La Chanson De Roland: Translated from the Seventh Edition of Léon Gautier

In 778, Charlemagne's army winds through the Pyrenees, returning from Spain. The rear guard, commanded by the knight Roland, walks into an ambush. What follows is the oldest surviving epic poem in French, a thundering tale of loyalty turned fatal, of pride and its terrible price. Roland's stepfather Ganelon has engineered this trap through treachery, and now two hundred French knights face a Saracen host numbering in the tens of thousands. The battle is not fair. It was never meant to be. This is a story about what happens when honor demands impossible choices, when a warrior's duty outweighs any calculation of survival. Written around 1100 but set in the age of Charlemagne, The Song of Roland transformed a minor historical skirmish into a myth of Christendom, where Roland's dying horn blast becomes a prayer and his death a sacrifice. Eight centuries of readers have heard that horn. Its sound has not faded.