Note 10 — III.
Reading edition
De Maistre forgot or underestimated the services of Leo the Isaurian whose repulse of the Caliph’s forces at Constantinople (a.d. 717) was perhaps as important for Europe as the more renowned victory of Charles Martel. But then Leo was an Iconoclast and heretic. Cf. Finlay’s Byzantine Empire, pp. 22, 23.