Charles Martel

Illegitimate son of Pepin of Herstal and the man who turned the office of Mayor of the Palace into a hereditary throne in all but name. His decisive victory over an Umayyad raiding army at Tours in 732 halted Muslim expansion north of the Pyrenees and fixed his reputation as the savior of Christian Francia. He divided the Frankish realm between his sons; one of them, Pepin, finished the dynastic transformation by deposing the last Merovingian king.