The greatest date in history

The last effort the Moslems made to destroy Christendom was contemporary with the end of the reign of Charles II in England and of his brother James and of the usurper William III. It failed during the last years of the 17th-century, only just over 200 years ago. Vienna, as we saw, was almost taken and only saved by the Christian army under the command of the King of Poland on a date that ought to be the most famous in history—September 11, 1683.
— Hillaire Belloc, The Great Heresies (quoted in “Strategic Misdiagnosis: Understanding Enemy Doctrine and the Center of Gravity,” Jason Orlich, Major, U.S. Army, 2009)

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Mick writes:

The last effort the Moslems made to destroy Christendom was contemporary with the end of the reign of Charles II in England and of his brother James and of the usurper William III. It failed during the last years of the 17th-century, only just over 200 years ago. Vienna, as we saw, was almost taken and only saved by the Christian army under the command of the King of Poland on a date that ought to be the most famous in history—September 11, 1683.

September 11, 1683 was 326.5 years ago, not just over 200. Assuming it is a typo and the writer meant “just over 300,” 26.5 years is about 10 percent of 300, not really “just over.”

A small but telling example of wide spread numerical illiteracy among U.S. punditry.

LA replies:

If Hillaire Belloc were a contemporary American pundit, you would be correct. However, Belloc, a Catholic of French-Anglo parentage, was born in France in 1870 and was educated in England where he lived most of his life and died in 1953. He, wrote The Great Heresies in 1938. From the battle at Vienna in 1683 to the publication of The Great Heresies in 1938 was 255 years. That’s a bit over “only just over” 200 years, but it’s less than 300.

Further, the battle of Vienna is not what Belloc is referring to when he speaks of an event that occurred “only just over 200 years ago.” He is referring to the failure of “the last effort the Moslems made to destroy Christendom.” And that failure was not complete until the end of the Austro-Ottoman war 16 years after the Battle of Vienna, with the Battle of Zenta in 1697 and the signing of the Treaty of Karlowitz on January 26,1699. The treaty ended the 150 year long Ottoman occupation of the Hungarian kingdom and terminated the Moslem presence and influence in Europe (except for the Balkans) for the next 300 years, freeing the West from the Moslem threat for the first time in a thousand years and allowing the modern world to be born … so that, as tolerant, peaceful moderns, we could forget that terrible thousand year struggle for survival against Islam and insanely start allowing Moslems to immigrate peacefully into the West. (By the way, my birthday is January 26. Maybe that’s why I feel so strongly the need to repeat the work of the Treaty of Karlowitz and expel the Moslems from the West once again.)

So, when Belloc said that the failure of the Moslems’ last effort to destroy Christendom occurred “just over 200 years ago,” he was speaking of the period from 1699 to 1938—239 years.

LA continues:

There is a similar misunderstanding when we speak of the Battle of Tours in 732 as the end of the Moslem threat to Gaul and Europe in the eighth century. In fact, there was a subsequent Moslem invasion of Gaul three years after the Battle of Tours (or Poitiers), which Charles Martel subsequently defeated in two campaigns; and the final expulsion of major Moslem forces from what is now France did not occur until 759, 27 years after the battle of Tours—just as the final expulsion of the Moslems from central Europe did not take place until 16 years after the Battle of Vienna.

From Wipipedia:

In 735, the new governor of al-Andalus again invaded Gaul. Antonio Santosuosso and other historians detail how the new governor of Al-Andalus, ‘Uqba b. Al-Hajjaj, again moved into France to avenge the defeat at Poitiers and to spread Islam. Santosuosso notes that ‘Uqba b. Al-Hajjaj converted about 2,000 Christians he captured over his career. In the last major attempt at forcible invasion of Gaul through Iberia, a sizable invasion force was assembled at Saragossa and entered what is now French territory in 735, crossed the River Rhone and captured and looted Arles. From there, he struck into the heart of Provence, ending with the capture of Avignon, despite strong resistance. Uqba b. Al-Hajjaj’s forces remained in French territory for about four years, carrying raids to Lyons, Burgundy, and Piedmont. Again Charles Martel came to the rescue, reconquering most of the lost territories in two campaigns in 736 and 739, except for the city of Narbonne, which finally fell in 759. Alessandro Santosuosso strongly argues that the second (Umayyad) expedition was probably more dangerous than the first. The second expedition’s failure put an end to any serious Muslim expedition across the Pyrenees, although raids continued. Plans for further large-scale attempts were hindered by internal turmoil in the Umayyad lands which often made enemies out of their own kind.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 21, 2010 06:17 PM | Send