I made today’s audio free for everyone so you can hear my really shitty pronunciation.
Early in the 8th century, Muslims spent seven years conquering the Iberian Peninsula—what is now Spain—in a righteous war of my god is better than your god. Francia (France, duh) looked south and got mighty nervous. Then she marshalled her forces and said okay you heathen motherfuckers, that’s far enough.
--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: June 9, 721--
You may have heard of the Battle of Tours. We’ll get to that. This is about a critical turning-point battle that happened 11 years previous, at Toulouse. Aquitaine was a large duchy in southwest… let’s just call it France. Odo, the duke, said by Christ those fuckers aren’t taking my city. Literally, he was big into Christianity and saw himself as a righteous defender of the faith. The pope was all you go, Odo. Fuck them up.
In the late winter of 721, governor of the conquered peninsula, Al-Samh ibn Malik al-Khawlani, laid siege to Toulouse, the capital of Aquitaine, and Odo said oh fuck and noped out. Well, he didn’t flee in terror, he did a strategic I’m getting the fuck out of here so he could go for help. And that’s what he did.
Odo spent three months rallying troops from various groups across France. On June 9, 721, the Muslim invaders were all fuck yeah Toulouse is just about to surrender we’re gonna raid the shit out of that city oh wait what the fuck who the fuck are those guys?
With Odo having fled, al-Khawlani was overconfident in his victory and didn’t set up a defensive perimeter for his besieging forces. Odo’s army hit the siege force fast and hard in a surprise attack. The defenders in Toulouse said fuck yeah the cavalry is here and left the city to join in the slaughter. Facing battle on two sides, al-Khawlani’s forces fled in disarray and were cut down in the process. It was a devastating defeat. Al-Khawlani was wounded in the battle and died shortly thereafter.
Odo became “the Great” and was praised by the pope as a champion of Christianity, but he was mostly lucky in it being a surprise attack. After Toulouse Odo proved an ineffective commander and it was his rival Charles Martel’s time to shine. The victory at Toulouse gave Martel the time he needed to solidify his base of power and build and train a powerful army that stood against the Muslims in 732 at the Battle of Tours. It was that victory that halted the invasion and set the stage for the establishment of the Carolingian Empire and France’s domination of Western Europe for much of the 9th century.
It also gave the Christians huddled in the northwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula the opportunity to start taking back the region from the Muslims. It only took them 700 years to do it.
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