Last night's reading included the ambush / The Battle of Roncevaux Pass in 778 A,D. The author delves deeply into the campaign out of Aquitaine, across the Pyrenees and into Spain. As we know, already Charlemagne was employing in various capacities, including as warriors, disgruntled Spanish “saracens,”* both Umayyeds and Abbasids, in German areas during his endless Saxon campaigns.
The Roncevaux debacle took place during the period of the Umayyed-Abbasid wars in southern Spain, between the two rival Caliphates and their various kingdoms. Thus Charlemagne was invited into Spain to fight on behalf of the Spanish Muslims of Zaragoza, with the promise of very much booty. It all worked quite well, until, according to Charlemagne’s characteristic organization of his force, he divided his army in two divisions. This tended to allow him to approach an opponent within a pincher movement, generally unexpected. The two parts, each with their outlier trains and troops, proceeded by close, but separate paths, across the Pyrenees. The force led by Count Roland was ambushed by an effective force of Basques. The Frankish force was utterly defeated, and the baggage train, which presumably included much booty, was high jacked and taken back into deep Basque country.
What excited me about this account is seeing for how long the Basques have been fighting to maintain their independence from invading conquerors. Their first mention that I’m familiar with is from the the late Roman Republic in the Sertorian War 80 – 71 B.C. Back then they and others in Celtiberia maintained an ongoing fierce guerrilla war against Rome's invasion. They strategically allied themselves with rebellious Roman governor, Sertorius, yet still managed to escape Pompey and Metellius's retribution once Sertorius was defeated. This history shows that Hispania was always effective at organizing guerrilla warfare -- they didn't just stumble into it during the Napoleonic or fascist eras – or even just now, as the Basques continue to fight for autonomy.
What was most interesting to me though, specifically in terms of Roncevaux, is Nelson’s deep scholarship to reveal Count Roland a real person. Among the evidence is a single contemporary coin that was struck by what evidently was his own small county. Nelson is painstaking in providing her scholarship within the narrative that supports her choices of interpretation of certain events, and details her reasoning. The battles among these sorts of medieval scholars over interpretation of the most obscure lines of most obscure texts and records, are constant, heated and, as time goes on, have changed our perspectives on the received wisdom regarding many events of Charlemagne's life.
Nothing has changed interpretation and understand in our time as much as the revelations that Charles self-consciously employed poets, minstrels, churchmen, scholars and chroniclers to create works that informed the international and local audiences who he was and what he did. These range from the tales on which the chansons de geste were based and other thoroughly, deliberately composed works by the crowds of poets and scholars he employed to do so. This is where we get the idea that he was a warrior against Islam. He wasn't. He really wasn't.
It's also in the great Song of Roland, first surviving work of French literature, composed nearly two centuries after the event, but employing the names and the re-written contemporary history, that posterity has learned and believed ever since that Roland was treacherously attacked by "Saracens" through the efforts of a personal betrayal to both Roland and Charlemagne. Not true.
What is historically true, is this was the catastrophic event in Charlemagne's life, that probably did end any idea he may have formed to return and expand his own territories in that direction. It also urged him to re-write the history, erase the history, to change history via the the written record, the spoken, sung and recited word.
A driving impulse, Nelson further argues, beyond preserving his historical dignitas, gloria et honore, was guilt for his over-confidence, i.e. his self-conceit. The strands out of documents by which Nelson arrives at this conclusion are many, long and – convincing. It was this which led to the deaths of so many of his very good warriors, of whom a very many he must have shared a warrior’s intimacy, as they were his most dependable, crack cohorts, who never asked to turn back from any campaign, no matter how long it went on. The Ronceveaux disaster didn’t need to have happened and wouldn't have if he hadn't divided his army again, on his way home, leaving that smaller force vulnerable.
The trajectory of his life until the debacle of Ronceveaux had been that of victory and strength, to more victory and strength. His decision to invade Spain came after his greatest international achievement so far, his 777 A.D. campaign against the Saxons, which was glorified in contemporary chronicles and poetry. This victory was celebrated deliberately at Paderborne, ancestral Westphalian center of the by-now ancient Merovingian kingdoms of the Franks, which would become the birth place of the Holy Roman Empire. Here gathered an international audience that included Muslims from both Baghdad and Spain, Greeks as well as powerful Roman Churchmen, Franks and Lombards, emissaries, warriors, merchants and administrators, all there to witness the magnificent pageant of thousands of Saxons baptized.** Even more significantly, when the defeated Saxons swore allegiance to Charles in awe-inspiring ceremony and spectacle, they swore their eternal fidelity to Charles, his sons, and the Franks. This was the first time submission was sworn not just to Charles and the Franks, but to the progeny specifically of himself. As it wasn't necessary even in his father's time that the heir of a powerful ruler be fathered directly by that ruler, this sent a very powerful message of how Charles was seeing the future, even after he left the stage himself.
That great year’s winter – spring quarters were at the Aquitaine palace of Chasseneuil.*** The Christmas and Easter courts provided a never-ending dazzle and sizzle of confidence, enjoyment and ambition. The poets and emissaries proclaimed Charles invincibility and God's favor non-stop. It went to his head. He very quickly accepted the offers of Abd-al-Rahman, who had lost his control of Toledo, Zaragoza and the Ebro Valley to the Abbasids, who now also held the Caliphate. Charles’s military and lucrative successes in Spain enforced his conviction the poets were correct about his invincibility and inevitability. So, on the way home, he left off his normal carefulness and planning ahead for the geography and lay of the land – which he read as brilliantly as every brilliant general does, from Julius Caesar to Ulysses S. Grant.
Charles didn’t make that error again.
Maybe not for you all but this is exciting stuff for me!
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* Sarcana / sarcanii was the Romans’ designation of the peoples of the Arabian peninsula.
** It appears that these Saxons at least, were mostly Christian already, long even before Charlemagne's day. But it was in his interest that the poets and chroniclers show the Saxons as "other", as such a worthy enemy. And as pagans, he was destroying, plundering and forcing them to 'baptism/submission for the great good and glory of God.
*** Charles current ‘wife’, Hildegard, was pregnant again. As she always traveled with him, this palace was considered most comfortable for her condition. In Aquitaine, it was convenient to the Pyrenees passes into Celtiberia.
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