Upon what seeming trifles turns the hinge of destiny! The casting-vote of Callimachus, urged by the eloquence of Miltiades, made Marathon; panic-fear let loose among Darius’ million men made Arbela; an eclipse of the sun won at Zama; Teutoberger Wald, Chalons, Tours--invisible, unknown, but not the less effective were the forces in these fights making fatefully for defeat and for victory. That which we term a trifle may be as a single bead of perspiration; trifling in itself, no doubt, but representative of a force far from trifling. Battle raged indecisively all day long from early light till dark. Prince Charles seemed to wield the hammer of Thor. Abderame fell. The Saracens withdrew sullenly within their tents. Quiet darkness gathered mournfully over the living, the dying, and the dead. And the next morning there was a great silence in the Moslem camp; in so much that the Christians trembled as at some uncanny treachery and stood awaiting they knew not what. But as the early morning hours passed and broad daylight brought back manly courage, the Christian army approached the camp of the enemy. It was deserted. The foe had fled. Christendom had won. Charles did not immediately pursue the fleeing Moslem hordes. He still feared treachery. Perhaps, too, some wakening sentiment of humanity restrained him from further bloodshed. The vast plains of Tours were covered with ghastly forms horribly hacked and hewed but now strangely still. According to an old chronicle the number of Moslem dead upon the field of Tours was three hundred and fifty thousand; that of the Christians, fifteen hundred. Surely that was enough of slaughtering death even for Karl Martel. The battle of Tours was fought Oct. 4, 732 A. D. The following Spring Charles went in pursuit of the Saracens who were still ravaging southern France. They withdrew from place to place as Charles drew near; and ultimately--without risking another encounter with the Hammer of Thor--they retired across the Pyrenees. France was freed from the Crescent. THE EIGHTH CENTURY. All writers agree that the eighth century was the darkest age of the so-called Dark Ages. The Benedictine monks, authors of _L’ histoire litteraire de la France_ say that the eighth century was _the darkest, the most ignorant, the most barbarous_ that France had ever seen. It seemed to be the seething culmination of four hundred years of Barbarism, one infusion following fast upon another.