Friday, August 15, 2008

 

This Day in the History of Pointless but Famous Battles


On this day in 778, Christian Basques beat up a small part of Charlemagne's Frankish army at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in the Pyrenees. The rear guard of the retreat was slaughtered, but the bulk of the Christian Franks made it back to France to prepare for the bottling up of Muslims in Spain for 700 years, until they were kicked out of Spain entirely, at least for a while. The battle is famous for its loose inspiration for the Song of Roland, which is actually pretty good.

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