The Saxons occupied the region beginning somewhat east of Cologne and extending to the Elbe, and north to where the great cities of Bremen and Hamburg are now situated. The present kingdom of Saxony would hardly have come within their boundaries. The Saxons had no towns or roads and were consequently very difficult to conquer, as they could retreat, with their few possessions, into the forests or swamps as soon as they found themselves unable to meet an invader in the open field. Yet so long as they remained unconquered they constantly threatened the Frankish kingdom, and the incorporation of their country was essential to the rounding out of its boundaries. Charlemagne never undertook, during his long military career, any other task half so serious as the subjugation of the Saxons, and it occupied his attention for many years. Nine successive rebellions had to be put down, and it was finally owing rather to the Church than to Charlemagne's military prowess that the great task was brought to a successful issue. [Sidenote: Conversion of the Saxons.] Nowhere do we find a more striking example of the influence of the Church than in the reliance that Charlemagne placed upon it in his dealings with the Saxons. He deemed it quite as essential that after a rebellion they should promise to honor the Church and be baptized as that they should pledge themselves to remain true and faithful vassals of the king. He was in quite as much haste to found bishoprics and abbeys as to build fortresses. The law for the newly conquered Saxon lands, issued sometime between 775 and 790, provides the same death penalty for him who "shall have shown himself unfaithful to the lord king," and him who "shall have wished to hide himself unbaptized and shall have scorned to come to baptism and shall have wished to remain a pagan." Charlemagne believed the Christianizing of the Saxons so important a part of his duty that he decreed that all should suffer death who entered a church by violence and carried off anything by force, or even failed to abstain from meat during Lent.[41] No one, under penalty of heavy fines, was to make vows, in the pagan fashion, at trees or springs, or partake of any heathen feasts in honor of the demons (as the Christians termed the heathen deities), or fail to present infants for baptism before they were a year old. For the support of the local churches, those who lived in the parish were to give toward three hundred acres of land and a house for the priest. "Likewise, in accordance with the mandate of God, we command that all shall give a tithe of their property and labor to the churches and the priests; let the nobles as well as the freemen, likewise the serfs, according to that which God shall have given to each Christian, return a part to God." [Sidenote: Coöperation of the civil government and the Church.]