This is Shields High.

Gather around my friends for I have a story to tell. The epic tale of a man who came to be known as the Hammer, Charles Martel.

You may have heard of Charles perhaps in passing or maybe not at all. That's because there are two versions of what happened on that fateful day.

One of those versions, in the year of our Lord 732 AD, is the one generally taught in schools today if it's covered at all, and it goes something like this.

After the fall of Rome, the greatest civilization the world had ever known, there was a skirmish in the territory of what is today France.

A Muslim-rating force fought a Frankish army near the towns of Tuo and Patee. The Muslims lost this battle, and then the Christian forces went back to squabbling amongst themselves, and the dark ages continued on for a few hundred years.

Some scholars and historians maybe use this event as something of a geographic marker in that this battle, battle of tour, was the furthest that Muslim soldiers ever made it into the heart of Europe.

But I have another version for you. The truth of what happened in October of 732 on that field near the cities of Tuo and Patee. Europe was saved. Gihad was stopped.

Christendom was preserved. Western civilization survived. Yes, the modern world we now know. All of it, all of it turned on Charles Martel, defeating a ruthless and skilled Islamic army through a great role of the dice.

Because of that day on the 10th of October 732, because of those brave soldiers under the command of Prince Charles of the Franks, the forces of Gihad were held at bay.

And the Middle Ages led to the Renaissance, the age of exploration, the industrial revolution, and the global ascendance of the Western world. But it almost was not so.

The darkness of conquest, slavery, and submission nearly spread across the whole of Europe. There would have been no Europe, no Britain, and no America had Charles lost on that day.

When you look through the lens of the years proceeding this battle, the victory at tour was something of a miracle. In fact, the odds heavily favored that the forces of Islam would have easily swept away Charles and his forces off the battlefield.

Once that was accomplished, the underbelly of Europe lay almost entirely undefended. Paris is only 150 miles or so from Tural, where the pivotal battle took place.

If Charles had lost, there was simply no force that would have stopped the Muslim general Abd al-Rahman al-Qafiki from conquering all the way to the coast of northern France and beyond.

The 19th century historian, Sir Edward Gibbon, described the dire situation of the Christian forces leading up to the Battle of Tural in his decline and fall of the Roman Empire.

And he described a seemingly invincible march of the Islamic hordes in this way.

A victorious line of march had been prolonged above a thousand miles from the rock of Gibraltar to the banks of the Lwaya. The repetition of an equal space would have carried the sarsins to the confines of Poland and the Highlands of Scotland.

The Rhine is not more impassable than the Nile or Euphrates, and the Arabian fleet might have sailed without a naval combat into the mouth of the Thames.

Perhaps the interpretation of the Quran would now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits might demonstrate to a circumcised people the sanctity and truth of the revelation of Muhammad.

Those were the stakes on the battlefield that day at Tural, everything that we know, cherish, and love in the West could have been lost.

To fully appreciate how unlikely the victory of Charles Martell's side was that day, to get a real sense of the desperation of those Christian foot soldiers and light cavalry on the battlefield of Tural, we have to look at the events leading up to it.

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