"You don't care for archæology. Well--'The German emperor Charlemagne, who reigned from 768 to 814, was a good Christian. He governed the kingdom of the Franks; and that means the whole of central and southern Germany, together with France and Italy; and all these, his subjects, had been already Christian a long time. On the north his empire was bordered by our heathen ancestors, the Saxons, and they were the sworn foes of Christianity. Whenever they could, they made a rush upon Charlemagne's dominions, plundered and killed, destroyed the churches and put to death the Christian priests; and were never quiet. So Charlemagne determined to make war upon the Saxons, partly to protect his kingdom against their inroads, and partly with the intent to convert them with a strong hand to the Christian religion. Then arose a fearful war of thirty-three years' length, which by both sides was carried on with great bitterness. The Saxons had, in especial, two valiant, heroic-hearted leaders, called "dukes" because they led the armies. The word "duke," therefore, means the same as army-leader. The one of them in Westphalia was named Wittekind; the other in Eastphalia was named Albion, also called Alboin. Charlemagne was in a difficult position. If he beat the Saxons, and thought, now they would surely keep the peace, and he went off then to some more distant part of his great empire, immediately the Saxons broke loose again, and the war began anew. Charlemagne was made so bitter by this, that once when he had beaten the Saxons at Verden on the Aller, and surrounded their army, he ordered 4500 captive Saxons to be cut to pieces, hoping so to give a disheartening example. But just the contrary befell. Wittekind and Albion now gathered together an imposing army to avenge the cruel deed; and fought two bloody battles, at Osnabrück and Detmold, with such furious valour that they thrust Charlemagne back, and took 4000 prisoners; and these prisoners, as a Lüneburg chronicle says, they slaughtered--part on the Blocksberg, part in the Osnabrück country, and part on the "stone-houses;" where the same chronicle relates that Wittekind, on his black war-horse, in furious joy, would have galloped over the bleeding corpses which lay around the stone-houses: but his horse shied from treading on the human bodies, and making a tremendous leap, struck his hoof so violently against one of the stone-houses that the mark of the hoof remained. Wittekind elsewhere in the chronicle is described as a noble, magnanimous hero; and this madness of war in him is explained on the ground of his hatred of Christians, and revenge for the death of the Saxons at Verden.