"[The battle of Roncevaux] should have been remembered as a humiliation. Yet it was not. For among the dead of Charlemagne’s army was an officer known as Roland. Although Roland scarcely merited a mention in the chronicle accounts of the battle, during the Middle Ages he would gain a form of meme status. His name became the byword for and archetype of the courageous Christian knight who died heroically for his lord and faith, fighting in a losing cause but emerging with the greater glory for it. In the eleventh century, one version of the many minstrel songs composed about Roland was written down in verse as The Song of Roland (La chanson de Roland). Today this is revered as the oldest surviving work of French literature, and although the world it describes bears little actual resemblance to Carolingian Francia (it is much closer to France during the Crusades), the story was no less popular for it. Describing the climactic moments at Roncevaux, the song tells of Roland blowing a mighty horn to alert Charlemagne to his desperate plight. The warrior puffs so hard into the instrument that his temples literally burst and blood spurts from his mouth. Later in the song, once all his companions are dead and he himself is dying, Roland summons his last ounce of strength to defeat a Saracen who was trying to steal his sword, beating the eyes out of his skull and laying him dead on the ground. Eventually, Roland himself dies, but before repenting his sins and joining hands with the archangels Gabriel and Michael, his last thoughts are for “the fair land of France, the men of his lineage [and] Charlemagne, his lord, who raised him.” Needless to say, this was all fantasy. Neither Charlemagne nor the unfortunate, real-life Roland could have imagined that a dismal defeat at the Pass of Roncevaux would have eventually inspired such a dramatic scene—let alone a foundational text in European literature. Yet somehow, for Charlemagne, even abject failure often contained the seeds of triumph."