The Ifs of History/Chapter 2
THE most tremendous contingencies in all history—the determination of the fate of whole continents, whole civilizations, by a single incident—are sometimes the occurrences that are most completely and signally ignored by the ordinary citizen. For instance, it does not occur to the man on the street that but for a turn in the tide of battle on a certain October day in the year 732, on a sunny field in northern-central France, he, the man on the street, would to-day be a devout Mussulman, listening at evening for the muezzin's call from a neighboring minaret, abjuring pork and every alcoholic beverage, and shunning stocks and all kinds of speculation as prohibited forms of gambling.
Islamism would to-day, but for a single hard-fought battle and its issue, probably be the established form of religion in all Europe. Even England would have been unable to resist the onset of the impetuous Arabs, once they had established themselves in triumph from the Tagus to the Vistula; and the conversion of all Europe would have carried with it the Moslemizing of the new world—supposing, indeed, that America had up to this time been discovered under Moorish auspices, which is unlikely.
Europe was certainly nearer to conquest by the Moors in the eighth century than most people suppose. There are few finer or more heroic episodes in history than the extraordinary series of conquests by means of which, a handful of fanatical Arabs, inspired by the prophet Mohammed, carried, with fire and sword, the faith of Islam over the world, until, within two hundred years of the date of the prophet's birth, it reigned from the shores of the Atlantic to the banks of the Indus. Horde after horde of impetuous warriors of the Crescent had arisen. Their purpose, frankly, was to convert the world, and convert it by force. Cutting themselves off from their bases of supply, and relying upon an alliance of miracle and rapine to sustain them, their triumphant campaigns were one continuous and colossal Sherman's march to the sea.
They struck Europe at the east, and also by way of the west. Greek fire checked them at the gates of Constantinople in the east, but they overran all northern Africa, crossed the Straits of Gibraltar, and flowed like a torrent over Spain and southern France. By the year 731, as Gibbon truly says, the whole south of France, from the mouth of the Garonne to that of the Rhone, had assumed the manners and religion of Arabia.
Abd-er-Rahman, the conqueror, reigned supreme in southwestern Europe. Spain and Portugal had been annexed to Asia, and now the turn of France had surely come.
But at this crisis a heroic figure arose in Europe—scarcely an elegant figure, though a picturesque one. The throne of the Franks had been seized by an illegitimate son of old King Pepin, a rough and heedless fighter, whose rule pleased the people better than did that of the priests and women whom Pepin had left behind him. This bloody-handed usurper was named Charles, or Karl, and he was destined afterward to be called Martel, "the Hammer," on account of the iron blows that he struck upon all who faced him.
Abd-er-Rahman, the victorious Moor, advanced into northern France, overthrowing armies with ease, and sacking cities, churches and convents as he marched. Nothing could stay him, as it appeared. He had planted the standard of the prophet at the gates of Tours, which is one hundred and thirty miles, as the crow flies, from Paris. But meantime the usurping and base-born Charles, in command of a small army mostly composed of gigantic and well-seasoned German warriors, was sneaking along, like an Indian, under the shelter of a range of hills, toward the Saracen camp; and one day, to Abd-er-Rahman's great surprise, Charles fell upon him like a veritable hammer of red-hot iron.
Not in one moment, nor in one day, was the issue decided. Six days the armies fought, and through all Abd-er-Rahman and his fanatical horde held their own. But on the seventh day Charles led a battalion of his biggest, fiercest Germans straight against the Moorish center. Abd-er-Rahman himself was slain; his army, appalled by this circumstance, was broken and beaten, and faded away toward the South.
Charles Martel made sure his victory by another successful campaign. The Moors were driven out of France forever. In their stead Charles himself reigned. He had saved Europe to Christianity. Yet for his lack of docility, the church execrated him.
If Abd-er-Rahman had overrun France, as he would surely have done if a less redoubtable and terrible antagonist than Charles Martel had faced him at Tours, he would next have turned his attention to Germany. With its fall, Italy and Rome would have invited his attention. There he would have found few but priests to oppose him, and the empire of the East, attacked in the rear as well as in the front, would speedily have succumbed. No Saint Cyril would have gone forth to convert the Russians and Bulgarians, who would promptly have been Tartarized.
As we have seen, nothing could have saved England or Ireland. The prophet's world-conquest must have been accomplished.
What then? Would the western world have remained at the stage of cultivation in which we see Arabia to-day? There is no reason to suppose that that would have been quite the case. It was not so in Moorish Spain, which rose to a high level of culture. Christianity would not have been suppressed. It was not suppressed in Turkey or Spain. But it would probably have been ruled, dominated, forced into odd corners, and to some extent Moslemized. Learning would not have languished, for in certain important forms it flourished in Spain. The western brain, the Aryan genius, must have had its way in many intellectual respects. Yet the cast of European thought would surely have been sicklied over with oriental contemplativeness.
The "hustler" never could have existed under Moslem rule. The speculator never would have risen, because he would not have been tolerated. The Moslem doctrine forbids censuses and statistics, treating them as a form of wicked curiosity concerning the rule of God on earth. Pictorial art, and sculpture, which the Koran regards as idolatrous, would have been sternly repressed. Literature would have been great along the line of poetry; science great along the line of mathematics.
The western woman would have been orientalized. So far from forming clubs, she would not have been permitted even to pray in the mosques.
America would have remained undiscovered for centuries; and if at last accident or search had laid it bare, it would have followed the path of Europe. The mellifluous tones of the muezzin's cadence, "La ilah 'i il 'Allah," "There is no god but God," would echo now where the shouts and yells of the Wall Street speculators reverberate. And the abode of the mighty would have been a House of Quiet, not the home of strenuousness.