For four years after their marriage Roland lived at Amiens, he being still an inspector of manufactures; but his knowledge of commercial affairs enabled him to contribute articles to the Encyclopédie Nouvelle, in which, as in all his literary work, he was assisted by his wife. On their removal to Lyons the influence of both became wider and more powerful. Their fervent political aspirations could not be concealed, and from the beginning of the Revolution they threw in their lot with the party of advance. The Courrier de Lyon contained articles the success of which reached even to the capital and attracted the attention of the Parisian press. They were from the pen of Madame Roland and were signed by her husband. A correspondence sprang up with Brissot and other friends of the Revolution at headquarters. In Lyons their views were publicly known; Roland was elected a member of the municipality, and when the depression of trade in the south demanded representation in Paris he was deputed by the council of Lyons to defend the interests of the city before the constituent assembly. Accompanied by his wife, he appeared in the capital in February 1791.

They had made many and influential friends in advance, and Madame Roland’s salon soon became the rendezvous of Brissot, Pétion, Robespierre, and other leaders of the popular movement. In person Madame Roland was attractive though not beautiful; her ideas were clear and far-reaching, her manner calm, and her power of observation extremely acute. It was almost inevitable that she should find herself in the centre of political aspirations and presiding over a company of the most talented men of progress. Her resolve was fixed, and gradually she impressed it upon all: the France of 1791 was a France of transition; a republic alone was its destiny, was the ideal of philosophy, the expression of liberty, the goal of history. This was the constant aim of her influence and her speech; it was accompanied with a petty animosity, almost hatred, towards the king and queen; but it found a ready echo in the minds of those leaders who willingly admired her calm and learned reasoning. The royal flight in - June and the ignominious return lent impetus to these ideas; a journal entitled The Republican appeared in Paris, but at its second number was suppressed. In its organization Madame Roland had a hand.

In September 1791, Roland’s mission being executed, they returned to Lyons. Meanwhile the inspectorships of manufactures had been abolished; he was thus free; and they could no longer remain absent from the centre of affairs. In December they again reached Paris. Roland became a member of the Jacobin Club. The rupture had not yet been made evident between the Girondist party and that section still more extreme, that of the Mountain. For a time the whole left united in forcing the resignation of the ministers. When the crisis came the Girondists were ready, and in March 1792 Roland found himself appointed minister of the interior. As a minister of the crown Roland exhibited a remarkable combination of political prejudice with administrative ability. While his wife’s influence could not increase the latter it was successfully exerted to foment and embitter the former. He was ex offidο excluded from the legislative assembly, and his declarations of policy were thus in writing,—that is, in the form in which she could most readily exert her power. A great occasion was invented. The decrees against the emigrants and the non-juring clergy still remained under the veto of the king. A letter was penned by Madame Roland and addressed by her husband to Louis. It remained unanswered. Thereupon, in full council and in the king’s presence, Roland read his letter aloud. It contained many and terrible truths as to the royal refusal to sanction the decrees and as to the king’s position in the state; but it was inconsistent with a minister’s position, disrespectful if not insolent in tone, disloyal in spirit, and grossly disfigured by repeated threats of violence on the part of the people. It was meant, and it was used, simply as a lecture to the king’s face and as an accusation behind his back. Roland’s dismissal followed. Then he completed the plan: he read the letter to the assembly; it was ordered to be printed, became the manifesto of disaffection, and was circulated everywhere. In the demand for the reinstatement of the dismissed ministers were found the means of humiliation, and the prelude to the dethronement, of the king.

After the abolition of royalty on the lθth of August, Roland was recalled to power, one of his colleagues being Danton. To his dismay he found that the passions which he had lent his aid in evoking he was powerless to allay, and that the party of the Mountain was, on the contrary, utilizing these passions for purposes of incredible excess. F rom this moment, though too late, the conduct of Roland, his wife, and the whole Gironde became heroic. They fearlessly denounced the massacres of September, Roland writing boldly to the assembly on the subject. Both husband and wife became the butt of calumny and the object of increasing dislike on the part of the ultra-revolutionists,—Robespierre shunning them, Danton denouncing them, and Marat in his journal heaping upon them the foulest falsehoods. Still the Girondists, from Vergniaud downwards, banded themselves bravely on their side; but on 22d January 1793 Roland sent in his resignation. It was the day after the execution of the king.

Still they remained in Paris, unflinchingly, but with ever less and less success, attempting to regulate and elevate the Revolution. Calumny continued. Once Madame Roland appeared personally in the assembly to repel the falsehoods of an accuser, and her ease and dignity evoked enthusiasm and compelled acquittal. But violence succeeded violence, and early on the morning of the 1st of June she was arrested and thrown into the prison of the Abbaye. Roland himself escaped secretly to shelter in Rouen. Released for an hour from the Abbaye, she was again arrested and thrown among the horrors of Sainte Pélagie. Finally she was transferred to the Conciergerie. In prison she won the affections of the guards, and was allowed the privilege of writing materials and the occasional visits of devoted friends. She there wrote her

Appeal to an Impartial Postent y, those memoirs which display a strange alternation between self-laudation and patriotism, between the trivial and the sublime. On 8th November 1793 she was conveyed to the guillotine. Before yielding her head to the block, she bowed before the clay statue of Liberty erected in the Place de la Revolution, uttering her famous apostrophe—“O Liberty! what crimes are committed in thy name !” One week later Roland, having heard of his wife’s death, wandered some miles from his refuge in Rouen; maddened by despair and grief, he wrote a few words expressive of his horror at those massacres which could only be inspired by the enemies of France, protesting that “from the moment when I learned that they had murdered my wife I would no longer remain in a world stained with enemies.” He affixed the paper to his breast, and unsheathing a sword-stick fell upon the weapon, which pierced his heart, on 15th November 1793. (τ. s.)

ROLAND Legend of. The main incident of this legend is founded upon an undoubted historical event, —the Spanish expedition of Charlemagne (778). The Frankish king, having crossed the Pyrenees and captured Pamplona, was beaten back from the walls of Saragossa. On his return the “Gascons” (Basques) surprised his rearguard, and, according to the testimony of Eginhard, cut it off to a man (Vit. Car., c. i.),—“In which battle were slain Eggihard, provost of the royal table . . . and Hruod-landus, prefect of the Britannic march.” This account is supported by other evidence more or less contemporary, as, for example, the Vita Hludowici. From this work we gather that at the time of its composition (c. 840) the Roncesvalles disaster was already the subject of popular tradition; for its author, speaking of the Frankish chiefs slain in this battle, says, “quorum, quia vulgata sunt, nomina dicere supersedi.” Yet in its earliest extant form the legend has already worked in the names and traditions of a later age, e.g., the traitor Ganelon, who probably, as Leibnitz has suggested, represents Wenelon, archbishop of Sens, accused of treason towards Charles the Bald in 859. It is interesting to note that during the last few years Dümmler (Romania, ii. 146-148) has discovered what appears to be the epitaph of the above-mentioned Eggihard. This, as G. Paris remarks, renders it highly probable that the similar elegiac verses quoted in the Pseudo-Turpin (cc. 24, 25), which make Roland thirty-eight years old at the time of his death, are also genuine survivals from the Carolingian era. According to Diimmler’s discovery, the battle of Roncesvalles was fought on 15th August.

Earliest Extant Forms.— The legend of Roland makes its first appearance in ( a ) the so-called History of Archbishop Turpin and ( b ) the Chanson de Roland. The former, according to Paris, may be divided into two parts; of these the first (cc. 1-5), written about 1050, deals with Charlemagne’s conquest of Spain, but contains no allusion to Roland. The latter section, written by a monk of Vienne between 1109 and 1119, gives the main outlines of the familiar legend: Marsilius and Baligant appear (c. 21); Roland fights with the giant Ferracute, Ariosto’s Ferraiι (Orl. Fur., c. 1); then follow the narrative of Ganelon’s treachery (c. 21) and punishment (c. 26), the episode of Roland’s horn, Roland’s address to his sword (c. 22), his last prayer, his death (c. 23), and Charles’s vengeance on the Saracens (c. 26). The Chanson de Roland, in its extant version probably composed in England between 1066 and 1095, looks like the expansion of an earlier poem written towards the beginning of the same century.

It gives the legend in much the same form as the Pseudo-Turpin, but with far more detail and poetic fire. There are, however, a few striking differences between the two accounts. Such deal with the causes and method of Ganelon’s treachery, the personality of Baldwin, and the fate of Archbishop Turpin. Above all, the Latin prose-writer has no second hero in Oliver and knows nothing of Roland’s love for Aude.

Additions to the Early Legend.— The name of Roland was soon transplanted from its native soil in the gestes of Roncesvalles into almost the whole cycle of later Charlemagne romance; and by weaving these notices of him together we may construct the legendary story of his life. Thus the Enfances Roland (c. 1200) tells of his parents’ disgrace and his infant valour; in the Chanson diAsρremont (late 12th century) we read how he became possessed of his famous sword Durendal; Girars de Viane (c. 1200) recounts his great fight with Oliver and his love for that hero’s sister Aude. Roland plays scarce less prominent a part in Renaud de Montauban (13th century) and figures in Fierabras (12th century), Οtinel (c. 1250), and the Voyage à Jerusalem (c. 1130). Nicholas of Padua’s Entrée en Espagne (c. 1320) makes Roland quarrel with Charles and fly to Persia, whence he only returns to aid in the siege of Pamplona and to perish at Roncesvalles.

Diffusion of the Roland Legend in Literature.— The immense popularity of the Chanson de Roland and the Pseudo-Turpin may be measured by the influence they have exercised on the literature of nearly every country of western Europe. To the original Chanson de Roland a poet of perhaps the reign of Philip Augustus added a new ending of some 2000 lines. From this full version are descended the Remaniements or Roneevaux, of which so many French MSS. remain. During the 12th century a Swabian priest, Conrad, translated the Chanson into rhymed German verse. This Rοlandslied forms the basis of the Stricker’s Karl (c. 1230), in its turn the foundation for the Roncesvalles section of the so-called Karl Meinet (early 14th century). In England Taillefer’s singing of a “cantilena Rollandi” prefaced the first Norman charge at Hastings; but, curiously enough, the English Roland of the 14th century in some places seems to look back for its original to the Pseudo-Turpin rather than to the Chanson de Roland, which received its final shape in England. It was probably from that country that the Roland legend passed to Scandinavia and Iceland. There the battle of Roncesvalles forms the eighth section of the great Karlamagnu,s Saga (13th century), which is of critical importance, as it preserves some details not to be found in the Chanson de Roland as we now have it. Translated into Danish, this work took the form of the Kejser Karl Magnus (15th century), to this day a popular book in Denmark. The legend penetrated eastward into Hungary and Bohemia; while in the west Roland appears in the Welsh Mabinogion and the tales of Ireland. M. Bormans has published Flemish fragments of the Roncesvalles story; and these, which belong to the 13th and the 14th century, are based on the Chanson. In the 16th century the same legend circulated throughout the Low Countries in one of the most popular books of the day. In the 13th century the Spanish “fabulae histrionum,” of which Roderic of Toledo speaks (d. 1247), and which may, on one hypothesis, have been the sources whence the Pseudo-Turpin drew his materials, gave way to a new and more patriotic legend, in which Bernard del Carpio takes the leading place; but three centuries later (1528) Nicolas di Piamonte revived the purer Frankish tradition in the still popular Karlo Magna

It is, however, on the literature of Italy that the Roland legend has exercised its widest influence. Here the songs, chanted by the early French jongleurs, towards the end of the 12th century made place for the Italianized Remaniements, till the epoch of Nicholas of Padua (c. 1320), whose gigantic Entrée en Espagne (with its supplement the Prise de PampehΜe), though but a mosaic of earlier materials, formed the groundwork of the Tuscan poem, the Spagna (1350-1380), on which the Rotta di Roncievalle in its turn is founded. Somewhat later than the verse Spagna came the Spagna in prose; and the extraordinary popularity of the legend in its new guise made the names of Charlemagne’s paladins familiar down to the age of the Renaissance. We have now reached the era of the great Italian poets Pulci {Morgante Maggiore, 1481), Boiardo {Orlando InnΜmorato, 1486), Ariosto {Orlando Furioso, 1516), and Berni (1541), whose poems, however, with the exception of Pulci’s, are indebted to those of their predecessors for little more than the names of their chief characters and their general plan.

Roland in Mediaeval Art.— The earliest remaining statue of Roland seems to be the 12th-century statue in the church of San Zeno at Verona. The whole history of Roncesvalles is blazoned in the 13th-century window in Chartres cathedral. A similar window existed formerly in the abbey church of St Denis. M. Vétault (Hist. de Ch., p. 496) has also figured a Carolingian coin which bears the names of both Roland and Charles. The so-called Roland statues of Germany are most probably symbolical of the judicial and other rights once possessed by the people of those towns where they are to be found. In some cases at least the name seems to have been transferred to what were originally meant to be representations of the first Othos (10th century). The earliest known allusion to a “statua Rolandi” under this name occurs in a privilegium granted by Henry V. to the town of Bremen (1111). The word “Rolandssäule” is perhaps a piece of folk-etymology for an earlier “Rothland-säule” or red-land-pillar, i.e., the before-mentioned figure or pillar, which signified that the state in which it stood had the power of life and death,—in other words, was a Blutgerichtstätte. Grimm suspects a connexion between the Roland statues and those old Teutonic pillars of which the Irminsul destroyed by Charlemagne is the best-known example. These Roland statues are sometimes in the open air, as at Bremen and Magdeburg; or against the town-house, as at Halberstadt; or in the church, as formerly at Göttingen. Sometimes they ride on horseback, as at Haldensleben near Magdeburg; but more generally they are to be found standing upright. They always bear a sword in their right hand and very frequently a shield in their left. They are usually armoured, as at Magdeburg, but are occasionally dressed in more peaceful robes, as at Halle (on the Saale), or both cloaked and armoured, as at Wedel in Holstein and at Bremen. Sometimes they are crowned, as at Wedel and Nordhausen. The heads of the statues differ extremely,—being long-bearded at Erfurt, short-bearded at Wedel, and absolutely smooth-faced at Bremen. At Brandenburg the Roland was ornamented with silver and perhaps with gold. The statues are often of colossal height, that of Belgern (Merseburg) being over 9 ells high, exclusive of its pedestal. Perhaps the most famous Roland pillar still remaining is that of Bremen.

For further information on this subject see Leibnitz, Annales Imperii, i. 478, &c.; the treatises of Gryphiander (ed. 1666) Eggelingius (1700), B. Carpzov (1742), J. H. Hartmann (1735), and Nicholas Meyer, De IVicbildis (1739); and Zoepfi’s exhaustive account in vol. iii. of his Alterthiimer des deutschen Reichs. For the Roland legend generally consult Léon Gautier’s Epopées Françaises, iii., and Chanson de Roland, edd. 1870 and 1881. Besides these, see the various romances of the Charlemagne cycle edited for the series of Anciens Poètes de France, the various volumes of Romania, and the late editions of the several poems alluded to in the foregoing article. For the relationship of the Roland legend to the Italian poets see the works of P. Rajna.