burned down the churches, killed the priests, and dragged the rest into captivity for slaves. Duke Hermann was just then in the Bremen territory, from whence he had expelled the piratical Northmen (the Danes). There the terrible news found him. In the greatest haste he collected his warriors to come and save his country. For the Wends had already penetrated to Lüneburg, as far as this heath, and had laid everything waste with fire and sword; the Hermannsburg church was destroyed by them at that time. Here upon this ground they had made a strong encampment, and surrounded it with ditches and fortifications like a fortress; they were from fifty to sixty thousand men strong, in horsemen and footmen, and all of them alive with the same enraged hatred of the Christians, and determined that every trace of Christianity should be wiped away from the land. In August of the year 945 Duke Hermann marched hither out of the Bremen country, over the northern heights of Liddernhausen and Dohnsen. When he saw himself with his eight thousand men on foot and two thousand horsemen confronted by the great host of the Wends, he said to his faithful followers--"We must fight; whether God will give us the victory, we must leave with Him." Then stepped up one of his knights before him, who is called in the chronicle "the brave Conrad," of the now extinct race of them of Haselhorst, and spoke:-- "'"Let us get a token from God. I will go forward and challenge one of the enemy to single combat; so will the Lord show us to whom He has allotted the victory." "'Duke Hermann gave permission. The knight, followed at some distance by a hundred men, who were to see that all was done in order, rode alone into the defile and challenged Mistewoi, the leader of the Wends, to send one of his people to meet him in single combat. Then stepped forward Zwentibold, a Wend of giant stature, clad in a dragon skin and with a shirt of link-mail over it, and on the head of his helmet the black image of his god Zernebok; behind him also a hundred men to look on. The Christian knight first called upon God to be his helper and protection: "Lord remember how Thou gavest strength to Thy servant David against the giant Goliath who had reviled Thy name; so now to-day establish Thy glory among the heathen, and show plainly that Thou art the true God."