14 THE DECLINE AND FALL chosen by the Moslems : they claimed the province of Septi- mania, or Languedoc, as a just dependence of the Spanish monarchy : the vineyards of Gascony and the city of Bordeaux Avere possessed by the sovereign of Damascus and Samarcand ; and the south of France, from the mouth of the Garonne to that of the Rhone, assumed the manners and religion of Arabia. But these narrow limits were scorned by the spirit of Abdalrahman, or Abderame, who had been restored by the caliph Hashem ^^ to the wishes of the soldiers and people of Spain. That veteran and daring commander adjudged to the obedience of the prophet whatever yet remained of France or of Europe ; and prepared to execute the sentence, at the head of a formidable host, in the full confidence of surmounting all opposition, either of nature or of man. His first care was to suppress a domestic rebel, who commanded the most important passes of the Pyrenees: Munuza, a Moorish chief, had accepted the alliance of the duke of Aquitain ; and Eudes, from a motive of private or public interest, devoted his beauteous daughter to the embraces of the African misbeliever. But the strongest fortresses of Cerdagne were invested by a superior force ; the rebel was overtaken and slain in the mountains ; and his widow was sent a captive to Damascus, to gratify the desires, or more probably the vanity, of the commander of the faithful. From the Pyrenees Abderame proceeded without delay to the passage of the Rhone and the siege of Aries. An ariny of Christians attempted the relief of the city ; the tombs of their leaders were yet visible in the thirteenth century ; and many thousands of their dead bodies were carried down the rapid stream into the Mediterranean sea. The arms of Abderame were not less successful on the side of the ocean. He passed without opposition the Garonne and Dordogne, which unite their waters in the gulf of Boi-deaux ; but he found, beyond those rivers, the camp of the intrepid Eudes, who had formed a second army, and sustained a second defeat, so fatal to the Christians that, according to their sad confession, God alone could reckon the number of the slain. The victorious Saracen overran the provinces of Aquitain, whose Gallic names are dis- guised, rather than lost, in the modern appellations of P^rigord, Saintonge, and Poitou : his standards Avere planted on the walls, or at least before the gates, of Tours and of Sens ; and his detachments overspread the kingdom of Burgundy, as far as ^■^[Hisham, A.D. 724, Jan. — 743, Feb.!
