mph. But his wife Galienne, daughter of
Galafre, whom he had converted to the Christian faith, died on her way
to rejoin him. Charlemagne then made an expedition to Italy (_Enfances
Ogier_ in the Venetian _Charlemagne_, and the first part of the
_Chevalerie Ogier de Dannemarche_ by Raimbert of Paris, 12th century) to
raise the siege of Rome, which was besieged by the Saracen emir
Corsuble. He crossed the Alps under the guidance of a white hart,
miraculously sent to assist the passage of the army. _Aspremont_ (12th
century) describes a fictitious campaign against the Saracen King
Agolant in Calabria, and is chiefly devoted to the _enfances_ of Roland.
The wars of Charlemagne with his vassals are described in _Girart de
Roussillon, Renaus de Montauban_, recounting the deeds of the four sons
of Aymon, _Huon de Bordeaux_, and in the latter part of the _Chevalerie
Ogier_, which belong properly to the cycle connected with Doon of
Mayence.

The account of the pilgrimage of Charlemagne and his twelve paladins to
the Holy Sepulchre must in its first form have been earlier than the
Crusades, as the patriarch asks the emperor to free Spain, not the Holy
Land, from the Saracens. The legend probably originated in a desire to
authenticate the relics in the abbey of Saint Denis, supposed to have
been brought to Aix by Charlemagne, and is preserved in a 12th-century
romance, _Le Voyage de Charlemagne a Jerusalem et a Constantinople_.[4]
This journey forms the subject of a window in the cathedral of Chartres,
and there was originally a similar one at Saint-Denis. On the way home
Charles and his paladins visited the emperor Hugon at Constantinople,
where they indulged in a series of _gabs_ which they were made to carry
out. _Galien_, a favourite 15th-century romance, was attached to this
episode, for Galien was the son of the amours of Oliver with Jacqueline,
Hugon's daughter. The traditions of Charlemagne's fights with the
Norsemen (Norois, Noreins) are preserved in _Aiquin_ (12th century),
which describes the emperor's reconquest of Armorica from the "Saracen"
king Aiquin, and a disaster at Cezembre as terrible in its way as those
of Roncesvalles and Aliscans. _La destruction de Rome_ is a 13th-century
version of the older _chanson_ of the emir Balan, who collected an army
in Spain and sailed to Rome. The defenders were overpowered and the city
destroyed before the advent of Charlemagne, who, however, avenged the
disaster by a great ba