Battle of Roncevaux Pass ( 778 ) The Battle of Roncevaux Pass ( French and English spelling , " Roncesvalles " in Spanish , " Orreaga " in Basque ) was a battle in 778 in which Roland , prefect of the Breton March and commander of the rear guard of Charlemagne ' s army , was defeated by the Basques . It was fought at Roncevaux Pass , a high mountain pass in the Pyrenees on the border between France and Spain . Over the years , the battle was romanticized by oral tradition into a major conflict between Christians and Muslims , when in fact both sides in the battle were Christian . The legend is recounted in 11th century " The Song of Roland " , which is the oldest surviving major work of French literature , and in " Orlando Furioso " , which is one of the most celebrated works of Italian literature . Background . With the rise of the Carolingians and Pepin the Short ' s war on Aquitaine , the Duchy of Aquitaine led by Waifer was defeated and a program of Frankish penetration into the duchy ensued under Charlemagne . The Basques ( " Vascones " , " Wascones " ) of the Duchy of Vasconia , one of the mainstays of the Aquitanian army , submitted to Pepin in 766 and 769 , but the territory south of the Garonne remained largely unscathed and self - governed — Duke Lupus cited . However , as of 778 Charlemagne expanded Frankish takeover of Aquitaine to present - day Gascony by appointing trusted Franks and Burgundians as well as Church officials in key regional positions and ( re - ) establishing counties , such as Fezensac , Bordeaux , and Toulouse , on the left banks of the Garonne . Charlemagne ' s colonization attempts bitterly displeased the Basques . The plot . " See Abbasid - Carolingian alliance for more " . Sulayman al - Arabi , the pro - Abbasid Wali ( governor ) of Barcelona and Girona , sent a delegation to Charlemagne in Paderborn , offering his submission , along with the allegiance of Husayn of Zaragoza and Abu Taur of Huesca in return for military aid . Their masters had been cornered in the Iberian peninsula by Abd ar - Rahman I , the Umayyad emir of Córdoba . The three rulers also conveyed that the caliph of Baghdad , Muhammad al - Mahdi , was preparing an invasion force against Abd ar - Rahman . Seeing an opportunity to extend Christendom and his own power and believing the Saxons to be a fully conquered nation , Charlemagne agreed to go to Spain . It seems that al - Arabi induced him to invade Al Andalus by promising him an easy surrender of its Upper March , of which Zaragoza was the capital . The King did not make up his mind until the winter , but he finally decided to launch an expedition into the Iberian peninsula the next year . Following the sealing of this alliance at Paderborn , Charlemagne marched across the Pyrenees in 778 " at the head of all the forces he could muster " . Charlemagne led the Neustria n army over Vasconia into the Western Pyrenees , while the Austrasia ns , Lombards , and Burgundians passed over the Eastern Pyrenees through Catalonia . His troops were welcomed in Barcelona and Girona by Sulayman al - Arabi . As he moved towards Zaragoza , the troops of Charlemagne were joined by troops led by al - Arabi . Abd ar - Rahman of Córdoba sent his most trusted general , Thalaba Ibn Obeid , to take control of the possibly rebellious city and to prevent the Frankish invasion . Husayn and Ibn Obeid clashed repeatedly ; eventually Husayn managed to defeat and to imprison Ibn Obeid . Reinforced in his autonomous position , Husayn became reluctant to yield his new privileged status to the Frankish monarch and refused to surrender the city to Charlemagne , claiming that he had never promised Charlemagne his allegiance . He seems to have tried to appease Charlemagne by giving him the prisoner General Ibn Obeid and a large tribute of gold , but Charlemagne was not easily satisfied , putting Sulayman al - Arabi in chains . Meanwhile , the force sent by the Baghdad caliphate seems to have been stopped near Barcelona . After a month of siege at Zaragoza , Charlemagne decided to return to his kingdom . The retreat . As the Frankish army retreated towards Pamplona they suffered an ambush led by the relatives of al - Arabi . Sulayman al - Arabi was liberated and brought to Zaragoza , where both conspirators jointly resisted a new attack by Abd ar - Rahman . Sulayman al - Arabi would eventually be murdered by al Ansari . Charlemagne also suffered an attack from the Basques in central Navarra . After stopping at Pamplona , Charlemagne ordered the walls of this strategic city be destroyed , possibly fearing that it could be used by the Basques in future rebellions . Some primary sources suggest that he destroyed the city altogether . Thereafter , Charlemagne marched for the Pyrenees and home . In the mountains , the army ' s rear guard was attacked . The battle . The battle itself took place in the evening of Saturday 15 August 778 , causing numerous losses among the Frankish troops , including several most important aristocrats and the sack of the baggage , probably with all the gold given by the Muslims at Zaragoza . After their success , the attackers took advantage of the night to flee . The sources are somewhat contradictory , yet the second version of the " Annales Regii " ( falsely attributed to Eginhard ) reads : The " Vita Karoli " mentions the names of the most important paladin s killed " among many others " : Eggihard , Mayor of the Palace , Anselmus , Palatine Count and Roland , Prefect of the March of Brittany . The Basque army . The guerrilla army of the Basques is not well known . A later source , the anonymous " Saxon Poet " , talks of the Basque spears , which fits with the Pyrenean and Basque tradition that would be present much later among the almogavars . A typical such mountain warrior would have two short spears and a knife or short sword as his main weapons , and would not normally wear armour . Pierre de Marca , a Béarn ese author , suggests that the attackers were a " reduced number " of mostly local Low Navarrese , Soule tines , and Baztan ese , whose main motivation may well have been plunder . Nevertheless he also suggests that the Duke of Vasconia , Lop , may have been their commander . This opinion is also held by the authors of the General History of Languedoc who claim that Duke Lop was the leader of the " Gascons " ( cited always as " Wascones " ) that attacked Charlemagne , who had serious reasons to oppose Carolingian expansion into Vasconia after the Franco - Aquitanian war ( 760 – 769 ) . The presence of people from other areas beyond those mentioned by de Marca is very likely anyhow . It is difficult to imagine why Bazatanese were there and not , for instance , the people of the nearby Aezkoa or Salazar valleys . There are even attributions to Guipuzcoans , such as a dedication in a chapel of Pasaia that gives thanks to Our Lady of Piety because of her support to their alleged participation in this battle ( although the date mentioned ( 814 ) may be that of the Second Battle of Roncevaux : see below ) . Location . There have been many different theories as to where this battle actually took place , some suggesting various places in the High Pyrenees ranging from Navarre and Aragon to as far as Catalonia . The mainstream opinion is that the battle took place somewhere not far from Roncevaux itself , as it is not just on one of the easiest routes but also the traditional one . Indeed , the Roman road " " Via ab Asturica Burdigalam " " which started in Castra Legiones ( current León ) and went to Benearnum , crossed the Pyrenees through Roncevaux . However , the traditional Roman road ( also called the " Route of Napoleon " ) followed a route different from the modern one , not crossing at Ibañeta ( the traditional location ) but heading up eastwards and crossing instead the Lepoeder and Bentartea passes — next to the mount Astobizkar — not far from the mount Urkulu , identified as the " Summum Pyreneum " of the classic Roman sources . Several authors ( Narbaiz , Jimeno Jurio ) have pinpointed the actual scene of the clash in the narrow passages of the above spots . However , that may have been the spot of the ambush , but the baggage train commanded by Roland was pushed to the valley , where the Basques engaged them in open battle . Another possible location that has been suggested for the battle is that of the Selva de Oza pass , in the valley of Hecho , on the border between Aragon and Navarre , since the old Roman road called " " Via Caesar Augusta " " that led from Caesaraugusta ( Zaragoza ) to Benearnum ( Béarn ) crosses the Pyrenees there . Since Charlemagne was retreating from Caesaraugusta , it has been seen as a possible location . Other than tradition , that points towards Roncesvaux as the place of the battle , the main argument provided against the Selva de Oza location is that according to the chronicles , Charlemagne retreated from Pamplona after arriving there from Zaragoza . This would suggest that he took the " " Ab Asturica Burdigalam " " road which passed through Pamplona , and not retrace his way back to the east , where Hecho lies . However , when physical descriptions of the battle site are taken on account , the Selva de Oza location seems to fit descriptions that tell about gorge - like passages wide enough for an army to pass easily and with several high vantage points from which to attack the enemy . Nevertheless , the Roncesvaux and Selva de Oza passes are only about 30 kilometers apart . Other locations have also been suggested , some as far away as in Catalonia , indicating that it is not established that Charlemagne took any of the Roman roads when retreating , nor that he retreated directly from Pamplona . Indeed , the routes that crossed the Pyrenees through Catalonia ( crossing the valley of Llívia ) are traditionally the easiest , though a Basque attack taking place so far from their heartland is seen as dubious . Consequences . The Franks failed in capturing Zaragoza and suffered significant losses at the hands of the Basques . They would only be able to establish the Marca Hispanica a decade later , when Barcelona was finally captured . Zaragoza remained an important Muslim city , capital of the Upper March and later of an independent emirate , until the 11th century . Defenceless Pamplona was captured by the Muslims soon after and held by them for some years , until in 798 – 801 a rebellion expelled them as well and helped to consolidate the Banu Qasi realm and eventually the constitution of the independent Kingdom of Pamplona in 824 . Legend . Over the years , this battle was romanticized by oral tradition into a major conflict between Christians and Muslims , although , in fact , both sides in the battle were Christian . In the tradition , the Basques are replaced by a force of 400 , 000 Saracens . ( Charlemagne did fight the Saracens in Iberia , though not in the Pyrenees . ) " The Song of Roland " , which commemorates the battle , was written by an unknown poet of the 11th century . It is the earliest surviving of the " chansons de geste " or epic poems of medieval France in the " langue d ' oïl " , in what would become the French language . There is a tombstone near the Roncevaux Pass commemorating the area where it is traditionally held that Roland died . Several traditions also state that Roland was slain by a child who , in time , would become the very first king of Navarre : Iñigo Arista . There is an alternate medieval Iberian legend involving Bernardo del Carpio , a medieval Leonese hero , whom some stories hold to be the vanquisher of Roland at Roncevaux . The 812 expedition and the Second Battle of Roncevaux . In the year 812 there was a second ambush attempt in the same pass , which ended in stalemate due to the Franks taking greater precautions than they had in 778 , i . e . they took Basque women and children as hostages . In the year 824 was the possibly more important Second Battle of Roncevaux , where counts Eblus and Aznar , Frankish vassals , were captured by the joint forces of Iñigo Arista ' s Pamplona and of the Banu Qasi , consolidating the independence of both Basque realms . Value for comparative history . In the case of the Battle of Roncevaux , historians possess both the description of an event by contemporary and fairly reliable sources and the depiction of the same event resulting from centuries of an oral tradition , in which it was magnified to epic proportions and changed almost unrecognizably . The ability here to compare both accounts , and trace how an actual historical event is transformed into legend , is useful for the study of other events of which the only existing account is one deriving from centuries of oral tradition , and in which historians need to try to reconstruct the actual historical facts and separate them from later myth ( for example , Homer ' s depiction of the Trojan War ) . The battle is also referenced in the song " Roncevaux " by Van der Graaf Generator , originally recorded in 1972 but only released in rather rough form many years later on the album " Time Vaults " .