Tours, battle of (733 or 734). Charles Martel, the mayor of the palace of the Frankish kings, stemmed the advance into northern Europe of Arab forces under Abd ar-Rahman at or near Tours in 733 or 734. The traditional location and date of this battle—at Poitiers in 732—are due to misinterpretations of the near-contemporary Frankish continuation of the Chronicle of Fredegar. That source states that, having burnt Poitiers, the Arab army was advancing towards Tours when it was met by Martel's force. It also implies that the battle took place in the year before the death of Eudo, Duke of Aquitaine, commonly accepted as 735. On both points this account is supported by the Mozarabic Chronicle of 754, which, however, disagrees with the continuator of Fredegar in its account of the aftermath: far from ‘scattering them like stubble before the fury of his onslaught’, it alleges that Martel allowed the Arabs to slip away by night.
Bibliography
- Staudte-Lauber, A., ‘Carlus princeps regionem Burgundie sagaciter penetravit: Zur Schlacht von Tours und Poitiers und dem Eingreifen Karl Martells in Burgund’, in J. Jarnut, U. Nonn, and M. Richter (eds.), Karl Martell in seiner Zeit (Beihefte der Francia, 37; Sigmaringen, 1994), 79-100.
- Wallace-Hadrill, J. M. (ed. and trans.), The Fourth Book of the Chronicle of Fredegar and its Continuations (Oxford, 1960).
- Wood, I. N., The Merovingian Kingdoms, 450-751 (London, 1994)
— Marios Costambeys
