[39] The most ferocious and warlike of all the barbarians with whom Charlemagne contended, not even excepting the Avars, were the Saxons. These people seemed to have an inextinguishable hatred of Christianity and of slavery. Almost their only redeeming trait was their respect for womanhood. They roamed the forests, and to some extent sailed the seas; they lived largely by hunting, but they preferred piracy and plunder. They could not be won by kindness. Even their word of honor was not binding upon them, for they continually violated the pledges of their treaties. The only way to deal with them was thoroughly to conquer them and to deal with them with a severity bordering on cruelty. This Charlemagne did. It took eighteen expeditions—though he never lost a battle with them—and thirty-three years to accomplish his purpose, but he was successful at the last. This people became civilized, christianized, and they developed into the best people of Europe, becoming the nucleus of the great German empire, and an important constituent of the English. Beyond almost all others, they have escaped the corruptions and vices attendant upon a luxurious life, and they are to-day among the leaders of industry and enterprise in both hemispheres.
[40] See [chap. viii].
[41] Berserker was a hero of Norse legend who fought without coat of mail and overcame all foes. His descendants, called Berserkers, went into battle under the inspiration of a fury, or demoniacal possession, in which condition gnawing the rim of their shields, howling like wild beasts, and foaming at the mouth, they were supposed to be invulnerable. This fury was the Berserk, or Berserker’s, rage.
[42] The Schleswig-Holstein question is proverbially complicated, being made so by the relations of the two provinces to each other, by the further relations of each separately and both combined to Denmark, and by the relations of all three to Austria, Prussia, etc. There was an almost ceaseless succession of wars over the question, or questions, from 1848 to 1866, when Schleswig-Holstein became a province of Prussia. For a full statement of the subject, see Bryce, Holy Roman Empire, note B.
[44] The placitum of the middle ages was a sort of convention for the consideration of public questions, over which the sovereign presided.
[46] “The details of the plot are said to have embraced the assassination of the king and his three royal sons, and the subsequent proclamation of Pippin as king. This was the bait which the conspirators held out to him....
“The secret was well kept. Pippin shammed sickness and for a while stayed away from court; the plot was fairly under way and dangerously near a successful termination, when by the inexplicable carelessness of the conspirators the whole of their impious scheme became known.
“They met in the church of St. Peter at Ratisbon and discussed all the details of the plot in the hearing of a cleric who from some cause or other had found his way into the church. Perhaps he came to sleep there; the conspirators found him hiding under the altar, and, strange to tell, contented themselves with his solemn promise on oath that he would not divulge the ominous secret. But the oath sat lightly on his conscience, and the moment after the conspirators had left he ran half-dressed at the dead of night to the royal palace and gave the alarm.