The country towards Roncesvalles is at first much less mountainous in character than that towards Vitória; for the high peaks of the Pyrenees lie in the centre of the range, to the eastward; and those immediately before us, though wild and rugged,{294} do not show up very imposingly above the lofty levels upon the Spanish side. Near Pamplona the meadows are green and civilised, but the view becomes sterner and more barren as we draw near to the feet of the hills; and presently we enter a long, narrow, rocky gully—the bed of a mountain river—whose steep, bare sides are dotted with trim little bushes of box. How hot it was in that narrow gully! The sun’s rays poured vertically into the breathless hollow, and their heat was radiated by every burning stone. Even the six-inch shadows of the box bushes were quoted at fancy values; and shedding our outer garments one after another, we eventually emerged at the further end in an almost aboriginal state.
“Are you thinking of resuming the garb of civilisation?” enquired one vagabond of another, as we halted for a moment on the little bridge near the village of Burguete. “I am thinking of resuming the garb of Adam,” retorted his comrade desperately, as he glared into the pool beneath. It was rather a public place for a bathe; but there are no passengers on a Spanish road at Comida time. And as that meal is invariably unpunctual, we knew that the little Fonda could be reached in plenty of time.{295}
Burguete stands in the centre of a little cup-like valley; and prominent upon the further lip rises a big domed hill, one of the flankers of the pass. It is a sleek, smooth mountain, upholstered with green turf, and spangled with grazing sheep; and the big round beeches and chestnuts herd together all over its crest, as domesticated as on an English lawn. Yet the little hillock beneath it was the scene of one of the greatest of tragedies; for there stood the abbey of Roncesvalles, the sepulchre of Charlemagne’s slaughtered Peers.
A good deal of controversial ink has been spilt over Charlemagne’s famous Spanish expedition: and all the confusion of history has been worse confounded by romance. The French Epics tell of it as a glorious and successful crusade, undertaken in the cause of Christendom against the insolence of the Moors. The Emperor dictated his own terms in his enemy’s palace at Córdova, and it was only the treachery of Ganelon that led to the regrettable incident at the end. Very different is the story of the Spanish ballads. Their bards were most wofully sceptical of religious and disinterested invasion; they wished to be left to fight out their own quarrels with their own infidels, and felt no sort of satisfaction at the prospect of{296} Spain becoming a province of the Franks. It was their own native heroes, Bernardo del Carpio and the chivalry of Leon, who overthrew the Paladins at Roncesvalles. Is not Roland’s “Durandal” in the armoury of Madrid to this day, to prove that the Spaniard was the better man?
In truth the expedition was directed against the newly-established Caliphate of Córdova, in alliance with Suleiman Ibn-al-Arabi, the Moorish king of Barcelona, who was jealous of Abderahman’s growing power. Charlemagne captured Pamplona (which was Christian), and obtained some acknowledgment of suzerainty from the Sheikhs of Gerona and Huesca. But Zaragoza held out against him with all its traditional obstinacy: the ill-matched allies could by no means pull together; and the campaign fizzled out abortively without any substantial gain. As for the dolorous rout which concluded it, that was the work of neither Goth nor Moor, but of the angry Basques of the mountains, a nation whom Charlemagne had not regarded, and whom he probably despised. They had seen their country pillaged, their capital Pamplona taken; and now, when the rearguard was entangled in the mountains, they at last got the chance of plunder and revenge. No doubt{297} they trapped them in that long rocky defile—straggling, way-worn, and cumbered with plunder and baggage—a position as hopeless as Elphinstone’s in the Koord Kabul. The disjointed line was toiling painfully along the gullet; the slippery screes rose unscalable on either side; and the jutting crags that frowned at every corner afforded both ramparts and missiles to the unweariable mountaineers. None but the doughtiest warriors could have succeeded in breaking out into the basin of Burguete. And here their superior arms and discipline would enable them to fight their way across to the further side. Only one short ascent still remained to be surmounted; but their active enemy was before them, and the task was beyond their power. Wounded and exhausted, they drew together in a rallying square upon the little hillock; and there, fighting desperately, they were cut down to a man.