Charlemagne entrusted Roland with his rear guard. While the rest of the Emperor’s army advanced safely through the Pyrenees, Roland’s contingent was suddenly attacked. By the 11th century, this anonymous Old French epic rendered Roland’s desperate attempt to summon aid with his horn into the form of a song, a lament for life in the face of death. Raphael Boulay sheds light on the grandeur of one of the earliest of the truly national poems of the modern world.