Battle of Avignon

The Battle of Avignon was contested in 737, in which Frankish forces led by Charles Martel expelled Arab forces from the city.

Contemporary view

Arabs had occupied the city of Avignon in 734, after it had been surrendered to Yusuf ibn 'Abd al-Rahman al-Fihri, Umayyad governor of Narbonne, by Duke Maurontus of Provence. [Riche, Pierre (1993). "The Carolingians: A Family Who Forged Europe". University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 0-8122-1342-4, p. 45.] According to the "Continuations of Fredegar", Maurontus probably invited Yusuf into the city after forming an alliance with him against Martel. The "Chronicle of Moissac" confirms that Yusuf's forces moved peacefully from Arab-held Septimania into Provence and entered Avignon without a fight. In reaction, Martel sent his brother Duke Childebrand south in 736, accompanied by fellow dukes and counts. Childebrand laid siege to Avignon and held the field until his brother was ready to storm the city. [Fouracre, Paul (2000). "The Age of Charles Martel". Pearson Education. ISBN 0-582-06476-7, p. 96.]

Martel's forces used rope ladders and battering rams to attack the walls of Avignon, which was burned to the ground following its capture. [Halsall, Guy (2003). "Warfare and Society in the Barbarian West 450-900". London: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-23939-7, p. 226.] [Mastnak, Tomaz (2002). "Crusading Peace: Christendom, the Muslim World, and Western Political Order". University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-22635-6, p. 101.] The army then crossed the Rhône River into Septimania in order to lay siege to Narbonne. [ Fouracre, 2000, p. 97.]

This battle was part of the campaigns of 736-737 during which Charles Martel for the second time kept invading Muslim armies from Al-Andalus occupying further territory beyond the Pyrenees. Unlike the invasion of 732-733, the Arabs came this time by sea, and forced the Franks to come to them. Notable at these battles was the use of heavy cavalry in addition to Martel's vaunted veteran Frankish infantry. Though he had some catapults, the city of Avignon was largely taken by a simple, brutal, frontal assault using rams to smash through the gates, and ladders to scale the walls.

Modern critical viewpoints

Anthony Santosuosso, an expert in the Dark Ages and Medieval Europe, has argued that these events were as important macrohistorically as Martel's victory at the Battle of Tours. The campaigns, which ended with the complete destruction of a large Arab force, attempting to relieve Narbonne, at the Battle of the River Berre in 737, crushed any hope of expansion while the Umayyad Caliphate was still united, prior to the Battle of Zab, at which the Umayyads were defeated by their Abbasid rivals. [ Santosuosso, Anthony (2004). "Barbarians, Marauders, and Infidels". Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-9153-9, p. 231.]

Another view is found in Paul Fouracre's account, in that both the extent and the importance of Martel's victories are said to have been greatly exaggerated by Paul the Deacon and the "Continuations of Fredegar" as Martel came to be depicted as the progenitor of later Frankish success and the Franks as "God's people". [Fouracre, 2000, p. 88; p. 2.] But this is disputed by the view of historians such as Edward Gibbon who called Martel "the hero of the age," and said of the Islamic invasions and Charles Martel "in the public danger, he was summoned by the voice of his country." In modern times, Santosuosso describes the campaigns of Tours and 736-737 by Martel and the Franks as macrohistorical in their halt of the Islamization of Europe. Also in the modern era, Matthew Bennett and his co-authors of "Fighting Techniques of the Medieval World" published in 2005 say the "few battles are remembered 1,000 years after they are fought...but the Battle of Poitiers, (Tours) is an exception...Charles Martel turned back a Muslim raid that had it been allowed to continue, might have conquered Gaul." Michael Grant, author of "History of Rome" finds the Battle of Tours of such importance that he lists it in the macrohistorical dates of the Roman era.

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