THE CONVERSION OF THE SAXONS.
The year 772, which opened upon a reunited Frankish kingdom (Carloman
having died at the close of the year preceding), and which was a blank
as far as Frankish operations in Italy were concerned, was memorable as
witnessing the beginning of that long struggle with Saxon independence
and Saxon heathenism which was to occupy thirty-two central years in
the life of Charles the Great.
Whether he entered upon this struggle with a light heart it is
impossible for us to say. Many a time he thought it was ended, but
found that he had only bent not broken the stubborn spirit of his foes,
and assuredly it was with no light heart that he found himself, when
past middle life and entering on his sixth decade, still obliged to
resume his Sisyphean labor.[35]
The different tribes which made up the loosely bound confederation
of the Saxons occupied those territories reaching to the Elbe on the
east, and nearly to the Rhine on the west, which now bear the names of
Hanover, Brunswick, Oldenburgh and Westphalia. This block of territory
was divided in nearly equal parts between the three tribes of the
Westphalians, the Angarians and the Eastphalians, the first and the
last, as we should expect from their names, occupying the western and
eastern and the Angarians (or Engern) the central portion. Then, beyond
the Elbe, between the German Ocean and the Baltic was seated a fourth
section of the Saxon people who bore the name of the Nord-albingians,
and whose territory must have pretty nearly corresponded with the
modern duchy of Holstein.
Thus the Saxons had no connection with the present kingdom of Saxony,
though part of Prussian Saxony was probably within their borders. As
Professor Freeman says in his _Historical Geography of Europe_ (p.
207), “After the breaking up of the great Saxon duchy (1191), from
most of the old Saxon lands the Saxon name may be looked on as having
altogether passed away. The name of Saxony as a geographical expression
clave to the Eastphalian remnant of the old duchy, and to Thuringia and
the Slavonic conquests to the East.” One might add, that by a curious
coincidence, Hanover, the home of the old continental Saxons, was for
123 years (1714–1837) ruled by descendants of Alfred the Great who were
kings of the Saxons over the sea.
These Saxon neighbors of the Franks are not to be thought of as mere
savages. They had probably to some extent exchanged the nomad life of
the shepherd for the more settled habits of the tiller of the ground.
The old Germanic institution of the Folksthing as described by Tacitus,
still apparently flourished among them. They had already been brought
into a sort of loose connection with the Frankish kingdom, having at
intervals paid a yearly tribute of 500 cows to a Merovingian king and
an Arnulfing mayor of the palace. There does not seem any reason to
suppose that at the time of the accession of Charles they nourished
any thought of deadly enmity to their Frankish neighbors, or would
have dreamed of uniting their tribes in a well-organized invasion of
the prosperous Rhine-lands--in fact, throughout the struggle which
followed, the inability of the Saxons to combine for the mere purpose
of defence against impending invasion is conspicuous and absurd. But no
doubt they were lawless and disagreeable neighbors, often indulging in
such raids as for centuries kept the Scottish Border in turmoil, and
above all the majority of them were still heathens. The missionaries
who like Boniface had crossed the sea from England to convert their
German kinsfolk had hitherto labored chiefly among the Frisians, but
had also made some impression on the mass of Saxon heathenism. From
the fierce wars which Penda, the heathen King of Mercia, waged with
Christian Northumberland, we can imagine what suspicious rage the
success of these English missionaries would arouse in the minds of the
still heathen chiefs of the East and Westphalians.
But, after all, it is probable that on the religious as well as on
the political question the attack came from the Frankish side. It was
not so much because the Saxons resented the presence of Christian
missionaries among them, as because Charles resented the fact of the
Saxons continuing in heathenism, that the Thirty Years’ War of the
eighth century was resolved on. Throughout his kingly and imperial
career Charles took the religious part of his duties seriously. It
was not for nothing that he bore the title of _Christianissimus Rex_,
not for nothing that St. Augustine’s famous treatise, _De Civitate
Dei_[36] was the favorite companion of his leisure. In his interviews
with Pope Hadrian at Rome the reform of the Church’s discipline was
apparently the chief subject of conversation; and in the thirty-three
Ecclesiastical Councils which were held during his reign he zealously
co-operated with the churchmen towards the same end. To such a ruler
it was intolerable that tribes which were connected, however loosely,
with his kingdom should still profess a belief in the absurdities of
heathenism. They must be persuaded, or, if persuasion failed, they must
be forced, to become Christians.[37]
At an assembly of the Frankish nation held at Worms (July ? 772)
Charles announced his purpose of carrying war into the country of
the Saxons, and in the early summer he marched with a large army,
accompanied by a multitude of bishops, abbots, and presbyters, into the
territory of the Angarii, the central tribe. The frontier fortress of
Eresburg was taken, and the invaders pressed on to the place where, in
the midst of a sacred grove, stood the celebrated Irminsul, a column
fashioned to imitate the great world-sustaining ash Yggdrasil, which
was the chief object of worship of the Saxon tribes. The idol was hewn
down, the temple overthrown, the hoard of gold and silver ornaments
deposited there by generations of devout Saxons carried off into
Frank-land. The work of destruction lasted three days. It chanced that
there was a great scarcity of water in the place where the Irminsul
had stood. The army was parched with thirst, and perhaps began to be
stirred by superstitious fears that the drought was a punishment for
the destruction of the idol. Suddenly, at noonday, while all the army
was resting, there was a rush of water along a dry river bed. All
the army had enough to drink, and recognized with thanks the Divine
approval of their destructive labors. Charles after this marched to
the banks of the Weser, held there with the Saxons a great palaver (to
borrow a word from modern reports of similar conferences), and received
their submission, for what it was worth, accompanied by the surrender
of twelve hostages.
It would be tedious to copy the particulars, meagre as they are, given
by the chroniclers concerning the eighteen campaigns in which Charles
slowly and remorselessly beat down the resistance of the Saxons. It
will be sufficient to notice some of the chief moments of the struggle.
In 774 Charles, intent on his operations in Italy, had left the
Saxon March comparatively unguarded. Seizing their opportunity, and
apparently heedless of the fate of the twelve hostages who were in
the hands of Charles, the heathen crossed the frontier in great force
and entered Hesse, which they laid waste with fire and sword. The
objective of their attack was the abbey and church of Fritzlar, which
had been founded near half a century before by the great Englishman,
St. Boniface. The saint had prophesied that his church should never
be destroyed by fire, and the barbarians certainly seem to have been
prevented--by supernatural means, says the legend--from wrapping it in
flames, but there can be little doubt that they robbed it of all its
treasures, thus taking speedy revenge for the destruction of their own
Irminsul. Charles meanwhile returned from his triumphant campaign in
Italy only to hear of the insult that had been offered to his crown
and his creed by a barbarous foe. The season was far advanced, but,
mustering his troops at Ingelheim (a little southwest of Mainz), he
sent them in four squadrons into Saxon-land. Three of the squadrons
found the Saxons and fought them; the fourth marched through their land
unopposed. All returned laden with booty to the Rhine.
Charles spent the winter of 774–775 in his palace at Quierzy, on the
Oise, and there came to the conclusion “that he would attack the
perfidious and truce-breaking nation of the Saxons in war, and would
persevere therein until they were either conquered and made subject
to the Christian religion or were altogether swept off the face of
the earth.” It was easier to form a ruthless resolution like this in
the privacy of the palace than to carry it into actual execution. The
campaign of 775, though planned on a large scale, does not differ
greatly from previous campaigns in character. The king held a general
assembly at Düren, at which apparently the programme of “Christianity
or death” for the Saxons was submitted and approved.[38] Then, in
August, Charles marched eastwards, took from the Westphalians their
strong fortress of Sigiburg, on the Ruhr; retook Eresburg, which
had been taken by the Angarii; and then pressed on into the land
of the Eastphalians, who do not appear to have offered any serious
resistance to his arms. But both with the Angarii and the Eastphalians
the campaign ended with the usual formalities of oaths of fealty and
surrender of hostages; we do not yet hear of that wholesale conversion
or extirpation which Charles had vowed at his setting forth. Moreover,
while he was thus penetrating into the recesses of the enemies’
country, part of his force, which he had left in Westphalia to guard
his communications with the Rhine, suffered a serious loss from a Saxon
surprise. Their camp was pitched at Lidbach, near Minden; it was three
o’clock in the afternoon; some of the cavalry had gone forth to forage
for their horses; the rest of the army was indulging in a siesta;
a troop of Saxons mingled with the returning foragers, feigning
themselves to be their comrades (of course the warriors of that day
wore no uniform), and thus obtained admission to the camp, where they
made great slaughter of the half-asleep and unarmed soldiers. It is
said that the Franks succeeded at last in driving the invaders out of
the camp, and that Charles, hurrying from the east, slew a multitude
of the retreating Saxons, but it is probable that we have here the
story, only slightly veiled, of a serious Frankish reverse. Next
year (776) Eresburg, taken and retaken, was again the prize of war.
Sigiburg was attacked, but bravely and successfully defended. Charles
came with impetuous rush to the sources of the Lippe, and found there
a multitude of Saxons, who had flocked thither from all quarters, and
who, terrified by Charles’s successes, declared their willingness to
embrace Christianity, to become faithful subjects of Charles and of
the Franks, and to perform the symbolical act by which they would give
him corporal possession of the soil of their country. An innumerable
multitude of Saxons, with their wives and children, were baptized in
the Lippe stream that flowed past the Frankish camp; hostages, as many
as Charles asked for, were given; Eresburg was rebuilt, many other
castles were reared, detachments of Franks were posted throughout the
country, and the king returned into Frank-land to keep his Christmas
at Heristal and his Easter at Nimeguen, feeling probably that the
programme of Quierzy was now realized, and that the heathen and
truce-breaking Saxons had at last become Christians and stable subjects
of his realm.[39]
But the subjugation was only apparent; there was one man ready, at
least for a time, to play the part of Arminius, and to resist foreign
domination to the death. The next nine years of the long contest
(777–785) may be best characterized as the years of Widukind’s strife
for freedom.
In the year 777 King Charles held a public synod at Paderborn in the
heart of Saxon-land. It was attended, not only by all the Frankish
nobles, but also by nearly all the chiefs of the Saxon tribes.
“Perfidiously,” says the chronicler, “did they promise to mould
their manners to the king’s mind, and to devote themselves to his
service. They received pardon from the king on this condition, that
if thereafter they violated his statutes, they should be deprived of
fatherland and freedom. At the same place there were baptized a very
great multitude who, although falsely, had declared that they wished to
become Christians.”
But at this great assembly there was not seen the face of Widukind, a
Westphalian chief who had large possessions both in Westphalia and also
in Mid Saxony, and who must have already taken a leading part in the
resistance to the Frankish arms, since he was, says the chronicler,
“conscious of having committed many crimes and feared to face the king,
wherefore he had fled to Sigfrid, King of the Danes.”
Next year Charles led his army into Spain on that memorable expedition
which ended in the disaster of Roncesvalles.[40] Hearing that he was
engaged in so remote a region, and perhaps also having some tidings of
his ill-success, the Saxons, headed by Widukind, rose in rebellion,
crossed the hills which formed their Western boundary and poured into
the valley of the Rhine. The great river itself, not the Frankish
armies, barred their further progress, but they rushed along the right
bank from Deutz to Coblentz ravaging and burning. “Buildings sacred
and profane were equally laid in ruins. No distinction of age or of
sex was made by their hostile fury, so that it was plainly manifest
that not for the sake of booty but in order to wreak vengeance they
had crossed the frontier of the Franks.” Incidentally we learn that so
great was the terror caused by this inroad that the monks of Fulda took
from the tomb their greatest treasure, the body of the holy Boniface,
and journeyed with it two days into Frankish territory, but then
hearing that the tide of invasion was turned, went back to redeposit
their treasure at Fulda. For Charles, on learning the tidings of the
Saxon invasion, had not thought it necessary with his war-wearied army
to undertake a regular campaign, but had sent a flying squadron of
Franks, who by forced marches came up with the Saxons at the river
Eder, attacked them while crossing the stream, and inflicted upon them
grievous loss.
In the next few years we hear the oft-repeated story of rapid marches
right through Saxon-land even to the Elbe, no effectual stand made
by the Saxons, but raids and insurrections headed by the restless
Widukind. In 780 Charles begins to busy himself with the ecclesiastical
organization of the conquered country. In 782 (apparently) he holds
a _placitum_ at the sources of the Lippe, and there promulgates his
stern _Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniæ_. On any one who violently
enters a church and robs it, shall be inflicted the punishment of
death; on any one who despises the Christian custom of Lent and eats
flesh therein, death (but his life may be saved if the priest shall
certify that flesh was necessary for his health); on any one who slays
bishop or presbyter, death; on any one who in pagan fashion believes in
witchcraft and burns the supposed witch, death; on any one practising
cremation instead of burial, death; on any Saxon hiding himself in
order to escape baptism and remain in paganism, death; on any one
offering sacrifice to the demons of the pagans, death; on any one who
shall conspire with the pagans against the Christians, or seek to
continue with them in hostility to the Christian faith, death. Yet if,
after privily committing any of these crimes, the criminal shall flee
to a priest, make confession and do penance, on the priest’s testimony
the capital punishment shall be remitted. At the same time a strict
tithe-law was passed. “We enact that according to the command of God,
all men, whether nobles, freeborn men or _liti_ (serfs), shall give the
tenth part of their substance and labor to the churches and priests, so
that as God shall have given to every Christian he shall restore a part
to God.”
This rigorous Act of Uniformity stirred the deep resentment of the
Saxons. But perhaps discontent might not have burst into a flame but
for the return of Widukind from his wonted Danish refuge, and for the
harangues with which he stirred the vain hopes of the Saxons and roused
them to revolt (782). At the same time tidings were brought to Charles
of an incursion of a Sclavonic tribe, the Sorabi, from beyond the
Elbe. The Frankish king presumed too far on the apparent pacification
of Saxon-land. Like his great imitator, Napoleon, he would use the
last-conquered people to subdue the enemy next beyond them, and he
sent an army composed of Saxons as well as Austrasian Franks to repel
the Sclavonic incursion. Adalgisus the chamberlain, Geilo the count of
the stables, and Worad the count of the palace, commanded the motley
host; but when they entered Saxon-land they found the whole country
already in a flame, and the Saxons, by the advice of Widukind, about
to march into Francia. Wisely postponing the expedition against the
Sorabi, they marched with their Frankish troops--the Saxon contingent
had doubtless deserted--to the place where they heard that the rebel
host was gathered. In the heart of the enemies’ country they met
Count Theodoric, a relation of the king’s, who had made a hasty levy
of troops in Rhine-land on hearing of the Saxon revolt. Seeing the
over-zeal of the three courtiers, Theodoric advised them to make
careful reconnaissances of the enemy’s position, and proposed that,
if the ground proved favorable, a joint attack should be made on
the Saxon camp at the hill Suntal, near Minden. In pursuance of the
suggested plan, they crossed the Weser and pitched their camp on the
north bank of the river. Then, fearing that the renown of the joint
victory would accrue to the king’s cousin Theodoric, they determined to
attack the Saxons alone. Underrating the steadfastness of their foes
they dashed headlong and in loose order into the camp, more as if they
were pursuing a flying foe than charging an enemy drawn up in order
of battle. This time the Frankish fury failed before the stolid Saxon
stubbornness. They were surrounded by the enemy, and terrible slaughter
was made in their ranks. A few Franks escaped, not to their quarters
of the morning, but to the camp of Theodoric; but Adalgisus and Geilo,
four counts, twenty nobles of high rank, and a multitude of followers,
who, in the true spirit of the old German _comitatus_, preferred to die
rather than survive their lords, fell on the field of fight. The battle
of Mount Suntal was certainly the greatest disaster that befell the
Frankish arms in the whole course of the Thirty Years’ War.
Terrible was the anger of Charles when he heard of the Saxon rising, of
the murders of priests and monks with which it had been accompanied,
and lastly of the deep humiliation inflicted on his race by the defeat
of the three generals. He collected a large army and entered the land
of the Saxons. When thus in earnest he seems to have been always able
to crush their resistance. Widukind fled for the fourth or fifth time
to Denmark, and the land lay prostrate at the feet of Charles. He
summoned before him all the chiefs of the Saxons, and made inquisition
concerning the author of the revolt. With one voice all named Widukind,
the absent Widukind. As he could not be arrested, the men who had
listened to his persuasions must suffer. Four thousand five hundred men
(including probably some of the chiefs of the nation) who had shown
themselves foremost in the revolt were surrendered to Charles. It was
expected probably that the ringleaders only out of this number would
suffer; but Charles was evidently in a Berserk rage.[41] All the 4500
Saxons were beheaded in one day at Verden on the banks of the Aller.
“Having perpetrated this act of vengeance, the king went into winter
quarters at the villa of Theodo, and there celebrated the birth of our
Lord, and there also the festival of Easter, according to his wonted
custom.”
The year 783 was to Charles a year of domestic sorrow but of military
triumph. His wife Hildegard (whom he had married immediately after
the repudiation of the daughter of Desiderius) died on the 30th of
April; his loved and honored mother, Bertrada, on the 12th of July;
but immediately after his wife’s funeral he entered Saxon-land with a
powerful army, vanquished his enemies with great slaughter at Detmold,
vanquished them again in the neighborhood of Osnabrück, where “there
was slain of the Saxons an infinite multitude, great booty was taken,
and a large number of captives was led away.” He then swept with his
victorious army from the Weser to the Elbe, ravaging wherever he
went--for it was thus that this great preacher of Christianity argued
for the faith--and then returning to Frankland married his fourth wife,
Fastrada, the daughter of the Frankish count Radolf.
The next year (784) was somewhat less successful, owing to widespread
inundations, the result of sudden and heavy rains, which stopped the
victor’s progress northward; but his young son Charles, who had been
left with a part of the army in Westphalia while Charles himself went
southward towards Thuringia, won a great cavalry battle on the banks of
the Lippe. And this year Charles made a new departure. After a short
autumnal visit to Frankland, he returned into Saxon-land, spent his
Christmas in the neighborhood of Pyrmont, and went into winter quarters
at the now strongly fortified Eresburg.
“And when he had decided to winter there,” says the chronicler, “having
sent for wife and children to join him, and having left in the said
camp a sufficiently staunch and strong garrison, he went forth himself
with a flying squadron to lay waste the townships of the Saxons and
to plunder their farms, and thus by himself and by the generals whom
he sent in different directions, marching everywhere, and everywhere
carrying fire and slaughter, he paid back the Saxons in their own coin
and gave them a sufficiently uneasy winter.” After holding a general
assembly at Paderborn, Charles marched unopposed through Saxon-land
as far as the Elbe. In the district of Bardengau, near the mouth of
that river, Charles halted, looking across the river to the territory
of the yet unsubdued Transalbian Saxons who dwelt in the land that is
now called Holstein. While he was here news was brought to him that
Widukind and a confederate, perhaps a kinsman, named Abbio were willing
to surrender themselves and forswear further resistance if they could
be assured of their personal safety. A Frankish courtier named Amalwin
was sent across the Elbe with hostages for the safe-conduct which he
bore to the two Saxon chiefs. They accompanied him on his return, and
were brought into the presence of Charles, who was by this time back
again across the Rhine and at his palace of Attigny on the Aisne, near
the forest of Ardennes. Charles received his fallen foes graciously.
They were both baptized, Charles himself acting as godfather to
Widukind and presenting him with costly gifts. As far as we can see,
both honestly accepted the duties which the pledge of fealty to the
most Christian king involved. Authentic history after this point is
silent as to the name of Widukind, but legends, for which there is very
likely some foundation, represent him as not only a contented but even
an ardent votary of his new faith, a founder of churches and convents,
and an endower of the bishopric of Minden. It is probable that he was
allowed to retain his large possessions in Westphalia, and he has been
chosen as a favorite peg by German genealogists on which to hang the
descent of their Serene and Princely patrons. The least doubtful of
these pedigrees appears to be that which makes the great Emperor Otho a
descendant, through his mother Matilda, of the Saxon hero.
The submission of Widukind ended for the time the resistance of the
Saxons. “That obstinacy of the Saxon perfidy rested for some years,
chiefly for this reason, that they could not find opportunities for
revolting suitable to the matter in hand,” is the quaint remark of the
chronicler.
This peace lasted for six or seven years, in one of which (789) we are
told that the king “arranged all matters pertaining to the Saxons,
suitably to the time.” That is to say, no doubt, the yoke of Church and
State was being fitted to the stubborn Saxon neck. So confident was
Charles of the subjugation of his foe that he employed both Saxons and
Frisians in the campaigns in which he was now busily engaged on the
Middle Danube against the kingdom of the Avars.
The fact, however, that the Frankish power was thus engaged in a tough
struggle with an enemy in the south, at last emboldened the Saxons
to make another stand for freedom. Again they allied themselves with
the Frisians, and on the 6th of July, 792, the first blow was struck.
A portion of Charles’s army which had, for some unexplained purpose,
been sent in ships to the mouth of the Elbe was set upon by the
insurgents of the two allied nations and cut to pieces. This evidence
of unslumbering hostility does not seem to have effectually diverted
Charles’s attention from his Danubian campaign, but next year (793)
tidings of a similar but more overwhelming disaster were brought to him
at his quarters in Bavaria. Count Theodoric, the king’s kinsman and a
valiant and trusted general (the same who had saved the Frankish army
from annihilation on the disastrous day of Suntal), had been leading an
army through the district of Rustringen, on the borders of Friesland
and Saxon-land, and at some little distance to the west of the Weser.
The reason for his presence in that region is not told us, but it was
probably the desire to check the revolt which had burst forth in the
preceding summer. What is certain is that he was set upon by the
Saxons, his army destroyed, and apparently himself slain. Now, at any
rate, if not already in the previous year, the rebellion assumed that
character of ruthless vindictiveness, especially against churchmen,
which showed how sorely the Saxons had been galled by Charles’s
ecclesiastical ordinances. “As a dog returneth to his vomit,” says an
annalist, “so did they return to the paganism which they had aforetime
renounced, again deserting Christianity, lying not less to God than to
their lord the king, who had conferred upon them so many benefits, and
joining themselves to the pagan nations who dwelt round about them.
Sending their emissaries to the Avars, they endeavored to rebel first
against God, then against the king and the Christians. They laid waste
all the churches which were within their borders with burning and
destruction; they rejected the bishops and presbyters who were set over
them; some they took prisoners and others they slew, and, in short,
they turned themselves right round to the worship of idols.”
When the news of Theodoric’s defeat reached the king it found him,
as before stated, in camp in the centre of Bavaria. The war with the
Avars was prospering, but it was still a long way from completion. To
deal with two enemies in such widely separated regions as Hanover and
Hungary was a hard problem for a commander-in-chief in the eighth
century. Charles sought to solve it by a characteristic stroke of his
truly imperial genius, and though he failed, even the failure attests
the grandeur of his conceptions. Near the Bavarian town of Weissenburg
a little stream called the Schwäbische Rezat takes its rise, within a
few miles of a larger river, the Altmühl. The Rezat flows northward
into the Main, and so eventually into the Rhine and the German Ocean.
The Altmühl, on the other hand, soon reaches the Danube, and so sends
its waters at last into the Black Sea. Charles’s idea (suggested to
him by some professed experts, but eagerly embraced) was to make a
navigable canal between the Rezat and the Altmühl, and thus transport
his troops and their provisions at will by river navigation either
northward against the Saxons or eastward against the Avars. During
the whole autumn of 793 a vast multitude of men labored at the great
enterprise. They dug a fosse two miles long and three hundred feet
wide, but it was all in vain. Nature was too strong for them. The
marshy quality of the soil, made worse by autumnal rains, thwarted
the operations of the diggers, and however much they dug out by day,
by night the heaps had all sunk back into the swampy level. There is
still, however, a trench about five miles south-west of Weissenburg
called the Fossa Carolina, which remains as a monument of the great
king’s project. “What a change” (as has been truly said by Pastor
Meier, a Bavarian priest who traced the course of the Roman _Limes
Imperii_ through these regions), “what stir, and what activity would
have filled all those quiet plains if the grand scheme of Kaiser Karl
(not yet Kaiser) had been realized, and this tiny streamlet, the Rezat,
had seen the interchange of the products of the east and west.” The
scheme itself, or something like it, was carried into execution by
King Louis I. of Bavaria, but owing to the introduction of the railway
system König-Ludwigs-Kanal, like so many other artificial waterways,
has lost much of its importance.
Foiled in this endeavor King Charles allowed the year 793 to pass
without an attempt to punish the Saxon rebellion. The next six years
(794–799) each had its Saxon campaign. The general features of the
war are very similar to those which we have already noticed: rapid
marches of the Frankish king, devastation of the Saxon country, oaths
of submission and Saxon hostages. It is noteworthy that Charles now
carries back into Frank-land large numbers of these hostages--all
apparently young lads--has them educated as Christians, generally as
ecclesiastics, and when peace is restored instals them in the various
churches and convents wherewith, as the Roman _imperator_ of old with
his _coloniæ_, he fastens down the conquered country. It is also to be
observed that the struggle is now chiefly confined to the northern part
of Saxon-land, to the great _gau_ of Wigmodia, which stretched between
Bremen and Hamburg, and to the Nordalbingi who, as has been said,
occupied what is now the duchy of Holstein. Further, that Charles,
Teuton as he was, did not object to avail himself of the help of a
Sclavonic people, the Abodrites, who were the eastern neighbors of the
Saxons, and that he bitterly avenged the death of their king Witzin on
“the perfidious Saxon nation,” into whose snares he had fallen (795).
In several of these campaigns the Frankish king was effectually
seconded by his son Charles, now a young man of between twenty and
thirty, to whom it was the father’s custom to entrust a portion of his
army that a combined attack might be made from different points of the
compass. The plan of operations seems to have been generally well laid,
for we never hear of these concerted invasions failing to meet at the
point agreed upon.
One of the fiercest campaigns was that of 798 against the Nordalbingi,
who had grievously enraged Charles by the murder of his _missi_ or
plenipotentiaries, one of whom was clothed with the sacred character
of an ambassador to the King of Denmark. In his vengeance for this
murder Charles was powerfully seconded by Thrasco, Duke of the
Abodrites.
During the next four eventful years (800–803) Charles had abundant
occupation south of the Alps. In 804 he led his army into Saxon-land,
“transferred all the Saxons who dwelt beyond the Elbe and in Wigmodia
with their wives and children into Frank-land, and gave the shires
beyond the Elbe to the Abodrites.” As these Sclavonian allies of
Charles were heathens, this handing over to them of the duchy of
Holstein was so far a confession of failure in the attempt to win
the whole of the Saxon territory for Christianity. The number of the
Saxons on both banks of the Elbe thus transported is given by Einhard
at 10,000. When the inhabitants of whole districts were thus forcibly
removed, much injustice, even from the point of view of Frankish “law
and order,” must often have been committed. In the next generation
complaints reached the ears of Charles’s successor from the sons of
loyal and peaceable dwellers by the Weser who had been swept off into
exile together with the rebel Wigmodians, and had never recovered the
property of which they were then despoiled.
The resistance of the Saxons was powerfully aided by their Danish
neighbor on the north. “Godofrid, King of Denmark,” says the
chronicler, “with his fleet and all the cavalry of his kingdom came
to a place which is called Sliesthorp, on the borders of his kingdom
and Saxon-land, for a conference with Charles, but would not venture
further. Charles remained close to the river Elbe in a place which is
called Holdunsteti, from whence he sent an embassy to Godofrid to treat
about the surrender of deserters.” As “the place called Sliesthorp” is
Schleswig, and “the place called Holdunsteti” is Holstein, the student
of contemporary history will recognize in this passage the germs of
that controversy on “the Schleswig-Holstein question” which was settled
in our day by the Dano-German war and led eventually to the supremacy
of Prussia in the Germanic Confederation.[42]
At last the Saxon war was ended. The wholesale transportation of
inhabitants to which Charles had at length resorted, and which was
balanced by the invitation to Franks to settle in the evacuated
lands--acts which remind us of the proceedings of Shalmaneser and
Nebuchadnezzar towards the people of Israel--had the desired effect.
“Freedom’s battle once begun
Bequeathed from bleeding sire to son”
in this instance was not “ever won.” Christianity, or a religion which
believed itself to be Christianity, was triumphant from the Rhine to
the Elbe, and three fat bishoprics, Bremen, Münster, and Paderborn,
divided between themselves the conquered land. “Saxonia” was henceforth
an inseparable part of the newly-founded Frankish Empire.