On 15 August 778, one of Charlemagne’s ablest lieutenants, Roland, Prefect of the Breton March and commander of the Frankish rearguard, was killed at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in the Pyrenees Mountains against Basque and Gascon guerillas. Charlemagne’s army was returning from a very successful campaign against the Umayyad Muslims on the Iberian Peninsula when his rear guard was overrun and baggage train sacked by the Christian Basques. Charlemagne lost much of his court whom were traveling with the baggage and most of the plunder of the campaign to the small force. The Basques were just interested in the booty and not affiliated with Charlemagne’s adversaries at all. Roland’s death would be immortalized and heavily romanticized in Medieval and Renaissance literature, most famously in the French epic poem, “The Song of Roland”.