Roland

Roland, the most famous of the Paladins of Charlemagne. According to the chronicler Einhard, his legend has the following basis of fact. In August 778 the rearguard of the French army of Charlemagne was surprised in the valley of Roncevaux by the Basque inhabitants of the mountains; the baggage was looted and all the rearguard killed, including Hrodland, count of the Breton marches. The story of this disaster was developed by the imagination of numerous poets. For the Basques were substituted the Saracens. Roland becomes the commander of the rearguard, appointed to the post at the instance of the traitor Ganelon, who is in league with the Saracen king Marsile. Oliver is introduced, Roland's companion in arms. Oliver thrice urges Roland to summon aid by sounding his horn, but Roland from excess of pride defers doing so until too late. Charlemagne returns and destroys the pagan army. Ganelon is tried and executed. The legend has been handed down in three principal forms: in the fabricated Latin chronicle of the 12th cent. erroneously attributed to Archbishop Turpin (d. c.800); in the Carmen de proditione Guenonis of the same epoch; and in the Chanson de Roland, in medieval French, also of the early 12th cent. It is a well-known tradition that Taillefer, a jongleur in the army of William the Conqueror, sang a poem on Roncesvalles at the battle of Hastings (1066), possibly an earlier version of the extant Chanson. Roland, as Orlando, is the hero of Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato and Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. Roland's sword was called ‘Durandal’ or ‘Durindana’, and his horn ‘Olivant’. (See also Oliver.)