The song of Roland - fact or fiction?

If the weather was reasonable during the hours when the refuge was quiet , I sat by the open doorway of the refuge de la Breche de Roland breathing in the fresh mountain air and soaking up whatever warmth the sun was willing to afford me while all the hikers sweating off their breakfasts on the mountains. Staying by the door I was within earshot of the telephone and could see any potential customers approach. I also had a direct view on the Breche - that other open doorway to Spain in the south. I spent a lot of time contemplating this dramatic rectangular opening in the rock face – this empty space, defined by the absence of matter. It is undeniably one of the world’s most spectacular border crossings, rising more than a hundred metres tall and forty metres wide. I knew its contours and relief by heart. But Roland’s Breach is much more than just a space - it is an invitation, a promise of adventure and the exoticism of the Iberian lands beyond.

Legend says that the Breche was hewn open by the mighty Roland, wielding the sacred sword Durandal. Nowadays it is more commonly accepted among historians that Roland perished in a less dramatic landscape near Roncevalles in the Basque country. But the history of the legend is almost as interesting as the legend itself.

In the year 777 Charlemagne was the Emperor of the Frankish Empire, an empire that extended well beyond the borders of modern day France. He was an innovative emperor and was the first to introduce schools in an attempt to educate the population. Even today, French schoolchildren still sing songs about him. Every emperor must have an empire and he was eager to extend his.

Soliman ibn al-Arabi, the governor of Barcelona, encouraged Charlemagne to take the city of Saragossa. The disgruntled governor was rebelling against the oppressive authority of the Caliph of Cordoba, Abd al Rahman and promised to engineer a popular uprising to coincide with Charlemagne’s arrival. The ambitious plan was to seize control of the entire north of Moorish dominated Spain. However, the Caliph got wind of the governor’s treachery and Charlemagne’s planned invasion. Al-Arbi’s promised rebellion and reinforcements never materialized. When Charlemagne arrived at Saragossa with his army, he found battalions of Moorish forces deployed ready to defend the city. Meanwhile, news came from much further north that the hitherto subjugated Saxons had revolted and were marching on Cologne. Charlemagne and his army were obliged to retreat and return to France.

They took more or less the same route they had taken on the way, passing through the town of Pamplona. Charlemagne had counted on the spoils of battle from Saragossa and was loath to return to France empty handed. Morale was low after the humiliating stand off. On the outward journey, Charlemagne’s army had been welcomed in Pamplona and heralded as defenders of Christianity, but on their way back they sacked and pillaged the town taking what they could, where they could, because they could.

On the fifteenth of august 778, as Charlemagne’s troops made their way back across the Pyrenees, their rear guard was ambushed in a pass. Rocks were rolled down onto them from above, crushing many of the soldiers to death. The survivors were charged upon and forced into a narrow ravine, where they were almost all mercilessly and savagely slaughtered. Roland, Charlemagne’s nephew and Duke of Brittany, was amongst those killed. Most historians place the scene of the battle as the valley of Roncevalles in the Basque province of Navarra.

The Basques claimed responsibility for the ambush, justifying their actions as retaliation for the sacking of Pamplona. (Though some accounts say that it was just the work of some opportunist bandits.) The next time Charlemagne’s forces crossed the Pyrenees they took Basque women and children as hostages to ensure their safe passage.

Those seem to be the facts, but the legend of Roland tells quite a different story. It originated as a tale aimed to galvanize the spirits of those battling in Hastings in 1066 and in the tale Roland is idealized as a hero, with aristocratic blood and God on his side.

In 1130, Sancho de la Rosa, the bishop of Pamplona, claimed to have seen the ambush of Roncevalles in a dream. The story was spread far and wide and the church played an active role in resurrecting Roland as a folk hero. Forty years later, in 1170, an anonymous poet allegedly wrote the 4002 verses of the Song of Roland, (though apparently the original text was only unearthed in 1832).

 The Song of Roland was widely diffused by the church, particularly along the pilgrimage route of the Saint James’ way. Statues were erected in Roland’s honour, sermons were preached in his name, and some four hundred years after his death, the memory of Roland was alive again. The church was having difficulty finding recruits to fight the holy war for Jerusalem and funds to finance it. Those seeking salvation on the Saint James’ way were promised that heavenly deliverance if they joined the Crusades. The Song of Roland was an elaborate, though admirably poetic, exercise in propaganda.

It tells the story of brave and pious Roland, who carries a magical sword with sacred relics concealed within its hilt. The sword is called Durandal. Retreating from Spain, Roland and his army are caught between a rock and a hard place. Faced with the impenetrable barrier of a sheer cliff wall and the pursuing enemy hot on their heels Roland sees death and defeat close at hand. Gone are the disgruntled Basques of Pamplona and Roncevalles. In the legend they are replaced by another enemy – the Saracens, cruel and infidel by both nature and inclination. But never fear – social rank, God and true bravery are seen to gain victory over the hordes of Islam.

Roland is loathed to let the sacred sword to fall into impious hands. In an act of desperation, in order to break the blade, he strikes Durandal against the rock. 

Rollant his stroke on a dark stone repeats

And more of it breaks off than I can speak.

The sword cries out, yet breaks not in the least

Back from the blow into the air it leaps

Destroy it can he not; which when he sees,

Within himself he makes a plaint most sweet.

"Ah! Durendal, most holy, fair indeed!

Relics enough thy golden hilt conceals:

Saint Peter's Tooth, the Blood of Saint Basile,

Some of the Hairs of my Lord, Saint Denise,

Some of the Robe, was worn by Saint Mary.

It is not right that pagans should thee seize,

For Christian men your use shall ever be. 

It is not Durandal that breaks, but the rock. Our hero hacks an opening in the mountain and through this newly hewn doorway, his army escapes north into France. And thus the legend explains the geological oddity that is the Breche de Roland, Roland’s Breach. 

Even if Roland didn’t escape through the Breche, plenty of others have used it as a passage between France and Spain. During the Spanish Civil War, many of those fleeing the excesses of Franco’s regime came this way. It the Second World War, persecuted Jews made their escape southwards from German occupied France, en route to ships harboured on the Portuguese coast that would then carry them to America. Generations of contrabandists have plied their trade over this border crossing, meeting with their Iberian partners at the foot of the mountain aptly named the Descargador, just south of the Breche. Though it is not the most common route, it is still occasionally used as a passage by hardy pilgrims on the St. James’ way to Campostella in Galicia.

Refuge de la Breche de Roland VIDEO

This is a slideshow of some photos I took during my three years working at the Refuge de la Breche de Roland in the Pyrenees National Park. Photos can never do justice to such an impressive landscape but at least they give some sort of idea of what life is like "la haut".

Count Henry Russell

Roland might not have broken the rock, but Count Henry Russell did. Or at least he had others do it for him. Upon his request a cave was hewn just a few metres to the west of the Breche on the northern side. It is still there, cold and damp and unwelcoming. Occasionally a few hardy or thrifty mountaineers will forsake the relative comfort of the refuge and spend an uncomfortable, though doubtlessly unforgettable night in Russell’s cave.

                                                            

Russell didn’t approve of the visual impact of refuges and was an ardent opponent of any building maintaining that they spoiled the natural harmony of the mountains. He was a colourful character without whom any account of the Pyrenees would be incomplete. He was a gentleman of leisure and means, though a most intrepid and determined one. He had the luxury afforded to the independently wealthy of doing as he pleased with little thought for social convention. Old photos and sketches of Russell show him as a tall elegant, gaunt faced man of angular build, sporting a moustache and goatee. His detractors say he was completely mad, while his admirers insist that he was merely very eccentric.

He was was born in 1834. His mother was French and his father was from county Down in Ireland. During his youth he briefly attended Clongowes college, a Jesuit school near Dublin. As a young man, he traveled the globe. He explored Canada and the American far west in his early twenties and spent time among the Native Americans tribes. He trekked through the Andes in Peru. He crossed the frozen lake Baikal in Siberia, and made his way through Mongolia. He crossed the Gobi desert, eventually following the ruins of the Great Wall all the way to Peking. On the same trip he visited Japan, Macao, Hong Kong, Sumatra, Australia and New Zealand. In Melbourne he set out to conquer some peaks in the neighbouring mountains and in the attempt almost died from exhaustion, dehydration and hunger. He sailed to India, docking first at Ceylon, then on to Madras, Goa and Bombay. He became very ill in India (believe me, I empathize) and stayed for some time in a sanatorium in Darjeeling, a hill station in the foothills of the Himalayas famed for its tea plantations. Eventually he returned to France by way of Suez, Constantinople, Venice and Marseille.

He did all that before he was thirty years old. With his wanderlust thoroughly sated he settled in the South West of France and for the next four decades rarely ventured far from the Pyrenees. He bought a house on the rue Marca in Pau (not far from the castle) and another on the coast in Biarritz, which was a fashionable watering hole for the aristocracy at the time. He dedicated his time to writing books abut his travels and cataloguing the mountaineering exploits that filled the rest of his life. 

At 3298 metres the Vignemale is the highest peak in the French Pyrenees. This was Russell’s mountain. It was in 1861, shortly after his return from his odyssey, that Russell made his first of at least 33 ascensions of the mountain that became his obsession. On a clear day I could see the summit from the kitchen window. Nowadays he would hardly recognize the receding glacier, a shadow of its former self with its yawing crevasses; another victim of global warming.

 In August 1880 he ascended the Vignemale and had his porters bury him in the rock and snow with only his head exposed to the mountain air. As night fell he was caught between cold, tiredness and fatigue. His hair, his eyebrows, his moustache all frosted over. He drifted in and out of hallucinatory dreams and mystical visions and for a moment attained “Union” with the “palpable presence” of God.

After this experience he wanted to spend more time and longer periods on his beloved mountain. This was when the cave digging started. The first cave was called Villa Russell and was inaugurated in July 1882. Then, in 1885, came the Grotte des guides.  The aristocratic ladies he lured up the mountain had to have their own quarters so the following year the Grotte des Dames was completed. Next came the Bellevue at an altitude of 2378 metres. His final cave, named Paradis, was just 18 metres below the summit.

In contrast to the cave at the Breche, Paradis had the advantages of facing south and being dry and was carpeted with straw. Obviously motivated by the glacial cold, Russell is credited with the invention of the sleeping bag, having had one made to his own design out of lamb’s fleece. At one stage he considered the idea of having animals brought to his caves to examine the effects of altitude on them. Among the matters that aroused his curiosity was whether cocks would crow at over 3000 metres.

In 1889 Count Henry Patrick Marie Russell signed a contract with the Syndicat de Bareges  for the rental of 200 hectares of the Vignemale for a duration of 100 years, at the most reasonable sum of 1 franc per year. The only condition imposed was that he didn’t have the right to bar access to the mountain. He had a red door installed on the Grotte de Paradis and keys forged with his initials on them. He had become the self-appointed keeper of the mountain.

For ten years he spent extended periods in his caves inviting ladies and gentlemen of the gentry to join him for sumptuous dinners served on bone china crockery, accompanied by fine wines served in crystal glasses. After dinner, the men smoked cigars and Russell entertained his guests by playing the cello.

The summer troglodyte was a winter dandy and attended high society balls, concerts and dinner parties. He was a flamboyant dresser, given to cloaks and canes and wearing the colourful costumes he had gathered on his travels. When speaking French he was said to affect the slightest of British accents. When he spoke English, his accent was more Gallic in tone.

In 1904, at the age of seventy, he made his final ascension of the Vignemale. He spent 17 days there alone. He died five years later, in the milder climes of Biarritz, at his residence, the villa Christine and his remains are buried in a cemetery in Pau.

Nowadays, almost unnoticed by the roadside at the entrance of the village of Gavarnie, is a statue of Russell - a copy of the original that was melted down by German troops during the occupation in the Second World War. His long limbed form is immortalized in bronze, depicted sitting semi-reclined with crossed legs. One hand rests on his knee while the other supports his jaw as he gazes wistfully towards his beloved Vignemale.