efore a well-supplied,
strongly-fortified, and fully-garrisoned city, while his own army was
none too well provided with food. In the end he found it expedient to
retreat, leaving Saragossa still in Saracen hands.

The retreat was conducted without loss until the Pyrenees were reached.
These were crossed by the main body of the army without hostile
disturbance, leaving to follow the baggage-train and a rear-guard under
the king's nephew Roland, prefect of the Marches of Brittany, with whom
were Eginhard, master of the household, and Anselm, count of the palace;
while legend adds the names of Oliver, Roland's bosom friend, the
warlike Archbishop Turpin, and other warriors of renown.

Their route lay through the pass of Roncesvalles so narrow at points
that only two, or at most three men could move abreast, while the rugged
bordering hills were covered with dense forest, affording a secure
retreat for an ambushing foe. It was when the main body of the army was
miles in advance, and the rear-guard struggling up this narrow defile,
that disaster came. Suddenly the surrounding woods and mountains
bristled with life. A host of light-armed Basque mountaineers emerged
from the forest, and poured darts and arrows upon the crowded columns of
heavily-armed Franks below. Rocks were rolled down the steep
declivities, crushing living men beneath their weight. The surprised
troops withdrew in haste to the bottom of the valley, death pursuing
them at every step. The battle that followed was doubtless a severe and
hotly-contested one; the prominent place it has gained in tradition
indicates that the Franks must have defended themselves valiantly; but
they fought at a terrible disadvantage, and in the end they were killed
to a man. Then the assailants, rich with the plunder which they had
obtained from the baggage-wagons and the slain bodies, vanished into the
forests whence they came, leaving to Charlemagne, when he returned in
search of Roland and his men, only the silence of death and the livid
heaps of the slain in that terrible valley of slaughter.

Such is the sober fact. Fancy has adorned it with a thousand loving
fictions. In the valleys are told a multitude of tales connected with
Roland's name. A part of his armor has given its name to a flower of the
hills, the _casque de Roland_, a species of hellebore. The _breiche de
Roland_, a deep fissure in the mountain crest, is ascribed to a stroke
of his mighty blade. The sound of h