Asher Sisneros

The discrepancies within The Song of Roland make the entire poem laughable. It is a wonder why anyone takes the book seriously. Though the book is filled with fascinating betrayals and gripping battles, the author repeatedly contradicts himself throughout the book, begging the question of why it lasted the test of time as a Western classic. One also cannot help but wonder if the medieval audience listening to this poem noticed the discrepancies or not. 

The first discrepancy is of utmost significance because from there, it is apparent that the book is built on a lie. In the second stanza of the poem, the auther states matter-of-factly that King Marsilie of the Seljuk Turks only has twenty thousand troops. By contrast, Emperor Charlemagne has one hundred and twenty thousand troops, including Roland’s rear guard. After witnessing Charlemagne conquer kingdom after kingdom in Spain, King Marsilie fears that defeat is inevitable. To save himself, he makes a pact with a German traitor who has a personal vendetta with Count Roland. After the betrayal is said and done, the author proceeds to paint King Marsilie as an incredibly powerful king, despite previously describing him as weak. Some may argue that his sudden strength was a rhetorical technique used to convey Marsilie’s confidence. However, that is a superficial analysis of the text. That conclusion is only accurate insofar as Roland was betrayed. The contradiction within the text does not rely on the mood of the antagonist during Roland’s betrayal. Obviously, moods can change, and Marsilie felt boosted morale, thinking that he could save himself from Charlemagne if Roland—Charlemagne’s bravest knight—was killed. The inconsistency relies on the number of Marsilie’s troops. Again, in the second stanza of the poem, it is clearly stated that Charlemagne’s men outnumber the Muslims. The exact numbers were twenty thousand Muslims against one hundred and twenty thousand Christians. However, when Marsilie marches to attack Roland during the betrayal, he suddenly has four hundred thousand troops. The thirty-ninth stanza states that he has four hundred thousand troops. Where did the other three hundred and eighty thousand troops come from? The author never addresses this discrepancy. It is so bad that Dr. Gary North said, “This is the stupidest single paragraph in all of Western literature. I cannot think of anything that is dumber than this.”¹

To make matters worse, that was not the author’s only blunder when it came to basic arithmetic. All of Roland’s men were slaughtered. Not a single one survived. Well, actually, Roland is described as being the last man standing. The author describes the death of all his colleagues in vivid detail, stating that he knows those facts because there was a German eyewitness who recorded the details. However, that cannot be true, because according to those “records,” Roland was the only German still alive. By that very logic, the author states that he knows how everyone died because there was a survivor who witnessed everyone being slaughtered—including himself. It makes no sense. However, that is not the important blunder the author made. He made a far worse mistake regarding the magical multiplication of Charlemagne’s troops. Towards the end of the poem, the Emir comes to save Marsilie after his forces are left in tatters. The Emir supposedly marches with three and a half million troops. Those troops then attacked Charlemagne’s three hundred and fifty thousand troops. But how did Charlemagne suddenly obtain three hundred and fifty thousand troops? It is illogical. The beginning of the poem states that he had one hundred and twenty thousand. Twenty thousand of those men died, leaving Charlemagne with one hundred thousand men. He was conquering a distant land, far from his native country. Immediately after engaging in war with Marsilie, he attacked the Emir. There was no time for reinforcements to arrive. The spontaneous multiplication of Charlemagne’s men is just another one of the numerous discrepancies in the book. 

Finally, there is the trumpet issue. As Roland is being attacked by Marsilie’s men, he has the opportunity to blow a trumpet and call on Charlemagne’s one hundred thousand troops to help his twenty thousand rear guard soldiers. He refuses. That alone was a ludicrous tactic on Roland’s part that was indubitably rooted in hubris. But here is the catch: Charlemagne would have heard Roland blowing one trumpet, but somehow, miraculously, he never heard Marsilie’s men blowing seven thousand war trumpets. If Charlemagne would have heard one trumpet, he should have heard seven thousand. The premise here is nonsensical. Either Charlemagne is a dumb rube who heard the trumpets and ignored them, or the author cannot comprehend basic logical conclusions. 

Medieval readers should have picked up on these illogical fallacies. This poem was used as justification for the Crusades. It was war propaganda. The discrepancies should have served to warn the populace against accepting such a surface-level argument, but clearly it did not. Without a deep historical dive, it is difficult to ascertain whether medieval listeners noticed the poem’s discrepancies. Perhaps, they did not notice them. It is a relatively long poem, after all. Besides, they may have been so entranced by the captivating story itself that they missed the logical inconsistencies. That is the more gracious conclusion. It is also possible that people listening to the poem or reading it were so politically caught up in the Crusades that they deliberately ignored the discrepancies as justification for their endless war to reclaim the Holy Land. However, those are only speculations. It is hard to arrive at anything conclusively. What is conclusive is that the discrepancies make the poem utter rubbish. People can think what they will about the Crusades or Charlemagne. Some support them while others abhor the Crusades. However, despite those arguments, The Song of Roland should be held in universal disrepute for its discrepancies and for its misrepresentation of Islam.²

1. RPC 10E132 5:32 ↩︎
2.  Note: I am saying this as a Christian. The book claims that Muslims revere Apollo and Mohammad as gods. It claims that Muslims are heathens for worshiping Apollo and Mohammad, but Islam does not revere any of them as gods. Apollo is abhorred in Islam, and Mohammad is only recognized as a prophet. Again, I reject Islam, but you must at least be fair in your criticisms. The author’s attacks on Islam were nothing but rhetoric. ↩︎