It was his delight to keep up old national customs and to wear the Frankish dress with its linen tunic, cross-gartered leggings, and long mantle reaching to the feet. ‘What is the use of these rags?’ he once inquired contemptuously of his courtiers, pointing to their short cloaks—‘Will they cover me in bed, or shield me from the wind and rain when I ride abroad?’
The EMPIRE of
CHARLEMAGNE
This criticism was characteristic of the King. Intent on a multitude of schemes for the extension or improvement of his lands, and so eager to realize them that he would start on fresh ones when still heavily encumbered with the old, he was yet, for all his enthusiasm, no vague dreamer but a level-headed man looking questions in the face and demanding a practical answer.
The Chanson de Roland
By the irony of fate it is the least practical and important task he undertook that has made his name world-famous; for the story of Charlemagne and his Paladins, told in that greatest of mediaeval epics, the Chanson de Roland, exceeds to-day in popularity even the exploits of Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. This much is history—that Charlemagne, invited secretly by some discontented Emirs to invade Spain and attack the Caliph of Cordova, crossed the Pyrenees, and, after reducing several towns successfully, was forced to retreat. On his way back across the mountains his rearguard was cut off by Gascon mountaineers, and slaughtered almost to a man; while he and the rest of his army escaped with difficulty.
On this meagre and rather inglorious foundation poets of the eleventh century based a cycle of romance. Charlemagne is the central figure, but round him are grouped numerous ‘Paladins’, or famous knights, including the inseparable friends Oliver and Roland, Warden of the Breton Marches. After numerous deeds of glory in the land of Spain, the King, it was said, was forced by treachery to turn back towards the French mountains, and had already passed the summits, when Roland, in charge of the rearguard, found himself entrapped in the Pass of Roncesvalles by a large force of Gascons. His horn was slung at his side but he disdained to summon help from those in the van, and drawing his good sword ‘Durenda’ laid about him valiantly.
The Gascons fell back, dismayed by the vigorous resistance of the French; but thirty thousand Saracens came to their aid, and the odds were now overwhelming. Oliver lay dead, and, covered with wounds, Roland fell to the ground also, but first of all he broke ‘Durenda’ in half that none save he might use this peerless blade. Putting his horn to his lips, with his dying breath he sounded a blast that was heard by Charlemagne in his camp more than eight miles away. ‘Surely that is the horn of Roland?’ cried the King uneasily, but treacherous courtiers explained away the sound; and it was not till a breathless messenger came with the news of the reverse that he hastened towards the scene of battle. There in the pass, stretched on the ground amid the heaped-up bodies of their enemies, he found his Paladins—Roland with his arms spread in the form of a cross, his broken sword beside him: and seeing him the King fell on his knees weeping. ‘Oh, right arm of thy Sovereign’s body, Honour of the Franks, Sword of Justice.... Why did I leave thee here to perish? How can I behold thee dead and not die with thee?’ At last, restraining his grief, Charlemagne gathered his forces together; and the very sun, we are told, stood still to watch his terrible vengeance on Gascons and Saracens for the slaughter of Christians at Roncesvalles.
The Chanson de Roland is one of the masterpieces of French literature. It is not history, but in its fiction lies a substantial germ of truth. Charlemagne in the early ninth century was what poets described him more than two hundred years later—the central figure in Christendom, the recognized champion of the Cross whether against Mahometans or pagans. ‘Through your prosperity’, wrote Alcuin, an Anglo-Saxon monk and scholar who lived at his court, ‘Christendom is preserved, the Catholic Faith defended, the law of justice made known to all men.’
Invasion of Lombardy