nations which were subject to his sceptre. Thither came before him, as a suppliant, Ibn-el-Arabi, the Saracen governor of Saragossa. He came to implore the aid of the great King of the Franks, against Abderahman, the Ommiad Usurper, whose genius and daring had made him all but master of Spain. Charlemagne eagerly grasped at the occasion. Possibly he might win and keep some Spanish cities; possibly alleviate the condition of the Christians-in any case, there were influence and glory to be gained; so he assembled a mighty army, and in the spring of 778 marched towards the Pyrenees. He crossed them, passing through the Vale of Roncesvalles, took Pampeluna, and moved straight upon Saragossa. But there his good fortune ended. The presence of the detested unbeliever had united all factions of the Moslem. Saragossa made a desperate defence. The Franks failed to capture it, and a negociation ensued. Charlemagne, according to the chronicles, received large presents of gold, with hostages, and promises of fidelity. In any case, he raised the siege, and marched towards France, levelling with the ground the walls of Pampeluna on his way. But when, with the van of his army, he had passed through the defiles, a new enemy, the Basques, or Gascons, of the mountains, assailed his rear. The result may be given in the very words of Eginhard. "The king brought back his army safe and undiminished, save that in passing the heights Eginhard. of the Pyrenees, on his return, he had to suffer somewhat from the perfidy of the Basques. For while the army, compelled thereto by the nature of the ground and the straitness of the defile, marched in a long and narrow line, the Basques, who lay in ambush on the crest of the mountain (for the denseness of the abundant forest was favourable to ambuscades), rushed suddenly from the heights on the men who were stationed in the rear-guard to protect those in front. The Basques cast them down into the valley beneath, and in the battle that ensued slew them to the last man. Having pillaged the baggage they made their escape, and rapidly dispersed under favour of the night which was now drawing on. The success of the Basques was greatly due to the lightness of their arms and the character of the ground. The Franks, on the other hand, heavily armed, and placed in an unfavourable position, were in every respect an unequal match for their enemies. In this battle perished Aeggihard, provost of the royal table; Anselm, count of the palace; and Roland (Hruotlandus), prefect of the March of Brittany. There was no means of taking vengeance for this blow; for the enemy dispersed so rapidly that no information could be had of the place where they were to be found." Eginhard relates the same disaster in his Annals, and adds, that this defeat almost effaced in the heart of the king all his joy for his Spanish conquests. "Hruotlandus, prefect of the March of Brittany," Lord Warden of the Marches. He had per- The Roland formed, no doubt sternly and valiantly, the of history. part of some " Belted Will," upon the Breton border, delivering his commands in brief Teutonic gutturals. He accompanied his liege upon this Spanish expedition, and perished in the Gascon ambuscade. This is all that authentic history can tell us of a name that has filled a thousand romances. Charlemagne at the epoch of this disaster was thirty-six years of age. Roland, if any credit can be accorded to an epitaph given by the pseudo-Turpin, was thirty-eight or forty-two.* Diver gences be tween the These ages of the king and his prefect of the March strike us in strange contrast with the Charlemagne and Roland of song. But in history and all respects the transformation was complete. the legend. I proceed to denote briefly the points of divergence between the history and the legend. The enemy 1. The enemy by whom the rear-guard was overthrown, instead of the barbarous Gascons became the of the hills, became the great Mohammedan power of Spain. In fact, what other power Saracens, not the Basques. could the ninth, or tenth, or eleventh century conceive of as a match for the mighty Karl? In a time when the imaginations of men were filled either with terror of Saracen invasion, or with the enthusiastic spirit of the Crusades, all other differences seemed lost in the conflict of Christian and Moslem. So it was Marsilius, the Saracen king of Saragossa, who, with a force outnumbering twenty-fold "the marvellous little company" of the Christians, lay in wait for and destroyed the rear-guard of Karl. *Sed qui lustra tenes octo et binos super annos, These are the concluding lines of the epitaph. In Signor Ciampi's edition of the Turpin the first of the above lines runs thus: Sex qui lustra gerens, octo bonus insuper annos. 2. Charlemagne, instead of being in the strength of early manhood, is in the extreme of old age, Charlebut an old age still green and vigorous; magne his white beard flows down over mail and of advanced age, not manhood. belt. Cruda viro viridisque senectus. His early enemies deemed his age something superhuman, reckoning him to have lived two hundred years. His aspect is so striking and majestic that none who seek him may mistake him. As pre- His legensented to us in the Roland, he is the ideal dary characteristics. of a king. The enthusiastic reverence with which he is regarded by his peers and warriors is absolutely unbounded. Even the traitor Ganelon has no word for him but that he is the noblest and most princely of men, whose vassalage he would rather die than forsake. The greatest sorrow of Archbishop Turpin, when dying, is that he will look upon his emperor never more. Like all great commanders of men, Karl is extremely tolerant of freedom of speech, even of open contradiction; but exacts the most unquestioning obedience to his commands; and he combines a terrible, and even savage sternness with the utmost warmth and tenderness of heart. quest of 3. It was not a sudden incursion of Karl into Spain that gave birth to the disaster. He His suphad been there for seven years, and had posed conconquered the high land, as far as to the Spain. sea, save the city of Saragossa alone. His retreat into France was induced, not by any failure of his enterprise, but by the perfidious prayers and tears, the feigned submission and promised conversion, of the Paynim king, aided by the treason of the near connection and bosom counsellor of Karl. The treason of Ganelon. 4. For how was it possible that such a calamity could have befallen a host of Christian and Frankish warriors otherwise than by treason? How often in later ages has the cry, "On nous a trahi" resounded after a French defeat! The traitor of Roncesvalles was Ganelon. Readers of the Italian poets, who in the fifteenth century turned this theme into one of sportive and delightful romance, must remember his name in its various formsGan, Gano, Ganellone.* In them, and, indeed, in all the later versions of the legend, he is depicted as the very type of a low, sordid soul, intrinsically baseminded and treacherous. "E Gan fu traditor prima che nato," says Pulci. Very different, and of a high poetical conception, is the Ganelon of the "Song of Roland." By birth among the noblest, wedded to the sister of Charlemagne, and step-father of Roland, he is no less distinguished by his splendid person and knightly valour, than by a genuine love and loyalty to Karl. His own retainers and kinsmen entertain for him the deepest devotion; his treason springs from outraged pride. His step-son Roland treats him with a height of scorn and outrecuidance, which rankles deeply in his breast. Ganelon suspects * There was a Ganilo, or Wenilo, Archbishop of Sens, about seventy years after Roncesvalles, who was accused of treachery towards Charles the Bald, and it has been conjectured that his name, having become a kind of synonym of treason, was bestowed on the legendary betrayer of Charlemagne. See preface to M. Genin's edition of the "Song of Roland," p. xxxv. All this is extremely obscure. |
