The Emir Abderrahman fell on the field, and then night put an end to the
conflict. Both armies camped on the field; but next morning the Arabs
had vanished in full retreat for the Pyrenees (Oct. 732). The flood of
Islam had received the first check; though Spain was not to be recovered
by the Franks, they were held to have saved northern Europe. Modern
criticism has remarked that the internal dissensions of Moslem Spain did
better service than this victory to the cause of Christendom; that the
Arabs continued to hold Septimania and sent raids into Provence. But for
contemporaries there was no question that the Franks had established a
claim to the special gratitude of the Church, and Charles to his
anomalous position as an uncrowned King. The Mayor of the Palace was
fully alive to the value of ecclesiastical support. He lent his support
to the work of the English missionaries Willibrord and Boniface among
the unconverted German tribes (Frisians, Hessians, Thuringians) over
whom he claimed supremacy. He permitted Boniface to enrol himself as the
servant of the Holy See. It is true that he would not form a political
alliance with the Roman Church against the Lombards. Northern wars
absorbed him; wars with the Frisians, the Saxons, the rebellious
Bavarians, Alemannians, and Aquitanians. But from alliance with the
Church to alliance with Rome was a natural step for his successors.
Shortly before his death (741) he divided his power between his sons
Carlmann and Pepin, giving Austrasia to the one, Neustria to the other.
But Carlmann abdicated to become a monk (747) and Pepin his junior was
left to continue the work of their father single-handed. Both brothers
employed Boniface to reorganise and reform the clergy of their
dominions; Pepin allowed the saint to take from all the Frankish bishops
an oath of subjection to the Holy See; and accepted him as Archbishop of
Mainz and primate of the German church. Three years later the Mayor
obtained the permission of Pope Zacharias to depose the last of the
Merovingian puppet-kings and to assume the regal style; the Pope justly