeaux and advanced towards the rich shrine of Saint Martin at Tours. Odo turned to Charles, his rival, for help. Charles met the invaders in October somewhere between Poitiers and Tours, and after a day of fighting Abd al-Rahman was killed and his army withdrew in the night. The date is usually given as 732, though some historians argue for 733.

The Battle of Tours became the most famous event of his life. In the eighteenth century Edward Gibbon presented it as the moment Christian Europe was saved from Islamic conquest, a view repeated for two centuries. Many historians now see the Arab expedition as a large raid for plunder rather than an attempt at conquest, note that Arabic sources give it little weight, and point out that Umayyad expansion was already slowing for other reasons. For Charles himself, the battle's main result was political: it let him extend his authority over Aquitaine, although Odo kept his duchy until his death in 735. The battle has also been taken up as a symbol by modern far-right groups, which has kept its meaning a subject of public argument in France.

Charles protected the Anglo-Saxon missionary Boniface, who worked among the pagans east of the Rhine and later organised bishoprics in Bavaria, and so helped bring those lands into the Frankish church and the wider world of Latin Christianity. When King Theuderic IV died in 737, Charles did not bother to appoint a successor and ruled alone. In 739 Pope Gregory III appealed to him for help against the Lombards, who threatened Rome; Charles, who had been allied with the Lombard king Liutprand, declined, but the appeal showed how far the papacy now looked to the Franks.

Charles died on 22 October 741 at Quierzy on the Oise and was buried in the abbey of Saint-Denis near Paris, the burial place of kings. Before his death he divided his lands between his sons Carloman and Pepin, with a share later for a younger son, Grifo.

Charles's sons crushed their rivals, and in 751 Pepin, now sole ruler, deposed the last Merovingian with papal approval and became king. His son Charlemagne was crowned emperor in 800, and the dynasty took its name, Carolingian, from Charles himself. The Carolingian Empire built on the unity and military strength that Charles had restored.

His reputation has swung between extremes. Early chroniclers celebrated his victories; churchmen of the ninth century told stories of him suffering in hell for robbing the church; later writers made him the saviour of Europe. Most modern historians describe a hard, effective warlord who restored central power in Francia and laid the foundations for his family's rise, while treating the larger claims made for Tours and for his supposed military reforms with caution.