THE SCENE: A Saracen prince discovers that it doesn’t take much to goad the French champion Roland into dramatic acts of violence.
THE TEXT: “French villains, you shall fight with us today, for he who should protect you has betrayed you; the king who left you in this pass is mad. This very day sweet France shall lose her fame, and Charlemagne the right arm from his body.”
When Roland hears this, God! Is he enraged! He spurs his horse and lets him run all out and goes to strike the count with all his force; he breaks his shield and lays his hauberk open and pierces through his chest and cracks the bones and cuts the spine completely from the back and with his lance casts out his mortal soul, impales him well, and hoists the body up and throws him dead a spear’s length from his horse. The neck-bone has been broken into halves, and still he does not leave, but tells him this: “You utter coward, Charles is not a fool, nor has he ever had a love of treason. His act was brave, to leave us at the pass; today sweet France is not to lose her fame. Now lay on, Franks! The first blow has been ours. We’re in the right, these gluttons in the wrong!”
– La Chanson de Roland, 11th Century AD
