A History of Germany from the Earliest Times to the Present DayTaylor, Bayard
History
A History of Germany from the Earliest Times to the Present Day
Taylor, Bayard
Germany -- History
Upon the heels of this disaster came the news that the Saxons had again
arisen under the lead of Wittekind, destroyed their churches, murdered
the priests, and carried fire and sword to the very walls of Cologne and
Coblentz. Charlemagne sent his best troops, by forced marches, in
advance of his coming, but he was not able to take the field until the
following spring. During 779 and a part of 780, after much labor and
many battles, he seemed to have subdued the stubborn race, the most of
whom accepted Christian baptism for the third time. Charlemagne
thereupon went to Italy once more, in order to restore order among the
Longobards, whose local chiefs were becoming restless in his absence.
His two young sons, Pippin and Ludwig, were crowned by Pope Adrian as
kings of Longobardia, or Lombardy (which then embraced the greater part
of Northern and Central Italy), and Aquitaine.
[Sidenote: 783.]
After his return to Germany, he convoked a parliament, or popular
assembly, at Paderborn, in 782, partly in order to give the Saxons a
stronger impression of the power of the Empire. The people seemed quiet,
and he was deceived by their bearing; for, after he had left them to
return to the Rhine, they rose again, headed by Wittekind, who had been
for some years a fugitive in Denmark. Three of Charlemagne's chief
officials, who immediately hastened to the scene of trouble with such
troops as they could collect, met Wittekind in the Teutoburger Forest,
not far from the field where Varus and his legions were destroyed. A
similar fate awaited them: the Frank army was so completely cut to
pieces that but few escaped to tell the tale.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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