Here are drama and suspense, treachery and heroism, gory battle and broad humor, love pure and impure, against the background of feudal France and Moorish Spain.The two poles between which lies most of the action are the treachery of Ganelon that sends Roland and his twenty thousand vassals to their death, on the field at Rencevals, and the trial by combat that pits Thierry as the emperor Charlemagne's champion against the redoubtable Pinabel, champion of the traitor.