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Show AN IMPORTANT BATTLE. The importance of tlie battle of Tours (732) can hardly be overestimated. It was not, like that of Chalons, a combat between the forces of order on one side and those of confusion and destruction on the other. It was a struggle for life and death between two races, two reliffious and two young and vigorous civilizations. We cannot ermceive of the rude hordes of Atilla founding a state and starting start-ing a new course of development for Europe. We may well imagine that the Arabs, if they had conquered con-quered at Tours, might have done for Gaul what they did for Spain, have made it into the seat of a great simitic culture. That they did not do this, that Europe became Christian and not Mohammedan, Aryan and not Semitic, is the debt we owe to thosu iron warriors who beat back the wave of Arab conquest con-quest on the field of Tours. From Emorton's Study of the Middle Ages. And those iron warriors with their brave chief, Charles Martel, were all faithful Catholics. |