their Christianity and their loyalty to king Charles and his heirs.’ To this great diet at Paderborn came some ambassadors from Spain, bearing an unexpected offer of homage to the king. Abderahman, the Ommeyad, had finally succeeded in conquering well-nigh the whole of the Spanish peninsula from those of the Saracens who refused to accept him as king. The last survivors of his opponents, in desperate straits, sent to offer to become the vassals of Charles if he would preserve them from the conqueror. These chiefs were Soliman Ibn-al-Arabi and Kasmin Ibn-Yussuf, who were holding the towns of Barcelona, Gerona, and Huesca, in the extreme north-east of Spain, on the Frankish border. Charles determined to accept their offer, and so to thrust forward his frontier beyond the Pyrenees, as to protect Septimania from Saracen raids by interposing a new line of fortresses between it and the dominion of the ruler of Cordova. He believed that Saxony was fully subdued, and might be safely left alone to settle down into loyalty and Christian ways. [Sidenote: Charles invades Spain, 778.] Accordingly, in 778, Charles led his first great expedition into Spain. He himself crossed the Western Pyrenees with the host of Neustria, while the levy of Austrasia, Burgundy, and Lombardy, passed the Eastern Pyrenees. The two armies met in front of Saragossa, and Charles there received the homage of the rebel Saracen chiefs of Barcelona and Gerona. Saragossa, however, did not fall, in spite of the great army that had been concentrated against it, and Charles then wheeled about, and returned to Aquitaine by the same way that he had come. His expedition had not proved a great success. The Saracen rebels were untrustworthy vassals, nor was the only other result of the campaign, the homage paid to Charles by the Spanish Basques and Navarrese, after he had stormed their town of Pampeluna, a more solid gain. Indeed, while the Frankish army was returning through the passes of the Pyrenees, the Basques fell upon the king’s rearguard and waggon-train, in the famous defile of Roncesvalles. They captured much booty, and slew three great officials—Eggihard, the seneschal; Anselm, the count of the palace; and Hruotland (Roland), the warden of the Breton marches. The last-named, of whom history knows nothing save his untimely fall at Roncesvalles, must have been a great man among the Franks, for within a short time after his death he had become the hero of many legends, which ultimately took shape in the famous _Chanson de Roland_, wherein the Breton Margrave appears as second only to Charles the Great among the hosts of Christendom (778).