In 739, Pope Gregory III begged Charles for his aid against Liutprand, but Charles was loath to fight his onetime ally and ignored the plea. From the Irish famine to Lady Godiva, journey through European history in this quiz. Charles Martel (688-741) was a Frankish statesman and military leader who, as Duke and Prince of the Franks and Mayor of the Palace, was de facto ruler of Francia from 718 until his death. As an illegitimate son, Charles Martel was entirely neglected in the will. For other uses, see. Please select which sections you would like to print: While every effort has been made to follow citation style rules, there may be some discrepancies. Charles was the illegitimate son of Pippin II of Herstal, the mayor of the palace of Austrasia. Plectrude imprisoned Charles and tried to govern in the name of her grandchildren, but Charles escaped, gathered an army, and defeated the Neustrians in battles at Amblève near Liège (716) and at Vincy near Cambrai (717). "716: A Crucial Year For Charles Martel", Medievalists.net, November 3, 2014, "Perspective | The fake history that fueled the accused Christchurch shooter", https://web.archive.org/web/20051222052229/http://www.standin.se/fifteen07a.htm, "The Battle of Tours is still felt today", Medieval Sourcebook: Arabs, Franks, and the Battle of Tours, 732, Arabs, Franks, and the Battle of Tours, 732: Three Accounts, Medieval Sourcebook: Gregory II to Charles Martel, 739, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Charles_Martel&oldid=1007404770, Wikipedia articles needing page number citations from August 2015, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles with unsourced statements from August 2015, Articles with unsourced statements from February 2021, Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference, Wikipedia articles with PLWABN identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 17 February 2021, at 23:53. Gerberding suggests that Willibrord had decided that the chances of preserving his life's work were better with a successful field commander like Martel than with Plectrude in Cologne. The burden of rule lay upon the mayors of the palace, who governed Austrasia, the eastern part of the Frankish kingdom, and Neustria, its western portion. A ninth-century text, the Visio Eucherii, possibly written by Hincmar of Reims, portrayed Martel as suffering in hell for this reason. He reunited and ruled the entire Frankish realm and defeated a sizable Muslim raiding party at Poitiers in 732. Charles also married a second time, to Swanhild and they had a child named Grifo. Theudoald was defeated and fled back to Cologne. Charles relied heavily on armed freemen to serve as the foundation of his military, but the increasing pace of offensive operations compelled him to create for his army a strong cavalry element composed of landed professional fighting men. Learn world history with free interactive flashcards. Charles, titling himself maior domus and princeps et dux Francorum, did not appoint a new king and nobody acclaimed one. After his victory at the Battle of Soissons (718), Charles Martel styled himself Duke of the Franks. Yann Martel was born in Salamanca, Spain, in 1963, of Canadian parents who were doing graduate studies. In 731, after defeating the Saxons, Charles turned his attention to the rival southern realm of Aquitaine, and crossed the Loire, breaking the treaty with Duke Odo. Charles Martel (686–741) was an illegitimate son of Pepin of Herstal, and therefore indeed a "free man", but not of noble rank. Neustria bitterly resented its conquest and annexation in 687 by Pippin, who, acting in the name of the king, had reorganized and reunified the Frankish realm. Boniface had been under his protection from 723 on. This was immediately opposed by the nobles because Theudoald was a child of only eight years of age. In any event, the suddenness of the assault lead them to believe they were facing a much larger host. Charles Martel (676-90[3] – 22 October 741) was a Frankish statesman and military leader who, as Duke and Prince of the Franks and Mayor of the Palace, was the de facto ruler of Francia from 718 until his death. Ever since their arrival in Spain from Africa in 711, Muslims had raided Frankish territory, threatening Gaul and on one occasion (725) reaching Burgundy and sacking Autun. Choose from 500 different sets of world history flashcards on Quizlet. At this time, Charles again marched against the Saxons. In 725 and 728, he again entered Bavaria but, in 730, he marched against Lantfrid, Duke of Alemannia, who had also become independent, and killed him in battle. Charles was now appointing the kings whom he supposedly served (rois fainéants) although they were mere figureheads. By this period the Merovingian kings of the Frankish realm were rulers in name only. [16] That same year, Dagobert III died and the Neustrians proclaimed Chilperic II, the cloistered son of Childeric II, as king. [13], In older historiography, it was common to describe Charles as "illegitimate". De son mariage plusieurs enfants seraient nés. However, it is not given prominence in Arabic sources from the period.[24]. This order of knights continued for little over two centuries, when it was replaced by Robert II of France's new order: the Knights of Our Lady of the Star (named in honor of his devotion to the Virgin Mary). He was buried at Saint Denis Basilica in Paris. The Continuations of Fredegar allege that Odo called on assistance from the recently established emirate of al-Andalus, but there had been Arab raids into Aquitaine from the 720s onwards. ...After his victory, Charles took the offensive". It was to Charles that Pope Gregory II wrote in 722 to enlist support for Boniface’s mission in the Rhineland. When Chilperic II died in 721, Charles appointed as his successor the son of Dagobert III, Theuderic IV, who was still a minor, and who occupied the throne from 721 to 737. In Gibbon's The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire he wonders whether without Charles' victory, "Perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford". "[35], Many twentieth-century European historians continued to develop Gibbon's perspectives, such as French medievalist Christian Pfister, who wrote in 1911 that, "Besides establishing a certain unity in Gaul, Charles saved it from a great peril. Height 2.09 m. Soulié (1855), op. [36], Similarly, William E. Watson who wrote of the battle's importance in Frankish and world history in 1993, suggested that, "Had Charles Martel suffered at Tours-Poitiers the fate of King Roderick at the Rio Barbate, it is doubtful that a "do-nothing" sovereign of the Merovingian realm could have later succeeded where his talented major domus had failed. Even after these expeditions, the Saxons in particular continued to raid Charles’s territory whenever the opportunity presented itself. Charles, in fact, was viewed favourably by the church and was noted for his patronage of monasteries. Many of the enemy fled and Martel's troops gathered the spoils of the camp. Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. He took the city and dispersed her adherents. [31] However, alongside this there soon developed a darker reputation, for his alleged abuse of church property. [25], His territories had been divided among his adult sons a year earlier: to Carloman he gave Austrasia, Alemannia, and Thuringia, and to Pippin the Younger Neustria, Burgundy, Provence, and Metz and Trier in the "Mosel duchy". When the Frisian leader Radbod died in 719, Charles seized West Frisia without any great resistance on the part of the Frisians, who had been subjected to the Franks but had rebelled upon the death of Pippin. Indeed, the Chronicle of 754 records that in 721 a victory of Odo at the Battle of Toulouse, while the Liber Pontificalis records that Odo had killed 375,000 Saracens. 714) - Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia | HighBeam Research", Kurth, Godefroid. From that point, Charles alone governed the Franks as mayor. "[39], More recently, the memory of Charles Martel has been appropriated by far right and white nationalist groups, such as the 'Charles Martel Group' in France, and by Australian Brenton Harrison Tarrant, the perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootings at Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019. [citation needed], For early medieval authors, Charles Martel was famous for his military victories. Having unified the Franks under his banner, Charles was determined to punish the Saxons who had invaded Austrasia. A dissolute literature professor named François retires to a monastery near Poitiers, the place where Charles Martel stopped the last advance of Islam in 732. By his able policy Odo succeeded in arresting their progress for some years; but a new vali, Abdur Rahman, a member of an extremely fanatical sect, resumed the attack, reached Poitiers, and advanced on Tours, the holy town of Gaul. [9][10], At the end of his reign, Charles divided Francia between his sons, Carloman and Pepin. Pippin left as heirs three grandsons, and, until they came of age, Plectrude, Pippin’s widow, was to hold power. Continuing and building on his father's work, he restored centralized government in Francia and began the series of military campaigns that re-established the Franks as the undisputed masters of all Gaul. In 718, Chilperic responded to Charles' new ascendancy by making an alliance with Odo the Great (or Eudes, as he is sometimes known), the duke of Aquitaine, who had become independent during the civil war in 715, but was again defeated, at the Battle of Soissons, by Charles. Pepin's death occasioned open conflict between his heirs and the Neustrian nobles who sought political independence from Austrasian control. They were easily defeated in 724 but Ragenfrid gave up his sons as hostages in turn for keeping his county. Print Collector / Getty Images. Theudoald lived to 741 under his uncle's protection, a kindness unusual for those times, when mercy to a former gaoler, or a potential rival, was rare. [26]:50, Charles Martel also had a known mistress, Ruodhaid with whom he had Bernard, Hieronymus and Remigius. Costambeys, Marios; Matthew Innes & MacLean, Simon (2011), Paul Fouracre, 'Writing about Charles Martel', in, https://www.warhistoryonline.com/medieval/ed-ok-732-battle-tours-charles-martel-hammer-preserves-western-christianity.html, "Alphaida (c. 654–c. His byname, Martel, means ‘the hammer.’ Learn more about Charles Martel in this article. He erected four dioceses in Bavaria (Salzburg, Regensburg, Freising, and Passau) and gave them Boniface as archbishop and metropolitan over all Germany east of the Rhine, with his seat at Mainz.
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