was set in motion to recross the Pyrenees.  On arriving before Pampeluna, Charlemagne had its walls completely razed to the ground, “in order that,” as he said, “that city might not be able to revolt.”  The troops entered those same passes of Roncesvalles which they had traversed without obstacle a few weeks before; and the advance-guard and the main body of the army were already clear of them.  The account of what happened shall be given in the words of Eginhard, the only contemporary historian whose account, free from all exaggeration, can be considered authentic.  “The king,” he says, “brought back his army without experiencing any loss, save that at the summit of the Pyrenees he suffered somewhat from the perfidy of the Vascons (Basques).  Whilst the army of the Franks, embarrassed in a narrow defile, was forced by the nature of the ground to advance in one long, close line, the Basques, who were in ambush on the crest of the mountain (for the thickness of the forest with which these parts are covered is favorable to ambuscade), descend and fall suddenly on the baggage-train and on the troops of the rear-guard, whose duty it was to cover all in their front, and precipitate them to the bottom of the valley.  There took place a fight in which the Franks were killed to a man.  The Basques, after having plundered the baggage-train, profited by the night, which had come on, to disperse rapidly.  They owed all their success in this engagement to the lightness of their equipment and to the nature of the spot where the action took place; the Franks, on the contrary, being heavily armed and in an unfavorable position, struggled against too many disadvantages.  Eginhard, master of the household of the king; Anselm, count of the palace; and Roland, prefect of the marches of Brittany, fell in this engagement.  There were no means, at the time, of taking revenge for this cheek; for after their sudden attack, the enemy dispersed to such good purpose that there was no gaining any trace of the direction in which they should be sought for.”

[Illustration:  Death of Roland at Roncesvalles——­227]

History says no more; but in the poetry of the people there is a longer and a more faithful memory than in the court of kings.  The disaster of Roncesvalles and the heroism of the warriors who perished there became, in France, the object of popular sympathy and the favorite topic for the exercise of the popular fancy.  The Song of Roland, a real Homeric poem in its great beauty, and yet rude and simple as became its national character, bears witness to the prolonged importance attained in Europe by this incident in the history of Charlemagne.  Three centuries later the comrades of William the Conqueror, marching to battle at Hastings for the possession of England, struck up The Song of Roland “to prepare themselves for victory or death,” says M. Vitel, in his vivid estimate and able translation of this poetical monument of the manners and first