punished for it, for in a brief time all his posterity was cut off."

In 731 the Saracens, masters of the peninsula, poured over the
Pyrenees, and entered the Septimania. They had come not to conquer and
pillage, but to conquer and occupy. They had brought with them
accordingly their wives and children. They took Narbonne, Carcassone
and Nimes, besieged Toulouse, and almost totally destroyed Bordeaux.
Thrusting up further, they reached Burgundy on one side and Poitou on
the other. Autun was sacked, and the church of S. Hilary in Poitiers
given to the flames. The Christians, wherever met with, were hewn down
with their curved scimitars; they passed on like a swarm of locusts
leaving desolation in their wake. Those of the natives who escaped did
so by taking advantage of the subterranean refuges either natural or
artificial that abounded. And that they did so is shown by the relics
of Merovingian times that have been found in them.

The Mussulmans were routed at Poitiers by Charles Martel. Three hundred
thousand Saracens, say the old chroniclers, with their usual
exaggeration, fell before the swords of the Christians. The rest fled
under the walls of Narbonne.

Between 752 and 759 Pepin the Short resolved on the conquest of
Septimania, _i.e._ Lower Languedoc. The Goths there had risen
against the Arabs and appealed for his aid. Nimes, Agde, Beziers,
Carcassonne opened their gates, but Narbonne resisted for seven years.
When it surrendered in 759, the Empire of the Franks for the first time
touched the Eastern Pyrenees. Pepin now picked a quarrel with Waifre,
Duke of Aquitaine, and crossing the Loire made of the unhappy country a
hunting-ground for the Franks. He delivered the land over to a
systematic devastation. From the Loire to the Garonne the houses were