Elsewhere the Mahometans pursued their triumphant progress with little check. After the fall of Carthage in 697 North Africa lay almost undefended before them; and the half-savage tribes such as the Berbers, who lived on the borders of the desert, welcomed the new faith with its mission of conversion by the sword and prospects of plunder.
It was the Berbers who at the invitation, according to tradition, of a treacherous Spanish Governor, Count Julian, crossed the Strait of Gibraltar and descended on the plains of Andalusia.
Spain, when the power of the Roman Empire snapped, had been invaded first by Vandals and then by Visigoths. The Vandals, as we have seen,[2] passed on to Africa, while the Visigoths, like the Lombards in Italy, became converted to Christianity, and, falling under the influence of the civilization and luxury they saw around them, gradually adapted their government, laws, and way of life to the system and ideals of those whom they had conquered. Thus their famous Lex Visigothorum, or ‘Law of the Visigoths’, was in reality the Roman code remodelled to suit the German settlers.
In this new land the descendants of the once warlike Teutons acquired an indifference to the arts of war, and when their King Rodrigo had been killed at the disastrous battle of Guadelete and his army overthrown, they made little further resistance to the Saracen hordes except in the far northern mountains of the Asturias. From France we have seen[3] the Mahometans were beaten back by Charles Martel, and here, established in Spain and on the borders of the Eastern Empire, we must leave their fortunes for the time. If Mahomet’s life is short and can be quickly told the story of how his followers attempted to establish their rule over Christendom is nothing else than the history of the foreign policy of Europe during mediaeval times.
VIII
CHARLEMAGNE
Just before his death Pepin the Short had divided his lands between his two sons, Charles, who was about twenty-six, and Carloman, a youth some years younger. As they had no affection for each other, this division did not work well. Carloman gave little promise of statesmanlike qualities: he was peevish and jealous, and easily persuaded by the nobles who surrounded him that his elder brother was a rival who intended to rob him of his possessions, it might be of his life. There seems to have been no ground for this suspicion; but nevertheless he spent his days in trying to hinder whatever schemes Charles proposed; and when he died, three years later, there was a general breath of relief.
Enumerating the blessings that Heaven had bestowed on Charlemagne, a monk, writing to the King about this time, completed his list with the candid statement: ‘the fifth and not least that God has removed your brother from this earthly kingdom’.
Charlemagne was exactly the kind of person to seize the fancy of the early Middle Ages. Tall and well built, with an eagle nose and eyes that flashed like a lion when he was angry so that none dared to meet their gaze, he excelled all his court in strength, energy, and skill. He could straighten out with his fingers four horseshoes locked together, lift a warrior fully equipped for battle to the level of his shoulder, and fell a horse and its rider with a single blow.