CHARLEMAGNE
613
CHARLEMAGNE
while he held a council of the realm at Kiersy (Quercy)
in September, 774, at which it was decided that the
Saxons (Westfali, Ostfali, and Angrarii) must be pre-
sented with the alternative of baptism or death. The
north-eastern campaigns of the next seven years had
for their object a conquest so decisive as to make the
execution of this policy feasible. The year 775 saw
the first of a series of Frankish military colonies on
the ancient Roman plan established at Sigeburg
among the Westfali. Charles next subdued, tem-
porarily at least, the Ostfali, whose chieftain, Hessi,
having accepted baptism, ended his life in the mon-
astery of Fulda (see Boniface, Saint; Ftjlda).
Then, a Frankish camp at Lubbecke on the Weser
having been surprised by the Saxons, and its garrison
slaughtered, Charles turned again westward, once
more routed the Westfali, and received their oaths of
ibmission.
Vt this stage (776) the affairs of Lombardy inter- acted the Saxon crusade. Areghis of Beneventum, so in-law of the vanquished Desiderius, had formed a | Ian with his brother-in-law Adalghis (Adelchis), then an exile at Constantinople, by which the latter wa to make a descent upon Italy, backed by the Eastern emperor; Adrian was at the same time in- volved in a quarrel with the three Lombard dukes, Reginald of Clusium, Rotgaud of Friuli. and Hilde- brand of Spoleto. The Archbishop of Ravenna, who called himself "primate", and "exarch of Italy", was also attempting to found an independent princi- pality at the expense of the papal state, but was finalfy subdued in 776, and his successor compelled to be content with the title of " Vicar" or representa- tive of the pope (seeCiviltaCattolica, 1865, 364, 133). The junction of the aforesaid powers, all inimical to the pope and the Franks, while Charles was occupied in Westphalia, was only prevented by the death of Constantine Copronymus in September, 775 (see Byzantine Empire). After winning over Hildebrand and Reginald by diplomacy, Charles descended into Lombardy by the Brenner Pass (spring of 776), de- feated Rotgaud, and leaving garrisons ami governors, or counts [comUes), as they were termed, in the re- conquered cities of the Duchy of Friuli. hastened back to Saxony. There the Frankish garrison had been forced to evacuate Eresburg, while the siege of Sige- burg was so unexpectedly broken up as to give occa- sion later to a legend of angelic intervention in favour of the Christians. As usual, the almost incredible nness of the king's reappearance and the moral effect of his presence quieted the ragings of the heathen. Charles then divided the Saxon territory into missionary districts. At the great spring hosting (champ <!< Mai) "f Paderborn, in 777, many Saxon converts were baptized; Wittekind, however, already the leader and afterwards the popular hero of the -. had fled to his brother-in-law, Sigfrid the Dane.
The episode of the invasion of Spain comes next in chronological order. The condition of the ven- erable Iberian Church, still Buffering under Moslem domination, appealed strongly to the king's sym- pathy. In 777 there came to Paderborn three Moor- ish emirs, enemies of the Ommeyad Abderrahman, the Moorish King of Cordova. These emirs did homage to Charles and proposed to him an invasion of Northern Spain; one of them. Ibn-el-Arabi, prom- ised to bring to the invader-' assistance a force of Berber auxiliaries from Africa : the other two prom- ised to exert their powerful influence at Barcelona and elsewhere north of tie Ebro. Accordingly, in the spring of 778, Charles, with a host of anas speaking many tongues, and which numbered among its constituents even a quota of Lombards, moved towards the Pyrenees. His trusted lieutenant, Duke Bernhard, with one division, entered Spain by the coast. Charles himself marched through the moun-
tain passes straight to Pampelona. But Ibn-el-Arabi,
who had prematurely brought on his army of Berbers,
was assassinated by an emissary of Abderrahman,
and though Pampelona was razed, and Barcelona
and other cities fell, Saragossa held out. Apart from
the moral effect of this campaign upon the Moslem
rulers of Spain, its result was insignificant, though the
famous ambuscade in which perished Roland, the
great Paladin, at the Pass of Roncesvalles, furnished
to the medieval world the material for its most
glorious and influential epic, the "Chanson de
Roland ".
Much more important to posterity were the next succeeding events which continued and decided the long struggle in Saxony. During the Spanish crusade Wittekind had returned from his exile, bring- ing with him Danish allies, and was now ravaging Hesse; the Rhine valley from Deutz to Andernach was a prey to the Saxon "devil-worshippers"; the Christian missionaries were scattered or in hiding. Charles gathered his hosts at Duren, in June. 779, and stormed Wittekind's entrenched camp at Bocholt, after which campaign he seems to have considered Saxony a fairly subdued country. At any rate, the "Saxon Capitulary" (see Capitularies) of 781
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obliged all Saxons not only to accept baptism (and this on pain of death) but also to pay tithes, as the Franks did, for the support of the Church ; more- over it confiscated a large amount of property for the benefit of the missions. This was Wittekind's last opportunity to restore the national independence and paganism; his people, exasperated against the Franks and their God, eagerly rushed to arms. At Suntal on the Weser, Charles being absent, they de- feated a Frankish army killing two royal legates and five counts. But Wittekind committed the error of enlisting as allies the non-Teutonic Sorbs from beyond the Saale; race-antagonism soon weakened his forces, and the Saxon hosts melted away. Of the so-called "Massacre of Verden" (783) it is fair to say that the 4.500 Saxons who perished were not prisoners of war; legally, they were ringleaders in a rebellion, selected as such from a number of other prisoners, and convicted on the information of their fellow rebels, i See Schiifer, "Die Hinrichtung d. Sachsen durch Karl den Grossen" in "Hist. Zeit- schrift " for 1897.) Wittekind himself escaped beyond the Elbe. It was not until after another defeat of the Saxons at Detmold, and again at Osnabruck, on the "Hill of Slaughter", that Wittekind acknowledged the God of Charles stronger than Odin. In 785 Wittekind received baptism at Attigny, and Charles stood godfather.
Last Steps to the Imperial Throne. — The summer of 783 began a new period in the life of Charles, in which signs begin to appear of his less amiable traits. It was in this year, signalized, according to the chron- iclers, by unexampled heat and a pestilence, that the two queens died. Bertha, the king's mother, and Hildegarde, his second (or his third) wife. Both of these women, the former in particular, had exercised over him a strong influence for good. Within a few- months the king married Faetrada, daughter of an Australian count. The succeeding years were, com- paratively speaking, years of harvest after the stu-
