Summary: Charles Martel, along with other Frankish leaders, besieged and recaptured the city of Avignon. They then advanced south and besieged Narbonne. While the city was under siege, Omar ibn Khaled led a Muslim army north to relieve his comrades. Charles marched his army south from Narbonne and the armies met above the Berre River. The battle was a decisive Frankish victory and much of the Muslim army was slaughtered as the soldiers fled into the water along the coast.

Once again, a very strong tribe of Ishmaelites, who are incorrectly called Saracens, rebelled, even crossing over the Rhône River with scheming, infidels. By the trickery and fraud of Maurontus with his allies, those same Saracens, having collected a hostile army, entered the most heavily-fortified and prominently-located city of Avignon, and the region was devastated by those rebels. Against them, the extraordinary man Duke Charles directed his brother, a most industrious man, Duke Childebrand, with the rest of the dukes and counts, to those parts with their warlike equipment; everyone, quickly arriving to that very city, set up their tents. They occupied the outskirts of the town and suburbs from all sides, besieged that most-fortified city, and drew up lines of battle. Following this, the warrior Charles attacked the aforesaid city, surrounded the walls, seized the outworks, and established a blockade; in the manner of Jericho with a great crash at the gates and the sound of trumpets, they rushed over the walls and fortifications with machines and scaling ropes. They succeeded in entering that most-fortified town. They captured their enemies’ armies, striking them down and slaughtering them, and effectively restored the town into his power. Therefore, the victor and distinguished warrior, the intrepid Charles, crossed the Rhône river with his army, breached the borders of the Goths, advanced all the way to Narbonnese Gaul,  and besieged their metropolis, that most-illustrious city. Above the Aude river he set up a fortification in a circle in the manner of rams; he enclosed the king of the Saracens, by the name of Amor [Iussef ibn ‘Abd ar-Rahman], there  with his followers, and he [Charles] laid out camps on all sides.

Hearing these things, the greatest nobles and princes of the Saracens, who at that time dwelled in the region of the Spanish, united an army of the enemy with another king, by the name of Athima [Omar ibn Khaled]. Armed with machines, they manfully rose up against Charles, prepared for battle; the aforementioned Duke Charles the triumphant rushed to meet them, above the Berre river, and in the valley of the Corbarian Palace. And with those men clashing together, the Saracens, defeated and prostrated, seeing that their king was killed, turned their backs in flight; and those who had fled, desiring to escape by ship, swimming into the stagnant sea, surely climbed over each other in their efforts. Soon the Franks with boats and thrown weapons threw themselves upon them [the Saracens], and slew them, drowning them in the water. And thus the Franks, triumphing over the enemies, seized great plunder and spoils [and] captured a multitude of prisoners.

With the duke victorious, they [the Franks] cleared out and laid waste to the Gothic region; Charles destroyed the suburbs and fortifications of that region [and] burned them to the ground with fire, entirely destroying the walls and defenses of the most famous cities Nîmes, Agde, and Béziers. Having defeated the army of the enemy through Christ, the protector in all things and the director of divine victory, he [Charles] returned salubriously to his own realm, into the land of the Franks to the capital of his principality.

Latin text from Recueil des historiens des Gaules et de la France, vol. 2 (Paris: Victor Palme, 1869), 456-457.  Translated by the Turma ad Latinam, the Latin Reading Group of the United States Military Academy: Cadets Cammack Shepler, John Robertson, Erin McCarthy, Andrew Marsh, Collin Smith, Ryan Kreiser, and Michael O’Connor, Major Ronald Braasch, Major Thomas McShea, and Professor Clifford Rogers.