The beasts were stabbed down, and the riders, as they fell heavily, stabbed upon the ground. It was a swarm of foot against few horses that destroyed that knot of captains. Behind them the resistance had almost ceased, the column was extinguished. Among the dead and the dying, and the horses now no longer plunging but still and fallen, the derelict wagons, full of the loot of Spain and of the provision of so great a host, stood gaping for the robbers. The mountaineers climbed with odd laughter up the sides of those wooden things, and passed one to another, quarrelled over, fought over, ivory and gold, and good wines, and salted meats, and hangings and stuff for tents, and cloth of the Saracens, and spices. When evening came on there began to draw away from that place of death the thousands who had so triumphantly designed the surprise, and the wreckage was left in Roncesvalles under the open night, with its leaders lying dead round Roland, and their mounts dead also upon that little place of grass beside the road. They say that not one man escaped from the slaughter of Roncesvalles to the main army, and to Charlemagne and to the Larger Land. But this cannot be so, for from that dreadful place there went forth at least such men as could tell the story and make it greater, until there rose from it, like incense from a little pot, an immortal legend which is the noblest of our Christian songs. Therein you may read the golden story of Roland--how he blew the horn that was heard from Saragossa to Toulouse, and how he challenged God, holding up his glove when he died, and how the angel took him to the hill of God and the city of Paradise, dead. And as the angel so bore him Roland’s head lay back upon the angel’s arm, like the head of a man in sleep. THE NORMAN SIEGE (_Winter_, A.D. 885–886) Just as the hard winter had closed right in, and the days, growing shorter and shorter, were bitter under the silent cold, and all the trees were bare, there came, rowing through the chill and swollen water, and past the leafless forests of the western hills, up to the very water chain of Paris, such a fleet as had not been seen before. There were seven hundred at least of these broad ships of war, strong enough for the seas, small enough for the rivers, and they had so come slowly up the stream from Rouen, which had fallen that summer to their arms. Everywhere, as they went thus slowly inland week by week into the winter, the banks had flamed with farm fires, and the fields had been ravished and men and women killed, for this great host and fleet were the host and fleet of the pirates. They were not Christian men. They knew nothing of the rule of Rome. They came for destruction and to loot and to enjoy, and they were barbarous. Before them all the land had bent, and yet they could make nothing--only war.