Before returning to Syria, Mūsa had stood upon the Pyrenees and seen a vision of European conquest. His recall interrupted his further advance; but others soon pushed forward. An Arab governor, as early as 719, occupied the southern part of Gaul, called Septimania, with the cities of Carcasonne and Narbonne, and from these centres he began to make raids upon Burgundy and Aquitania. Eudes, Duke of Aquitania, administered a total defeat to the Saracens under the walls of Toulouse in 721, but this only diverted their course more to the west. They sacked Beaune, exacted tribute from Sens, seized Avignon in 730, and made numerous raids upon the neighbouring districts. The new governor of Narbonne, Abd-er-Rahmān, resolved upon the conquest of all Gaul. He had already checked the operations of Eudes, who presumed, after his victory at Toulouse, to carry the war into the Saracens' country; and now he attacked the Tarraconaise, and boldly invaded Aquitaine, defeated Eudes on the banks of the Garonne, captured Bordeaux by assault, and in 732 marched on in triumph towards Tours, where he had heard of the treasures of the Abbey of St. Martin. Between Poictiers and Tours he was met by Charles, the son of Pepin the Heristal, then virtual King of France, for the feeble Merovingian sovereign, Lothair, had no voice to oppose the will of his powerful Mayor of the Palace. The Saracens went joyfully to the fight. They expected a second field of the Guadalete, and looked to see fair France their prey from Calais to Marseilles. An issue momentous for Europe was to be decided, and the conflict that ensued has rightly been numbered among the fifteen decisive battles of the world. The question to be judged by force of arms was whether Europe was to be Christian or Mohammedan--whether the future Nôtre Dame was to be a church or a mosque--perhaps even whether St. Paul's, when it came to be built, should echo the chant of the Agnus Dei or the muttered prayers of Islam. Had not the Saracens been checked at Tours there is no reason to suppose that they would have stopped at the English Channel. But, as fate decreed, the tide of Mohammedan invasion had reached its limit, and the ebb was about to set in. Charles and his Franks were no emasculate race like the Romanized Spaniards and Goths. They were at least as hardy and valorous as the Moors themselves, and their magnificent stature gave them an advantage which could not fail to tell. Six days were spent in partial engagements, and then on the seventh came a general medley. Charles cut through the ranks of the Moslems with irresistible might, dealing right and left such ponderous blows that from that day he was called Charles Martel, "Karl of the Hammer." His Frankish followers, inspired by their leader's prowess, bore down upon the Saracens with crushing force; and the whole array of the Moslems broke and fled in utter rout. The spot was long and shudderingly known in Andalusia by the name of the "Pavement of Martyrs."