Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar. Having destroyed Nimes and Carcassonne the warriors of Anbassa charged on Rouergue. The soft sound of the galloping hooves of the little Berber horses and the sounds of the war cries in the valleys of Rouergue in 720 did not reach the infidels.

The natives, surprised, hardly understood the drama which was being played out in front of them. A Saracens arrow would paralyse a spinal cord. Children were beheaded with scimitars and the women screamed as they were sexually assaulted by the fanatics.

The Jihad, like later the Crusades, abolished the restrictions and rejected cruelty. At one stage the Moors advanced towards Gevaudan (Lozere) and as they progressed they left no man, woman, child or cattle alive.
The Rouergats may have known of the Wisigoth invasion, their progressive establishment round Toulouse, the tribes migrating on their way to North Africa and the boundless raids of the Saracens.
It was not until the year 800 that stability was achieved by Charlemange and his empire. This respite, though, was brief.

The Rougerats hardly having shaken off the recollection of the Moors, had more dreadful times to come, the Vikings. In 864, having swept down to Toulouse, they also turned towards Rouergue but this time the army of the French king, Charles le Chauve, halted them at Connac south of Requista. The battle has become an important legend.