For the aristocratic audience of early twelfth-century France, The Song of Roland was a testament to their glorious past as a nation and an account of the present, a testament to the glorious days of Charlemagne three centuries earlier, and an account of the king and his knights, who were making their formidable presence increasingly felt in twelfth-century life. The poem thus unites two separate but related worlds, the eighth-century world of Charlemagne and the contemporary world of the rising knightly class.
Of the history of Charlemagne, Roland, and the tragedy in Roncevals, little is known. The most faithful account of the events of the year 778, the time of the actual occurrence of the massacre, comes from Einhard, Charlemagne’s friend and biographer, who died in 840. In his Life of Charlemagne, the first biography of a secular figure of the medieval era, which he wrote around the third decade of the ninth century, he recounts the king’s devastating attack on the country of Spain:
Charles crossed the Pyrenees and received the surrender of all the towns and castles along the way; he returned with his army sustaining no losses. But recrossing the Pyrenees, he was made to experience Basque treachery. While his army was being forced by a narrow passage to proceed in a long column, some Basques were lying in wait to ambush his men from the top of the highest mountain, for the dense woods were well suited there for ambushes. They fell on the last part of the baggage train, driving the men from the protecting rearguard back into the valley, where they waged combat and slaughtered them to the last man. Then, having looted the baggage train, they dispersed quickly in every direction beneath the cloak of falling darkness. In this encounter, the Basques had the advantage of light armament and suitable terrain, whereas the French were disadvantaged by heavy armament and the ground’s unevenness. Eggihard, the royal steward, Anselm, the count of the palace, Roland, the prefect of the Breton March, and many others were slaughtered in this engagement.
Einhard’s Life focuses on Charlemagne; it is a short, personal biography of a great and beloved leader, written by one who knew him very well. And it survives in a vast number of manuscripts. Moreover, Roland is here only the prefect of the Breton March, the third of the three nobles named and therefore the least important of the three men who died in the battle; nothing else survives of Roland’s identity, and his historical existence remains questionable.
In the nearly three centuries that intervene between Einhard’s Life and The Song of Roland, the legendary stature of Charlemagne grows immensely from the realistic portrait of Einhard’s king. He has become a mythic figure, the superhuman, almost supernatural French champion of the Church and of his country; he is, in essence, the defender of the true faith against the pagan infidels who are constantly striving to overcome and vanquish the Christian forces. And Roland himself, now safely enshrined as Charlemagne’s nephew and his greatest warrior, is the epitome of loyalty to his king and to his God.
The late eleventh and early twelfth centuries were the era of the Great Crusades, which set Christian heroes against pagan warriors. A long series of religious wars that began toward the end of the eleventh century, the Crusades sought ultimately to restore Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem, for the Crusades came about as a consequence of Muslim rulers forbidding access to all Christians to the sacred places. The Christians did recapture Jerusalem in 1099, a suitable date around which the composition of The Song of Roland might well have taken place.
As Einhard wrote, Charlemagne “loved foreign travelers and took great measures to take them under his protection.” He had roads built for them, and he made it illegal to withhold accommodation from pilgrims in quest of distant shrines. When the Muslim lords denied all Christians entry to holy Jerusalem in the late eleventh century, people began naturally to turn their minds back to Charlemagne; he had always protected pilgrims. So strong was their belief in his power that during the crusade of 1101 rumors arose that Charlemagne had come back to life to guide and comfort his countrymen in this new time of crisis.
The Song of Roland unites the glorious past of the French nation with the contemporary crusades. Charlemagne opens and closes the poem—he is the avuncular center of the tragedy—and Roland is its true hero. The poem is a tribute to Roland’s stature as the finest knight in the world, one doomed to his tragic end in his ceaseless battle for God and country.
Using the epic form now known as the chanson de geste (a song of a deed or action)—most chansons de geste focus on events that took place during the Carolingian period of the late eighth century and well into the ninth century, and their heroes are Charlemagne’s knights or barons, who frequently fight pagan forces—the poet of The Song of Roland tells a tragic story, though it takes place amid the glory that was Charlemagne’s world. This poem is certainly the oldest existing epic poem—and the best—in French literature.
This particular epic song was, indeed, a song, and the narrative poem was probably sung or partly sung by a minstrel, who may be the Turolde mentioned in the last line of the poem. Turolde may also be the copyist who entered the poem in his manuscript; indeed, Turolde may even be the composer of this epic story. Although Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne may serve as a source for this poem, it is not the only source. Accessible now in written form, the poem was probably diffused and circulated orally for a long time before its final composition in this surviving form in the twelfth century.
There are references in the mid-eleventh century to the story of Roland and his companions, and additional frequent references to the story appear in the twelfth century. Even William of Malmesbury, the preeminent English historian of the twelfth century, noted that at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, a minstrel sang The Song of Roland to encourage the Normans.
Like most chansons de geste, The Song of Roland treats noble feats of the past. British literature has its Beowulf, though it was of much earlier origin; French literature has its Song of Roland. And the form of this French epic consists of laisses, or stanzas of irregular length, with the meter being decasyllabic, for the decasyllable was seen as the proper epic meter.
As the medieval audience listened to the singer, they heard an exciting story. Charlemagne, the great emperor of France, is returning home after seven long years conquering his southern neighbor, Spain. One problem remains: the city of Saragossa is governed by King Marsille, a pagan ruler. The opening laisse, therefore, establishes the opposition between Charlemagne, the good king serving the true God, and King Marsille, the pagan monarch who does not love and serve God. The war between them operates throughout the poem. King Marsille convenes his pagan council, which tells him to pretend to offer fealty and friendship to Charlemagne to prove his loyalty; in addition, the pagan king will pretend to convert to Christianity and become Charlemagne’s vassal. Despite his promises, the king has no intention of doing any such thing. Charlemagne stands without defense from King Marsille’s traitorous tricks.
In Cordoba, a city Charlemagne has just seized, Charlemagne greets the pagan embassy and listens to their promises. At his own council the next day, Count Roland, Charlemagne’s nephew, recommends the rejection of the offer, preferring to send French forces to capture Saragossa and thereby avenge the recent beheading of their two ambassadors. To this call to arms, only Ganelon, brother-in-law of Charlemagne and stepfather of Roland, immediately answers, urging the acceptance of the treaty and pointedly rebuking Roland: “Advice that comes from pride should be reproved. / Let’s cling to wisdom; leave foolishness to fools” (226–27). Charlemagne agrees with Ganelon, sending him, not Roland nor any other of the Twelve Peers, his trusted warriors, to King Marsille to arrange peace.
There is a bitter enmity between Roland and his stepfather, which is explained much later in the poem; Roland had, according to Ganelon’s testimony, “cheated me in gold and gain, / So I had Roland killed, by my arrangements” (3678–79). But these words are the expression of an evil character who is himself motivated by greed (greed had supplanted pride in the eleventh century as the deadliest of the seven deadly sins). Under greed’s control, and extremely jealous of Roland—of Roland’s innate power over his companions and his obvious sway over Charlemagne—Ganelon is blind to Roland’s sterling qualities, which make Roland both beloved and feared. As Charlemagne says of Ganelon, “You are the Devil! Mad and rabid blood / Has entered to your heart” (735–36). Ganelon’s end will be a fitting conclusion to an evil life.
In the great walled city of Saragossa, Ganelon appears before King Marsille with Charlemagne’s offer, informing him that if he refuses the terms, he will be put to death—a fictional addition by Ganelon. He promises Marsille that only half of Spain will remain to him—the other half going to Roland—his second fiction. He urges King Marsille to pretend to accept the offer, then ambush Roland and the rearguard in the narrow pass after Charlemagne has already traversed the mountains: Roland will be slaughtered, and Spain will be invaded no more. King Marsille accepts this treacherous plan, and Ganelon returns to the French troops.
To lead the French rearguard under the tight bluffs, Ganelon nominates Roland, who will take only twenty thousand Frenchmen for his forces. Although beset by dreams and fearful for his nephew and the troops under his surveillance, Charlemagne accedes, “Knowing that Ganelon will be the wreck / Of lovely France” (822–23). That Charlemagne followed Ganelon’s advice, though fearing Ganelon would “be the wreck” of France, reveals Charlemagne’s careful deliberation of the advice of all his advisors, even when he doubted their wisdom.
As the pagan forces march on Roland and the rearguard, Oliver, Roland’s companion-in-arms, suspects Ganelon of betrayal, but Roland will embrace no such suspicion about his stepfather. Although Oliver begs Roland to sound his horn, Oliphant, to bring Charlemagne back from the north, Roland steadfastly refuses, “I’d be a fool to throw / Honor away” (1043–44). As the poet says, “Roland is valiant. Oliver is wise. / Both are marvelously noble knights” (1082–83). Archbishop Turpin blesses the French, “Confess your sins out loud and ask God’s mercy. / I now absolve you into life eternal” (1121–22). As the French and the pagans engage in a long and protracted encounter—one hundred thousand pagans dead and only two thousand still alive!—the French lose many of their troops, with only sixty still alive. When Roland seeks to sound his horn and summon Charlemagne, Oliver sarcastically reproaches him: “Think of the shame your relatives would bear, / Knowing you blew your horn, yes, lifelong shame” (1676–77), and threatens to end Roland’s engagement to his own sister. After the archbishop intervenes in their quarrel to urge the sounding of the horn, Roland gives a blast, and this sound summons Charlemagne, who has Ganelon placed under arrest before heading back to the pass.
In the subsequent fray, Roland sees his close companion, Oliver, killed, then the few remaining Frenchmen facing imminent slaughter. Amid a sea of dead bodies, Roland laments his own end,
making a prayer for his salvation:
The countries that he conquered and subjected,
The men of France from whom he is descended,
And Charlemagne, who cherished him and fed him.
He cannot help but weep as he remembers.
But now he must recall himself, confessing
His sins to God and begging for His mercy:
“Eternal God the Father, faithful ever,
Who rescued Lazarus from death and rescued
Daniel from the lions’ den, defend me
From my life’s sins, which put my soul in peril.”
He holds his right glove, offers it, and stretches
It up toward God. The Angel Gabriel
Receives it from his hand. Then Roland rests
His head upon his arm, clasps hands together,
And goes on further to his end.
God sends His cherubim with Gabriel
And Michael Help-of-Sailors. They descend
And carry Roland’s soul to Him in Heaven. (2335–52)
Roland dies a Christian hero’s death. Now his soul ascends to Heaven.
Charlemagne arrives on the field of battle, but too late to prevent the terrible tragedy that has taken place. When he prays for a longer day, his prayer is answered: in their flight from the returning French troops, the pagans lose their lives in the Ebro River. Meanwhile, Baligant, the Grand Emir of Babylon and a noble warrior, comes to King Marsille, who promises to hand over to him the governance of Spain if he can defeat Charlemagne and his forces. Brimming with confidence, Baligant now prepares for a final encounter with the French forces.
At Roncevals, Charlemagne seeks out the body of Roland. On finding it, he laments his most grievous loss and, gathering up the bodies of Roland, Oliver, and Turpin, he has their hearts wrapped
in soft silk and placed in a small white marble crypt. Then he prepares himself for battle against Baligant with an expressive prayer that recalls Roland’s dying prayer:
“True Father, today stand by me and defend me,
You Who rescued Jonah from the depths,
Pulling him forth from the great whale’s belly,
Who spared the repentant King of Nineveh,
Who rescued Daniel when the lions pressed
About him in the Babylonian den,
And the Three Children in the furnace—You saved them!—
Be with me Lord today, in love be present,
And in Your mercy grant that I avenge
The death of Roland, Roland, my dear nephew!” (3029–38)
In the ensuing fray, Charlemagne harangues his men to victory; Baligant, who slays four French knights, prays to the three pagan gods. The French forces suffer the loss of seven thousand troops. The final encounter lasts all day long, with Charlemagne and Baligant meeting in single combat. Baligant proposes a pact, which the French king rejects. When Charlemagne receives a near-fatal blow, the Angel Gabriel rushes to his side: “Hearing the angel’s urgings near at hand, / Charles’s fears and hesitations vanish” (3529–30). He strikes the emir “with the sword of France” (3532) and Baligant falls dead.
Some pagans flee, though very few. In Saragossa, King Marsille “gives up his body, burdened / With sins, to earth; his soul, to evil spirits” (3563–64). Charlemagne captures the city, ending all vestiges of paganism within its walls, and more than one hundred thousand pagans receive baptism. He retains as prisoner Queen Bramimunde, the widow of King Marsille, and conducts her back to Aix. En route home, Charlemagne buries his three preeminent warriors—his nephew Roland; Roland’s trusted companion, Oliver; and the wise Archbishop Turpin—in a white tomb at Blaye. When he is back at his palace in Aix, he encounters Alda, Oliver’s sister, who comes to hear news of her betrothed, Roland. Stricken to the heart by his death, she herself falls dead at Charlemagne’s feet.
Ganelon is then brought out for trial. A crowded court includes thirty of his supporting relatives. Ganelon is handsome; indeed, “If he were loyal, you would think, ‘What valor!’” (3684). The barons cannot reach a verdict and report to Charlemagne their unwelcome news. Thierry of Anjou offers single combat on behalf of Roland, and Pinabel, Ganelon’s relative, takes up the challenge. Thierry’s success in combat leads to the hanging of all of Ganelon’s relatives, and Ganelon himself is dragged to his death.
In a final moment of conversion, Queen Bramimunde, having listened to many sermons, lessons, and prayers, desires baptism, taking the new name of Juliana: “Christian she is, in knowledge
and in faith” (3905). Alone in his vaulted chamber, Charlemagne receives a visit from the Angel Gabriel, who tells him that pagans have besieged yet another city. “How tired I am.
How weary my life is” (3918), he laments, and the poem ends.
When the audience heard this story, they were duly impressed with their own recognition of France’s past and one of its most glorious and tragic moments. All the men and women acknowledged the beauty of the story and the complexity of the narrative. They knew about Roncevals and the tragedy that had occurred there three centuries earlier. It had become the stuff of legend, and they relished the vibrant retelling of the story.
In this audience were both men and women, the latter a significant addition since there had been no women in earlier medieval audiences for the male-oriented stories of the heroic past. And their presence accounts, in part, for the significance of two women in the story, the stalwart Queen of Spain and Roland’s beautiful betrothed, Alda.
Bramimunde’s repeated references to Charlemagne connect her to the French king. After surviving the pagans’ serious defeats, she adopts Christianity out of love and becomes a fitting and final proof of the power of faith. Meanwhile, Alda, who apparently fainted (though, in reality, she had fallen dead) at the news of Roland’s death as Charlemagne himself fainted at the sight of Roland’s dead body, subtly connects this epic poem to the nascent body of literature that would come to be called the “courtly love” romances. Alda, who cannot endure the news of Roland’s death, is a heroine of the body of poetry that brings romantic love to the fore of the heroic life. Although this dimension of love is not possible in a truly heroic poem such as Beowulf, it is present here as the heroic age gives way to a more complete depiction of men and women. From this perspective will come the romances of the Arthurian cycle that will dominate French culture in the later part of the twelfth century.
The men populating The Song of Roland are knightly heroes who have a significant role to play in the governance of their countries. From both sides, the Christian and the pagan, come good knights who respect the vision of their class. Baligant, who worships the pagan deities, is, first and foremost, a fine warrior who could be a great man were he aware of the inadequacies of his pagan faith: “What valor he has shown through countless struggles! / O God, were he a Christian knight, how wonderful!” (3088–89). Even Ganelon, Charlemagne’s respected knight and brother-in-law, espouses solid knightly virtues, though these are severely undercut by his monstrous sin of greed.
All the knights belong to a feudal society, bound to one another by fealty and bound to their ruler in a hierarchical world. Charlemagne rules over the Frenchmen, who are his vassals. He binds them to himself in homage and in love, and they endure all encumbrances and sufferings out of allegiance to him. In exchange for their loyalty, the king must be their protector and, if need be, their avenger.
Although Charlemagne is the poem’s center, he has a reduced role. In Einhard’s account of 778, he was a youthful and impressive monarch of only thirty-six years of age. In The Song of Roland he is a much older man, always pulling at his white beard and uttering loud lamentations. A brave and wise man, he is victorious in his single combat with Baligant, though he does receive supernatural assistance. He does not assume a minor position in the action—all the knights loudly support him—but his great role is now reduced. In another fifty years or so, the French Arthurian romances will remove Arthur to the remote background, and the knights of his Round Table will be the center of his romances.
The heroes of The Song of Roland are Roland, Oliver, Turpin, and the glorious knights who go down to defeat at Roncevals. The ideal knight, Roland has the innate ability to impart wise advice in council and the strength to be a powerful presence in battle. Most important in his character is his loyalty to his king—he is the proper vassal of his lord!—and his loyalty to God, who is represented on Earth by his king. With these qualities, Roland represents the virtues that are the essence of the perfect warrior. Oliver, Roland’s companion-in-arms, is another Roland, loyal to his king and his God, and loyal, too, to his fellow knights on the battlefield. He watches over Roland, making sure that he is safe. Though perhaps more prudent and cautious than Roland, he is ever the servant to his lord. And the presence of Archbishop Turpin, the most important ecclesiastic figure taking part in the conquest of Spain, brings religion to this warring world, elevating the battle into a major religious struggle between the French—the men of God—and the pagan forces who strive to vanquish them.
A grouping of people from non-Christian lands, the Saracens—the pagan forces who worship Apollo, Mohammed, and Tervagant—are a curious mixture of folk beliefs and superstitious understandings. Although the terms “Muslim” and “Islam” do not occur in the poem, these followers of Mohammed are universally seen as negative agents in a world that strives to be perfect in a Christian frame of reference. Meanwhile, the contact the French had at this time with the Muslim world was severely limited, and they had little sympathy or understanding for what they did not know. The Saracens, therefore, come to represent the concrete embodiment of the oppositional forces to Charlemagne and his people.
The Song of Roland is the great tale of the unending war between the forces of good and the forces of evil, between those aligned here with the Christian God and those opposed to this allegiance. As Roland maintains,
To serve his lord, a knight
Should suffer hardships, deserts, winter ice
And sacrifice his limbs, his hide, his life.
—Frenchmen, prepare yourselves to strike and strike!
No wit will mock our strokes with comic rhymes!
Pagans are wrong. Christians are right! (1000–1005)
And the epic form is the ideal vehicle for the poetic illumination of military exploits undertaken for religious purposes and the consequent tragedy of this particular enterprise.
Reading this new translation of The Song of Roland, the twenty-first-century audience sees again the alarms of battle, the sufferings of loss, and the ceaseless fighting for God and country. They witness the treachery and the machination of the infidels as they inflict countless horrors on the French; they watch the incredible heroism of Charlemagne, Roland, and many others; and they finish with singular appreciation for this magnificent twelfth-century epic and its superb translation.