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.”