Charlemagne’s Defeat in the Pyrenees: The Battle of Rencesvals. By Xabier Irujo

Abstract

The Battle of Roncevaux has been much studied; here, exceptionally, it is approached from the perspective of Basque history by a historian familiar with the topography of the area. Xabier Irujo uses an extensive range of original sources to reconstruct the narrative of the lead-up to the battle (Chapter 1), the Campaign of 778 (Chapter 2), the battle itself (Chapter 3), and consequences of the battle (Chapter 4), before turning his attention to the importance of the battle in medieval tradition (Chapter 5), specifically the Chanson de Roland, the Historia Caroli Magni et Rotholandi (Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle), and the window of Chartres Cathedral. Basque terms are used to designate Roncesvalles (Errozabel) and the Basque country (Vasconia). The author’s strengths are his understanding of the topography and focus on original sources, but it would have been helpful to have had more engagement with — and discussion of — the views of other historians, such as Rosamond McKitterick (Charlemagne: The Formation of a European Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)), who is footnoted, or Janet L. Nelson, whose recent book, King and Emperor: A New Life of Charlemagne (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2019), is not used at all. The author’s view, that the whole campaign was against the Basques (p. 37), would carry more weight if consideration was also given to the traditional view that the Spanish campaign had been undertaken in response to a request from Ibn al-ʿArabī (see McKitterick, Charlemagne, p. 34). When the author contests the description of the battle as a ‘skirmish’, he does not footnote historians who disagree. He does engage with other scholars in the discussion of the size of armies involved (pp. 41–43). The final chapter, on the battle in medieval tradition, briefly describes some of the literary accounts of the events. Of most interest here is a translation into English of a nineteenth-century Basque poem (pp. 149–51). An appendix lists and discusses the historical sources. There is some confusion here and in the bibliography: for example, La Chanson de Roland: The French Corpus (general editor Joseph J. Duggan (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005)) is listed as ‘in English’ and published in 2000 by the Anglo-Norman Text Society; C. M. Bowra’s classic study Heroic Poetry (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1964) is listed as an edition of William of Malmesbury’s De gestis regnum Anglorum. The bibliography includes both primary and secondary material, thus separating the different editions of the same text. Limited access to libraries during the pandemic may explain the use of older editions and translations readily available on the internet rather than more recent scholarly editions. The discussion of the Chanson de Roland manuscript in Chapter 5 also draws heavily on older palaeographic studies. The book is readable and nicely produced with a helpful abstract at the head of each chapter. The study has a potential — which greater engagement with other views would have helped fulfil — to open new perspectives in this important event in both medieval history and the medieval imaginary, namely the neglected perspective of the Basques.