Battle of Roncesvalles. It is August 15, 778, in the middle of the Pyrenean summer, the only time when the mountains of Roncesvalles usually reveal all their greenery if you are lucky enough to be free of fog. During the Emperor's lifetime no chronicler dared to record the defeat. Not only do they omit it but they talk about a normal and ordinary return to France. But twenty years after the battle, the new Annales Regii dare to record the Frankish disaster of Roncesvalles: In cuius summitate Wascones insidiis conlocatis extremum agmen adorti, totum exercitum magno tumultu perturbant. Et licet Franci wasconibus tam armis quam animis praestare viderentur, tamen et iniquitate locorum et genere imparis pugnae inferiors effecti sunt. In hoc certamine plerique aulicorum, quos rex copiis praefederat, interfecti sunt, direpta impedimenta et is propter notitiam locorum statim in diverse dilapsus est. Cuius vulneris acceptio dolor magnam partem rerum feliciter in Hispania gestarum in corde regis obnubilavit. (New Annales Regii, Edic. Pertz-Kurze, pp. 50-51). The Basques having prepared an ambush on top of them, they attacked the rear, throwing the entire great army into great disorder. And although the Franks ed themselves superior to the Basques both in arms and in courage, nevertheless, given the harshness of the place and the unequal character of the fight, they found themselves inferior. In this battle, most of the courtiers to whom the king had given command of the army corps were killed, the baggage was plundered, and the enemy, with their knowledge of the place, quickly dispersed. The grief of this defeat largely clouded the king's mind over the happy events that had taken place in Hispania. Twenty years later, around 830, Eginhard, who had personal dealings with Emperor Charles, recorded for the first time in writing the names of the commanders of the various army corps who died in the battle with the Basques. Understandably, the Frankish chroniclers do not say a single word about the presence and actions of Emperor Charles in the battle. But in an action that shook the entire great army and in which almost all the commanders of its corps died, it is impossible that Charlemagne was absent. It is reasonable to assume that, given the way things were going in a setting usually covered in fog and forests, he would have opted to save the vanguard by undertaking a swift retreat to safer ground. The question of who organized the ambush is more obscure. Auzias supposes it was the Duke of Vasconia, Lupus II. In the forged letter of Alan, invented by the well-known forger Pellicer, Lupus is credited with leading the ambush. He would have had good reason to do so, given the still recent conquest of Vasconia by Charles, with its attendant crimes and robberies that every war entails. But he also adds that Lupus was later captured by Charlemagne and ignominiously hanged. The truth is that nothing is known of Lupus after 778, but it is known that his son succeeded him. The History of Languedoc ed what was said in the Letter of Alan. All this nonsense remained standing until Benjamin Gurard discovered the falsity of the document. This defeat, Campin comments, produced two important results: on the part of the vanquished, a desire to take revenge and reduce all of Vasconia by force of arms; on the part of the victors, the convenience of allying themselves with the Saracens, or rather, with the Aragonese mulads (the Beni Fortn, probably of Basque origin), who, out of ambition, became Mohammedans and then rose to semi-independent positions. Then opened, Campin continues, a very obscure period of political fluctuation whose scattered news items us the Vascones, sometimes subject to the Franks, sometimes at war with them, sometimes friends of the Moors, sometimes fighting with them: at the whim of convenience. That is all that is known about the Battle of Roncesvalles. Everything else is nothing more than conjecture, falsehoods or nonchalance, although all three cases also occur in a skillful interweaving as in the studies of Menéndez Pidal. In the cited work, La Chanson de Roland y el neotradicionalismo (p. 199), he turns furiously against the Carolingian sources, not so much for their flattering nature towards Charles or their offensiveness towards the victors, but because they categorically and without a doubt attribute the attack to the Basques. Menéndez Pidal criticizes the chroniclers because they turn the battle into an act of pillage and attribute to them what they do not say: at the hands of bandits, without home or land.