THE CHRISTIAN REALMS 251Military expeditions under successive governors of Al-Andalus did
expand Arab conquests along the Mediterranean coast of southern
France, reaching as far as Avignon in 737, but the main thrust of such
undertakings was into Aquitaine via Pamplona. The effect of these,
from the vantage of hindsight, was to be seriously counter-productive,
for so threatening did the successive Arab incursions into Aquitaine
become that eventually its duke, Eudo, who like his predecessors had
long resisted the claims of Frankish royal authority, had to call on
Charles 'Martel', the Carolingian Mayor of the Palace, for aid, result-
ing in the defeat and death of the Arab governor 'Abd al-Ral].man at
the battle of Poi tiers in 732 or 733. Although this in itself did not put
an end to the incursions, it did bring revived Frankish royal authority
firmly into Aquitaine and Provence. This was not achieved instantly,
for Charles's son Pepin III and grandson Charlemagne had to face
continued military opposition from the Aquitainian dukes and even-
tually had to suppress their line, but the process was begun by the
Poi tiers campaign.49 Once involved, the Frankish rulers were also able
to fulfil one of the ambitions of their sixth-century Merovingian
predecessors by bringing all of southern France under their control.
The Arabs were dislodged from recent gains in Provence by Charles
'Martel' in the late 730s, and Pepin, the first Carolingian king, went
on to take Narbonne in 759, and thus finally added all the old
Visigothic Septimania to the Frankish crown.
The revitalised Frankish monarchy soon became involved in the
affairs of the peninsula itself, and, as in the Visigothic past, appeals
for aid could be directed to it against the authority of the central
power in Spain, now the Umayyad Amirate. In 778 Charlemagne,
fresh from the conquest of Italy and successful campaigns against the
Saxons, was invited to come to the assistance of the governor of
Zaragoza, then planning revolt against his overlord in Cordoba. This
proved a disaster as the city of Zaragoza was held against the Frankish
king and in retreat the rearguard of his army was annihilated by the
Basques in the pass of Roncesvalles.
No further Frankish involvement occurred until the beginning of
the next century, but in the meantime Charlemagne increased his
hold on Aquitaine, having his son Louis crowned as its king in 781.
It was from this new kingdom of Aquitaine, under the direction of
Louis with the supervision of his father, that Frankish penetration
across the eastern end of the Pyrenees was successfully carried out. In
801 a Frankish army under Louis seized Barcelona. Its governor Sa'diin