RONCESVALLES, one of the valleys its Navarre, on the southern side of the Pyrenees, about 20 ns. n.n.e. of Pamplona, has been rendered famous in poem and story as the scene of a defeats sustained by the army of Charlemagne at the hands of a combined force of Arabs, Navarrese, and French Gascons in 778. Charlemagne, allurdd by the promise of the feudal supremacy of Catalonia, opened a campaign in aid of the viceroy of that province against the _Mohammedans. With a powerful army he passed the Pyrenees, penetrated into Navarre, took Pamplona, the capital, and leveled the walls of the city with the ground. Clearly this was not part of his programme as the champion of the Christian religion in Spain; for Pamplona was the capital of a Christian state. and it is even asserted that prior to 870 A.D. Moors had not been admitted within its walls. Pres sing onward, Charlemagne subdued a great part of the country between the Pyrenees and the Ebro: but on his return northward, while threading time defiles of the mountain:: near Roncesvalles, his rear-guard was furiously assailed and annihilated by a mixed force, of which a body of Navarrese, enraged at the destruction of their capital, formed an important section, Eginhard, the secretary of the emperor, tells its that the whole rear-guard, including many generals and chief nobles, was totally destroyed. and that
the spoil of the campaign, together with the whole baggage of the army, fell into the hands of the victors. In this action fell Roland (q.v.) the famous paladin, and the hero of a hundred romances. The older poets found abundant material in the battle of Ron cesvalles, in which, on the one side, the most distinguished chivalry of that time, and on the other the patriotic, high-spirited mountaineers of Navarre; and in recent times the incident has contributed a spirited allusion to sir Walter Scott's ilarmion: ' "Oh, for a blast of that dread horn, On FoMarablan echoes borne, That to King Charles did come, When Roland braye, and Olivier, And every paladin and peer, On Roneesvalles died !"