school exercise in rhetoric that focuses on Ganelon’s treason and the battle proper. The
anonymous Occitan Ron-sasvals (1,802 lines; one 14th-c. manuscript, in Apt) likewise
centers the action on the battle itself. Although it alters characterizations and introduces
Oliver’s son Galien into the battle, it is a well-constructed and emotionally elevated
work. In the same manuscript with Ronsasvals is the heroic-comic Rollan a Saragossa,
which recounts in 1,410 lines Roland’s amorous encounter with Bramimonde in
Saragossa and his ensuing rift and conciliation with Oliver.
The poem is based ultimately on the historical ambush by Christian Basques or
Gascons that destroyed Charlemagne’s baggage train on August 15, 778, during his
return from an unsuccessful campaign in Spain. It recounts the heroic death of the
emperor’s nephew Roland in an unequal fight with an enormous host of Spanish Saracens
and Charlemagne’s vengeance and imposition of Christianity on the vanquished. Faced
with inevitable defeat in the last Saracen stronghold left after a campaign of seven years
by Charlemagne, King Marsile of Saragossa sues for peace, giving false guarantees. In
anger at being nominated by his hated stepson Roland for the dangerous peace
negotiations, Count Ganelon persuades the Saracens to commit their 400,000 men to
overwhelm the French rearguard of 20,000, to be led by Roland, whom he describes as
the Frankish “hawk.” In spite of Charlemagne’s fears, provoked by prophetic dreams, the
French host sets off, leaving the rearguard behind. When Roland’s comrade Oliver hears
the Saracen army’s approach, Roland emphatically rejects his friend’s advice to sound his
elephant-tusk horn (the olifant) to recall the main army; he fears personal and family
dishonor, a point of view that Oliver does not accept. After great deeds and initial
successes by the French, led by Roland, Oliver, and the battling archbishop Turpin, the
weight of numbers reduces the Christians to sixty survivors; Roland now at last decides
to sound the horn, but Oliver angrily says that this would indeed be dishonorable now
that the battle is on, and he accuses Roland of a monumental error of judgment,
motivated by recklessness. Turpin points out that it can no longer be a matter of help,
only of vengeance and Christian burial for the dead, so that no dishonor is involved.
Roland’s sounding of the olifant brings the army back but fatally injures the arteries of
his temple. After witnessing the deaths of Oliver, with whom he is reconciled at the last,
and Turpin, Roland himself dies as a conqueror, the Saracens having fled on hearing the
trumpets of the returning army. Angels bear his soul to Heaven. Charles returns and, with
the aid of a divine miracle that prolongs the daylight, catches up with the Saracens and
kills all of Marsile’s surviving men.
As the emperor prepares next day to leave for dulce France with the bodies of Roland,
Oliver, and Turpin, we suddenly learn that Marsile’s overlord, the emir Baligant,
summoned seven years earlier, when Charles had first invaded, has arrived. (This
development has not been prepared in any way, and the status of this long episode is a
subject for controversy.) Charles fights a second great battle, in which he finally kills
Baligant. Saragossa is taken, and the remaining Saracens are converted or killed. Charles
returns to Aix-la-Chapelle, where Oliver’s sister Aude, whom Roland was to have
married, dies at the news of his death. Ganelon, accused by Charlemagne of treason, is
protected by his powerful kinsman Pinabel, who nearly secures his acquittal by his
threatening influence; but Tierri d’Anjou proves by judicial combat against Pinabel that
Ganelon has committed treason, against the emperor as much as against Roland, and
Ganelon is quartered by horses. As he sits alone at night, discouraged and desolate,
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