This encounter took place on a plain a little to the south of Tarbes
which is still called the Heath of the Moors.

When Ferdinand Foch was a little boy, more than eleven hundred years
after that battle, it was not uncommon for the spade or plowshare of
some husbandman on the heath to uncover bones of Christian or infidel
slain in what was probably the last conflict fought on French soil to
preserve France against the Saracens. And there may still have been
living some old, old men or women who could tell Ferdinand stories of
the 24th of May (anniversary of the battle) as it was observed each
year until the Revolution of 1789. At the southern extremity of the
battlefield there stood for many generations a gigantic equestrian
statue, of wood, representing the holy warrior, Missolin, rallying his
flock to rout the unbelievers. And in the presence of a great
concourse singing songs of grateful praise to Missolin, his statue was
crowned with garlands by young maidens wearing the picturesque gala
dress of that vicinity.

Some forty-odd years after Missolin's victory, Charlemagne went with
his twelve knights and his great army through Tarbes on his way to
Spain to fight the Moors. And when that ill-starred expedition was
defeated and its warriors bold were fleeing back to France, Roland--so
the story goes--finding no pass in the Pyrénées where he needed one
desperately, cleaved one with his sword Durandal.

High up among the clouds (almost 10,000 feet) is that Breach of
Roland--200 feet wide, 330 feet deep, and 165 feet long. A good
slice-out for a single stroke! And when Roland had cut it, he dashed
through it and across the chasm, his horse making a clean jump to the
French side of the mountains. That no one might ever doubt this, the