the family of Doon de
Mayence (q.v.).

The earliest poems of the cycle are naturally the closest to historical
truth. The central point of the _geste du roi_ is the 11th-century
_Chanson de Roland_ (see ROLAND, LEGEND OF), one of the greatest of
medieval poems. Strangely enough the defeat of Roncesvalles, which so
deeply impressed the popular mind, has not a corresponding importance in
real history. But it chanced to find as its exponent a poet whose genius
established a model for his successors, and definitely fixed the type of
later heroic poems. The other early _chansons_ to which reference is
made in _Roland--Aspremont, Enfances Ogier, Guiteclin, Balan_, relating
to Charlemagne's wars in Italy and Saxony--are not preserved in their
original form, and only the first in an early recension. _Basin_ or
_Carl el Elegast_ (preserved in Dutch and Icelandic), the _Voyage de
Charlemagne a Jerusalem_ and _Le Couronnement Looys_ also belong to the
heroic period. The purely fictitious and romantic tales added to the
personal history of Charlemagne and his warriors in the 13th century are
inferior in manner, and belong to the decadence of romance. The old
tales, very much distorted in the 15th-century prose versions, were to
undergo still further degradation in 18th-century compilations.

According to _Berte aus grans pies_, in the 13th-century _remaniement_
of the Brabantine trouvere Adenes li Rois, Charlemagne was the son of
Pippin and of Berte, the daughter of Flore and Blanchefleur, king and
queen of Hungary. The tale bears marks of high antiquity, and presents
one of the few incidents in the French cycle which may be referred to a
mythic origin. On the night of Berte's marriage a slave, Margiste, is
substituted for her, and reigns in her place for nine years, at the
expiration of which Blanchefleur exposes the deception; whereupon Berte
is restored from her refuge in the forest to her rightful place as
queen. _Mainet_ (12th century) and the kindred poems in German and
Italian are perhaps based on the adventures of Charles Martel, who after
his father's death had to flee to the Ardennes. They relate that, after
the death of his parents, Charles was driven by the machinations of the
two sons of Margiste to take refuge in Spain, where he accomplished his
_enfances_ (youthful exploits) with the Mussulman king Galafre under the
feigned name of Mainet. He delivered Rome from the besieging Saracens,
and returned to France in triu