Charles Martel

Charles Martel (born c. 688—died October 22, 741, Quierzy-sur-Oise [France]) was the mayor of the palace of Austrasia (the eastern part of the Frankish kingdom) from 715 to 741. He reunited and ruled the entire Frankish realm and defeated a sizable Muslim raiding party at Poitiers in 732. His byname, Martel, means “the hammer.”

Early life

Charles was the illegitimate son of Pippin II of Herstal, the mayor of the palace of Austrasia. By this period the Merovingian kings of the Frankish realm were rulers in name only. 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. 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.

The assassination of Pippin’s only surviving legitimate son in 714 was followed a few months later by the death of Pippin himself. Pippin left as heirs three grandsons, and, until they came of age, Plectrude, Pippin’s widow, was to hold power. As an illegitimate son, Charles Martel was entirely neglected in the will. But he was young, strong, and determined, and an intense struggle for power at once broke out in the Frankish kingdom.

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Mayor of the palace

Both Charles and Plectrude faced rebellion throughout the Frankish kingdom when Pippin’s will was made known. The king, Chilperic II, was in the power of Ragenfrid, mayor of the palace of Neustria, who joined forces with the Frisians in Holland in order to eliminate Charles. 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). His success made resistance by Plectrude and the Austrasians useless, and they submitted. In 719 Charles defeated Ragenfrid at Soissons and forced him to retreat to Angers. From that point, Charles alone governed the Franks as mayor.

Assured of Austrasia, Charles now attacked Neustria itself, finally subduing it in 724. This freed Charles to deal with hostile elements elsewhere. He attacked Aquitaine, whose ruler, Eudes (Odo), had been an ally of Ragenfrid, but Charles did not gain effective control of southern France until late in his reign. He also conducted long campaigns, some as late as the 730s, against the Frisians, Saxons, and Bavarians, whose brigandage endangered the eastern frontiers of his kingdom. Even after these expeditions, the Saxons in particular continued to raid Charles’s territory whenever the opportunity presented itself.

Consolidation of power and the Battle of Tours

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. The stirrup was not yet in use among Frankish horsemen, so Charles’s equestrian force would not have resembled the true heavy shock cavalry of the later Middle Ages, but the expense of arms and armour was nevertheless significant. To finance this costly enterprise, he appropriated some of the ecclesiastical lands recently acquired and consolidated by various bishops, mostly in Burgundy. This action aroused no contemporary censure, and the tenure of the lands was later regularized under Charles’s sons Pippin and Carloman. It was then decided that the warriors to whom the lands had been granted should hold them for life (precaria), with the church remaining the actual owner.

Again, no contemporary disapproval was shown at Charles’s severity toward bishops, such as Rigobert of Reims, who were resentful or tardy in surrendering their holdings. Charles, in fact, was viewed favourably by the church and was noted for his patronage of monasteries. It was to Charles that Pope Gregory II wrote in 722 to enlist support for Boniface’s mission in the Rhineland. From that point onward, Charles consistently supported Boniface and also assisted the missionary efforts of Pirmin and Willibrord, apostles of the Alemanni and of the Frisians, respectively.

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Having spent a large part of the 720s campaigning in the north and east, Charles spent much of the following decade combating a persistent threat on his southern frontier. 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. In 732 ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ghafiqi, the governor of Córdoba, marched into Bordeaux and defeated Eudes. The Muslims then proceeded north across Aquitaine to the city of Poitiers. Eudes appealed to Charles for assistance, and Charles managed to defeat a significant Muslim force at the Battle of Tours. Although Tours is sometimes presented as a decisive check on Muslim expansion into Europe, it was, in reality, a single engagement in a decades-long conflict between the Franks and the armies of Muslim Spain. The victory did have the effect of burnishing Charles’s reputation and authority, especially in Aquitaine, where he forced Eudes to swear allegiance to him.

In 733 Charles began his campaigns to force Burgundy to yield to his rule. In 735 word arrived that Eudes was dead, and Charles marched rapidly across the Loire River in order to make his power felt around Bordeaux. By 739 he had completely subdued the petty chieftains of Burgundy, and he continued to fend off Muslim advances into Gaul during the decade.

Charles’s health began to fail in the late 730s, and in 741 he retired to his palace at Quierzy-sur-Oise, where he died soon after. Before his death he divided the Merovingian kingdom between his two legitimate sons, Pippin III and Carloman. Charles refrained from transferring the royal title to his own dynasty, however. The fiction of Merovingian rule would continue until Pippin set aside Childeric III, the last Merovingian king, and had himself crowned king of the Franks in 751.