Puffed up with the glory they had gained, the Saracens, who were followers of the Prophet Mahomet, believed that they had only to advance for Christian armies to run away; and over the Pyrenees they swept in large bands, seizing first one stronghold on the Mediterranean coast and then another. Before this invasion Charles Martel had been engaged in a quarrel with the Duke of Aquitaine, but now they hastily made friends and on the field of Poitiers joined their forces to stem the Saracen tide. So terrible was the battle, we are told, that over three hundred thousand Saracens fell before the Frankish warriors ‘inflexible as a block of ice’. The number is almost certainly an exaggeration, and so also is the claim that the victors, by forcing the remnant of the Mahometan army to retreat towards the Pyrenees in hasty flight, saved Europe for Christianity. Even had the decision of the battle been reversed, the Moors would have found the task of holding Spain in the years to come quite sufficient to absorb all their energies. Indeed, their attacks on Gaul were, from the first, more in the nature of gigantic raids than of invasions with a view to settlement, though at the time their ferocity made them seem of world-wide importance. Thus it was only natural that the Mayor of the Palace, to whom the victory was mainly due, became the hero of Christendom. The Pope, who was at that time trying to defend Rome from the King of the Lombards, sent to implore his aid; but Charles knew that his forces had been weakened by their struggle with the Saracens and dared not undertake so big a campaign. [Sidenote: Pepin, King of the Franks] Some years later his son, Pepin ‘the Short’ (751-68), who had succeeded him, received the suggestion with a different answer. Pepin, as his nickname shows, was short in stature, but he was powerfully built and so strong that with a single blow of his axe he once cut off the head of a lion. Energetic and shrewd, he saw a way of turning the Pope’s need of support against the Lombards to his own advantage. He therefore sent Frankish ambassadors to Rome to inquire whether it was not shameful for a land to be governed by kings who had no authority. The Pope, who was anxious to please Pepin, replied discreetly, ‘He who possesses the authority should doubtless possess the title also.’ This was exactly what the Mayor of the Palace had expected and wished, and the rest of the story may be told in the words of the old Frankish annals for the year 751: ‘In this year Pepin was named king of the Franks with the sanction of the Popes, and in the city of Soissons he was anointed with the holy oil ... and was raised to the throne after the custom of the Franks. But Childeric, who had the name of king, was shorn of his locks and sent into a monastery.’