entrenched camp at Sigiburg, Charles passed on into Engria, defeated the Mid-Saxons and crossed the Weser. This brought him into Eastphalia, which he ravaged as far as the river Ocker. The Eastphalians, though the furthest of the Saxons from the Frankish border, were the first to submit to Charles, and their chief Hessi eagerly accepted Christianity, and did homage. Soon after the Engrians also came in to the king's camp, and gave up hostages for their fidelity. The Westphalians held out last, and only submitted when Charles, on his return towards Austrasia, ravaged their land from end to end, and First conquest made a great slaughter of their warriors. The of Saxony. king left garrisons in two great camps at Sigiburg and Eresburg, to hold down the Westphalians and Engrians respectively. The hostages whom he brought back were mostly boys of noble family, whom he sent to be brought up as Christians in various Austrasian monasteries. Three-fourths of Saxony had thus done homage to Charles, but their adhesion was of the most unstable sort. They hated the Franks as ancestral enemies, and detested Christianity as a Frankish device for subduing them body and soul. It was only the presence of Charles and the fear of his return that kept them in order for a moment.

No sooner had Charles started in the next year for his second invasion of Italy, to put down the dukes of Friuli and Benevento, than the Westphalians and Engrians at once took arms. They stormed the Frankish camp at Eresburg, and slaughtered the garrison, but failed in a similar attempt at Sigiburg. The moment that Charles heard of this rebellion, he hastened back from Italy with such speed that he was already on the Lippe before the Saxons suspected that he had crossed the Alps. So great was their fear of him that the whole race at once asked for peace, and sent their local chiefs to do him homage, 'promising that they would all be baptized, and hold their land as true vassals of the king.' Only one chief, named Second conWitikind, refused to submit, and fled northward, quest of to take refuge with the Danes (776). Charles Saxony, 776. replaced his garrison in the fort of Eresburg, and built

another entrenched camp at Karlstadt. That winter he remained in Austrasia, close to the Saxon border, in order to watch these untrustworthy subjects. In the next spring he summoned the great national council of the whole Frankish realm to meet at Paderborn, in the heart of Engria, in order to mark the fact that Saxony had now become an integral part of his dominions (777). Then were a great multitude of the Saxons baptized, and following their national custom, they swore that they would forfeit their freedom and their lands if ever they revolted again, according to their old habit, and unless they kept their Christianity and their loyalty to king Charles and his heirs.'

To this great diet at Paderborn came some ambassadors from Spain, bearing an unexpected offer of homage to the king. Abderahman, the Ommeyad, had finally succeeded in conquering well-nigh the whole of the Spanish peninsula from those of the Saracens who refused to accept him as king. The last survivors of his opponents, in desperate straits, sent to offer to become the vassals of Charles if he would preserve them from the conqueror. These chiefs were Soliman Ibn-al-Arabi and Kasmin Ibn-Yussuf, who were holding the towns of Barcelona, Gerona, and Huesca, in the extreme north-west of Spain, on the Frankish border. Charles determined to accept their offer, and so to thrust forward his frontier beyond the Pyrenees, as to protect Septimania from Saracen raids by interposing a new line of fortresses between it and the dominion of the ruler of Cordova. He believed that Saxony was fully subdued, and might be safely left alone to settle down into loyalty and Christian ways.

Charles in

Accordingly, in 778, Charles led his first great expedition into Spain. He himself crossed the Western Pyrenees with the host of Neustria, while the levy of Austrasia, vades Spain, Burgundy, and Lombardy, passed the Eastern Pyrenees. The two armies met in front of Saragossa, and Charles there received the homage of the rebel Saracen chiefs of Barcelona and Gerona. Saragossa, how

778.

ever, did not fall, in spite of the great army that had been concentrated against it, and Charles then wheeled about, and returned to Aquitaine by the same way that he had come. His expedition had not proved a great success. The Saracen rebels were untrustworthy vassals, nor was the only other result of the campaign, the homage paid to Charles by the Spanish Basques and Navarrese, after he had stormed their town of Pampeluna, a more solid gain. Indeed, while the Frankish army was returning through the passes of the Pyrenees, the Basques fell upon the king's rearguard and waggon-train, in the famous defile of Roncesvalles. They captured much booty, and slew three great officials-Eggihard, the seneschal; Anselm, the count of the palace; and Hruotland (Roland), the warden of the Breton marches. The last named, of whom history knows nothing save his untimely fall at Roncesvalles, must have been a great man among the Franks, for within a short time after his death he had become the hero of many legends, which ultimately took shape in the famous Chanson de Roland, wherein the Breton Margrave appears as second only to Charles the Great among the hosts of Christendom (778).

The king had not long reached Aquitaine when the unwelcome news arrived that the Saxons had broken their oaths, and were once more up in arms. The exile Witikind had returned from Denmark, and called the turbulent youth of Saxony into the field. The greater number of the tribes had risen at his call, and a great Saxon host had stormed the new fort of Karlstadt, and harried Hesse and the right bank of the Rhine, as far as Deutz and the mouth of the Moselle, burning churches, and slaying the peasantry of the country-side in revenge for the destruction of the Irminsul and the ravages of Charles in 775-76. On receiving this disturbing news the king made his way to Austrasia, sent out some troops to clear the Rhine-bank of the Saxon plunderers, but put off the general muster of the hosts of the Franks for a third conquest of Saxony till next year. In the summer of 779,

however, he again started on his endless task, and marched through Westphalia with fire and sword. The Westphalians once more surrendered, after a defeat in the open field; the Engrians and Eastphalians yielded without fighting. In the next spring he returned again, held a great diet at the headwaters of the Lippe, and divided all Saxony into missionary districts, each to be worked by a colony of monks from Austrasia, the first step towards the partition Saxony. of the land into the later bishoprics. This activity was rewarded by the conversion and baptism of many thousand pagans. Charles assisted in person on more than one occasion, when whole thousands of Saxons were simultaneously passed through the waters of the Ocker and the Elbe (780).

Fourth con. quest of

He then turned off towards Italy. For the first time his departure was not followed by an immediate outbreak of rebellion. The land remained quiet for more than two years (780-82), and when he next passed that way Charles thought it had advanced so far in the paths of peace that he divided it up into countships, after the model of the rest of his empire, and gave the charge of many of them to native Saxon chiefs, whom he honoured with the title of count; the rest were placed under officers of Frankish blood. He also published a code of laws for Saxony, in which the harshest punishments were denounced against all those who still clung to paganism. Such offences as sacrificing to Woden, burning instead of burying the dead, openly deriding church ceremonies, or robbing a church, were to be punished with instant death. Even those who obstinately refused baptism, or who after baptism refused to fast in Lent, and conform to church discipline, were threatened with capital punishment.

It was perhaps in consequence of the issue of this cruel code that the Saxons once more flew to arms in the autumn of 782. The rebel Witikind returned from Denmark to put himself at their head, and most of the northern tribes rose at his call. The news quickly brought Charles back into the country. Once more he came in overwhelming force, and

many of the Saxons at once laid down their arms and submitted. But now for the first time the king showed signs of violent wrath against the unruly race. He could not pardon them for slaying priests, burning churches, and washing off in mockery their marks of baptism. He bade each tribe send to him in bonds those men who had been most prominent in casting off Christianity and fomenting the last rising. Four thousand five hundred captives were brought before him by their submissive countrymen in his camp at Massacre of Verden, on the Aller. Yielding to an impulse

Verden.

of revenge, Charles had the whole of this great body of helpless prisoners beheaded. But, instead of cowing the Saxons, this cruel execution only roused them to wild wrath. Every man in the nation had lost some friend or relative in the great massacre, and even the tribes which had hitherto been most submissive flew to arms. There followed more than two years of unbroken fighting (783-85). Charles marched twice. through the land, burning and slaughtering over the face of every Saxon gau, from the Ems to the Elbe, but the infuriated rebels closed in behind him after he had passed, and still held out in the woods and marshes. But the king only hardened his heart. He refused to quit the land, and wintered, with all his army, near Minden, in the heart of Saxony. At last, in the spring of 785, the perseverance of the rebels began to quail; it was impossible to drive off the inflexible king of the Franks, and they once more bethought them of submission. The rebel chief Witikind obtained a promise of his life if he would surrender and be baptized, and, when he, with his chosen warriors, submitted, the great rising Fifth conwas at last at an end. Once more the counts quest of received charge of their old districts, the mis- Saxony, 785. sionaries returned to rebuild their ruined churches, and the surviving Saxons submitted in despair to the yoke of the Frankish warrior and the Frankish priest.

It was seven years before any further trouble arose in Saxony, though there were to be four more partial risings