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The Battle of Roncevaux Pass (French and English spelling, Roncesvalles in Spanish, Orreaga in Basque) in 778 saw a large force of Basques ambush a part of Charlemagne's army in Roncevaux Pass, a high mountain pass in the Pyrenees on the present border between France and Spain, after his invasion of the Iberian Peninsula.
According to tradition, Roncesvalles is the site where this event took place in 778, and hence today the battle is called Battle of Roncesvalles. [4] There is a stone monument near the pass commemorating the area where it is traditionally held that Roland died.
The French force at Roncesvalles consisted of 40,000 men and 8 mountain guns under Generals Reille and Clausel. The pass was defended by the British 4th Division commanded by Major-General Galbraith Lowry Cole and was helped by the Portuguese 4/10 brigade.
The battle is said to have been fought in the valley known as Valcarlos, which is now occupied by a hamlet bearing the same name, and in the adjoining pass of Ibañeta (Roncevaux Pass). Both of these are traversed by the main road leading north from Roncesvalles to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, in the French Basque Country.
The British withdrew from the Maya Pass that evening. Wellington rallied his troops a short distance north of Pamplona and repelled the attacks of Soult's two corps at the Battle of Sorauren on 28 July. Instead of falling back to the northeast toward Roncesvalles Pass, Soult made contact with his third corps on 29 July and began to move north.
His only historical attestation is in Einhard's Vita Karoli Magni, which notes he was part of the Frankish rearguard killed in retribution by the Basques in Iberia at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass. The story of Roland's death at Roncevaux Pass was embellished in later medieval and Renaissance literature .
During the Battle of Roncevaux Pass a combined Basque-Qasawi Muslim army defeated a Carolingian military expedition in 824. The battle took place only 46 years after the first Battle of Roncevaux Pass (778) in a confrontation showing similar features: a Basque force engaging from the mountains, a northbound expedition led by the Franks, and the same geographical setting (the Roncevaux Pass or ...
Tradition holds that this is the valley [val-] where Charlemagne's rear-guard, under the command of Roland, was slaughtered by Vascons at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in 778. Tradition holds that Charlemagne's troops were returning across the Pyrenees and had become stretched thin. The Vascons, unhappy with the Franks, fell upon the rear-guard ...