By the time Virginia Convention was convened in Richmond on March 20, 1775, the fiery oratory of Patrick Henry was already legendary. He had taken on the established church in the Parsons Cause and he actively continued to defend unlicensed preachers in Virginia. He led the opposition in the House of Burgesses against the Stamp Act a decade earlier and was already one of the leading political figures in America.

Before he left for Virginia after the First Continental Congress, he met with John Adams for dinner and discussed the situation. Adams read to him a letter from a friend back in Massachusetts urging a military plan of action. Adams would later write, “In the Congress of 1774, there was not one member, except Patrick Henry, who appeared to me sensible of the precipice, or rather, the pinnacle on which we stood, and had the candor and courage enough to acknowledge it.”

As he traveled back home to Virginia, the question of what to do weighed heavy on Henry. But upon his arrival home, he would be greeted with devastating news – his wife, Sarah, who had long suffered from an unknown illness, was very sick and near death. But the urgent matters of state could not wait.

Governor Dunmore had refused all requests to reconvene the House of Burgesses, and an effort was underway to call a convention to discuss how the colony would respond to the growing British threat. The Hanover County Committee elected Henry to represent them at the convention on February 18th, but he was absent from the proceedings. Just a week earlier, his wife had died. He told his closest friends how deeply his wife’s death grieved him, but he also felt that he couldn’t disappoint the people of Virginia in their hour of need.

The Virginia Convention gathered at St. John’s Church in Richmond with all the leading men of the colony present. The first order of business was a discussion of what had transpired during the Congressional sessions in Philadelphia and to share news of the ongoing siege of Boston from the various committees of correspondence. The news was not encouraging, and many leaders in the other colonies were uncertain how to respond.

Despite his grief and recent personal loss, Patrick Henry was in attendance and put forward a motion for Virginia to take defensive measures against the British threat and prepare plans for calling and arming the militia. The convention was split on the motion. Richard Henry Lee and several of the more militant members supported Henry. Others, such as Peyton Randolph, were cautious that such a move might provoke the British to bring troops to Virginia and impose order. If approved, Henry’s motion could very well mean war. But everyone there knew that by discussing the motion, the convention was already flirting with treason. Henry was making a bold move.

Discussion raged back and forth between the convention members. No one, including Henry, was anxious for an armed conflict against what was then the greatest commercial and military power in the world. But he concluded that the time for talk and half-measures was over – immediate action was necessary. Failure to do anything would leave Virginia and the whole of America vulnerable to attack by the British.

Having heard his proposal denounced as going too far, he asked to speak. Rising from the church pew with determination, he knew that the other members of the convention had to be brought to the point where they acknowledged the gravity of the situation. He began his address by acknowledging that despite their differences, all of those present were friends and apologized in advance to those who disagreed with him for the bold statement he was about to make. This was no time for polite conversation: “The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery… Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty towards the majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly things.”

Now that he had everyone’s attention and had created in his hearers’ minds a sense of anticipation, he wanted to state his case as clearly as possible. Surely, everyone wanted peace, but they had to recognize the threat that the British troops represented. Arriving more and more every day, they were not intended to bring peace, but submission. “Has Great Britain any enemy in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging.”

Directing his rhetorical prowess to the arguments of those who wanted to make further appeals to the king, he said, “Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned with contempt from the foot of the throne.” The concern was not just with Lord North or the Parliament – this policy of submission extended all the way to the king. Having identified that the problem started at the top and worked its way down to the colonies, there was no room left to hope for yet another appeal to the king. “We must fight! I repeat it sir, - we must fight! An appeal to arms, and to the God of hosts, is all that is left us.”

Their attention now drawn away from the arguments at hand, he had to address their fears about the British might. “Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us.”

Growing all the more bold and speaking now like an Old Testament prophet, he assured them that because their cause was just, their hope should be in the Lord. “There is a God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle sir, is not to the strong alone: it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.” Henry now had to make sure that everyone understood that there was only one course of action to follow. “There is no retreat but in submission and slavery. Our chains are forged. Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston. The war is inevitable. And let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come!”

Summoning what strength he had left in him, he challenged his colleagues to be men of purpose; men of virtue; men of action. “Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it Almighty God!” With his audience sitting motionless and hanging seemingly on every word, Henry wanted those present to have no lingering doubts about where he stood or what was at stake. “I know not what course others may take, but as for me,” he said throwing a defiant fist in the air, “give me liberty,” and now bringing his hand down to his heart as if holding a dagger, “or give me death!”

Patrick Henry had made his case. The atmosphere in St. John’s Church was electric and yet deathly silent. And as he sat down in the pew, one observer later recalled that the words, “to arms,” quivered on every lip. Another listener was so moved as he stood outside and listened through an open window in the church, that he requested to be buried on that spot – a request that was granted at his death. Henry had thrown down the gauntlet, and the members of the convention would pick it up.

His motion was approved. Virginia, and all of the other American states with her, was now preparing for independence – and war.

All werthy men that luffes to hear
Of chevallry that byfore us were
That doughty weren of dede
Of Charlles Magne de Fraunce, the heghe Kynge of alle
That oft sythes made hethyn men for-to falle,
That styffely satte one stede;
This geste es soothe; witnes the buke,
The ryghte lele trouthe, whoso will luke,
In cronekill for-to rede.

That strange mixture of action and adventure, intrigue and suspense, mystery and treachery, betrayal and heroism that we’d expect from a classic Hollywood blockbuster was the stock and trade of the Medieval chansons de geste, or “songs of deeds.” Some literary historians assert that the very idea of the modern novel emerged from these songs of chivalry, of knights in shining armor, and of the legends of the crusaders. One of the very earliest, and one of the best, of these is The Song of Roland. It is one of those great, classic works of literature that is almost entirely fictional but which nevertheless is more truthful than most history books filled with carefully verified facts. Indeed, it’s “true lies” tell us much about ourselves, our world, and the shaping of Western Civilization that we might not otherwise know.

Traditional folk musicians, troubadours, minstrels, and jongleurs would often travel from town to town, market to market, and castle to castle singing about the epic adventures of great heroes from the distant past. The best stories were, over long periods of time, standardized into a single form. About a hundred of these popular epic poems survive, dating from around the eleventh to the fifteenth century.

Thus, we do not actually know who the various composers of The Song of Roland were or even when the poem took its present form. All indications are that there was a single, very gifted, final editor who took various strands of the popular oral tradition and wove them together into a creative masterpiece sometime between 1098-1100. This would mean that the poem was written during the time of the First Crusade. Indeed, most scholars believe that the story was intended to encourage Christians to fully comprehend the danger of Islam posed to Christian civilization.

The poem actually describes events that had occurred several centuries earlier, during the reign of the Frankish warrior-king Charlemagne. Though almost none of the details of the poem are verifiably historically accurate, they became an essential part of what Europeans remembered about the past. History is, after all, not so much what actually happened, as it is what we think happened or what we remember of what happened. As a result, fictionalized legends like this one can often have more influence than careful historiography can.

The composer got a goodly number of the facts wrong: Charlemagne was not yet the emperor; the bandits who slaughtered the rear-guard of the army were likely Basques not Saracens; the invasion of the Spanish Moors was but a brief expedition not a seven-year-long campaign; revenge for the ambush was never actually undertaken; and the rivalry between Roland and Ganelon probably never happened, so far as we know—in fact, there is good reason to suspect that the two men were not even alive at the same time.

Here is what we do know with some certainty: during the afternoon of August 15, 778, the rearguard of Charlemagne’s Frankish army was ambushed and slaughtered in the Roncesvalles of the Pyrenees Mountains while returning from a raid on Moorish garrisons in northern Navarre and Leon.

Accounts from this distant age are usually very sketchy, but the most reliable account of the event comes from Einhard, who was Charlemagne’s court historian and biographer. From his slight and fragmentary account, romantic balladeers began to piece together a tale of courage, honor, passion, betrayal, adventure, enmity, and revenge that eventually became not only a great work of literature but also the essential historical reference point for the whole system of noble Christian chivalry.

Chivalry is a rather romantic notion that brings to mind Arthur and his Round Table, Ivanhoe and his lost honor, Guenevere and her threatened virtue, and Rapunsel and her dire straits. It evokes sentimental images of the long ago and the far away. But chivalry is actually a code of honorable conduct that need not necessarily be tied to any particular time or place or cultural context. Instead, it is a standard of virtuous behavior that has inspired great men and women through all the ages—causing them to long for a kinder, gentler society that abides by the conditions of genuine civilization. Drawn equally from Biblical standards of virtue and from the examples of godly heroes of the faith, chivalry was a kind of moral philosophy for society, manners, and justice.

The Song of Roland both established and illustrated the notion that chivalry is a humane ideal—ultimately based on Scripture—that defines the limits of proper action toward friend and foe alike. For several generations of European Christians it was one of the most powerful means by which such cultural standards were woven into the hearts and lives of the people. At first glance, that might be a little difficult for us to understand since we only have the written version of the poem with which to interact—in fact, we probably ought to admit right from the start that as it appears on the page, the poem is a little dry, repetitive, and overbearing. Actually, the chansons de geste were not intended to be read. They were written to be performed.

So today, we’re at something of a disadvantage: The Song of Roland was meant to be seen and heard, accompanied by music, perhaps actors, and certainly in the context of feasting and celebration. In addition, the poem probably would not have been performed at a single sitting. Instead, the jongleur might only perform a few scenes from the poem, merely summarizing the essential preceding parts and for the sake of context.

Several features of the poem made such performances easier: it consists of roughly 4000 lines of verse, divided into 298 poetic units called laisses; these laissesare irregular in length, averaging just under fourteen lines; the lines are mostly decasyllabic, and are connected by either assonance which is something like a very weak rhyming scheme; the laisses are regularly punctuated with a kind of echo effect so that slightly different versions of the same event recur consecutively in order to slow the pace of the story—kind of like slow motion in a movie; the laisses are filled with formulaic phrases which helped the performer remember the tale and provided easy “visual” clues for the listener—a technique commonly employed in epics since the time of Homer.

All in all, the style, structure, and literary composition of the poem would have made it a kind of operatic drama.

There is never a doubt about who the good guys and the bad guys are. Good and evil are easy to pick out. There is no moral ambivalence about war and its hazards here as in the Iliad or the Aeneid. Virtue and vice are set in plain opposition to one another. God’s good providence and the machinations of greedy, foolish, and unscrupulous men are exposed for what they actually are. So, the message of the poem is never in question. But, that is not to say that it is either simple or simplistic. Like virtually all the chansons de geste, the poem has a veritable cast of thousands. And there are battle scenes galore. You’ll really have to pay attention to follow all the details, the twists and turns of the plot, and the symbolic details in the names, the places, and the peculiar providences evidenced in the tale.

A few tips for the modern reader are therefore in order:

First, far and away my favorite translation is the one by Dorothy Sayers (Penguin Classics). Just reading her marvelous introduction is well worth the price of the book.

Second, be sure to read The Song of Roland aloud. Accentuate the drama. Listen for the musical refrains. Allow the architecture of the plotting to dictate your pacing. The Sayers translation is perfect text for an apt theatrical feel.

Third, read the poem in a group. Divide up the parts, the characters, and the scenes. Read with the full emphasis of voices, accents, and sound effects.

Fourth, if possible, read the poem in a setting of revelry. Have a meal or a party or a time of fellowship as a backdrop. Decorate for the occasion. Use firelight or candlelight for dramatic effect. In other words, treat the poem as if it were a script or a screenplay. In that way, you will begin to see and hear and experience just why the poem became so immensely popular and influential.

The storyline of The Song of Roland is full of blood and thunder, valor and betrayal, faithfulness and vain-glorying, romance and adventure—in other words, it is full of all the things that make for a great yarn. There is something very attractive about the bravery, loyalty, and noble bearing of Roland’s lost cause that continues to attract our attentions and affections. It is a great classic tale—and it sheds as bright a light on our own time as on the days of Charlemagne it portrays so beautifully.

For further reading: A very helpful work for Roland’s historical setting is Maurice Keen’s Chivalry, (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1984). For the literary character of the epic poem and the chivalric chapbooks, turn to Stephen A. Shepherd’s Middle English Romances, (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995). And Byron York and William Nolan’s Chansons de Geste is an excellent resource, (London: Belvedere Press, 2001).

Oh yes, and for a bit more on the crusading mindset as well as just a bunch of good yarns set in the early medieval world, read the Brother Cadfael mysteries of Ellis Peters (beware: they’re addictive and there are 21 volumes in the series; read one and you’ll want to read them all).

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