Returning to Pampelona Charles levelled the walls of that city to the ground, to prevent its rebelling against him, and then began his march across the Pyrenees. On the highest point of the pass an ambush had been planted by the Wascones whose operations were concealed by the dense forests growing there. When the baggage-train and rear-guard came in sight they dashed down upon them. The surprise and the possession of the higher ground fully compensated for the mountaineers’ inferiority in arms and discipline; in fact, in such an encounter the heavier armor of the Franks was a positive disadvantage. By the confession of the biographer of Charlemagne at least the whole of the rear-guard were cut to pieces, and with them fell many of the nobles of Charles’s court, notably Eggihard the seneschal, Anselm the count of the palace; and Hruodland the governor of the Breton March. As night soon fell and the nimble invaders dispersed rapidly to their homes and hiding-places, revenge was impossible, and Charles returned to Chasseneuil with clouded brow, all his satisfaction at his successes in Spain--such as they were--being marred by this dishonor to his arms and by the loss of so many of his friends. The date of this disaster is fixed by the epitaph of the seneschal Eggihard to the 18th of August 778. The place, by undeviating tradition, has been identified with the wild gorge of Roncesvalles. It is indeed somewhat difficult to understand how even the main body of the Frankish army could have escaped, if the foes were on the very summit of the pass, and if the skirmish took place at Roncesvalles on the Spanish side of the mountain: but this may be accounted for by the distance at which the baggage-train and the rear-guard lagged behind the van. It was at this same point of the Pyrenean ridge and through this same defile of Roncesvalles that Soult’s gallant soldiers forced their way in 1813, when the French marshal made his brilliant, but unsuccessful, attempt to turn Wellington’s position and raise the siege of Pampelona.