The king had not long reached Aquitaine when the unwelcome news arrived that the Saxons had broken their oaths, and were once more up in arms. The exile Witikind had returned from Denmark, and called the turbulent youth of Saxony into the field. The greater number of the tribes had risen at his call, and a great Saxon host had stormed the new fort of Karlstadt, and harried Hesse and the right bank of the Rhine, as far as Deutz and the mouth of the Moselle, burning churches, and slaying the peasantry of the country-side in revenge for the destruction of the Irminsul and the ravages of Charles in 775-76. On receiving this disturbing news the king made his way to Austrasia, sent out some troops to clear the Rhine-bank of the Saxon plunderers, but put off the general muster of the hosts of the Franks for a third conquest of Saxony till next year. In the summer of 779, however, he again started on his endless task, and marched through Westphalia with fire and sword. The Westphalians once more surrendered, after a defeat in the open field; the Engrians and Eastphalians yielded without fighting. [Sidenote: Fourth conquest of Saxony.] In the next spring he returned again, held a great diet at the headwaters of the Lippe, and divided all Saxony into missionary districts, each to be worked by a colony of monks from Austrasia, the first step towards the partition of the land into the later bishoprics. This activity was rewarded by the conversion and baptism of many thousand pagans. Charles assisted in person on more than one occasion, when whole thousands of Saxons were simultaneously passed through the waters of the Ocker and the Elbe (780). He then turned off towards Italy. For the first time his departure was not followed by an immediate outbreak of rebellion. The land remained quiet for more than two years (780-82), and when he next passed that way Charles thought it had advanced so far in the paths of peace that he divided it up into countships, after the model of the rest of his empire, and gave the charge of many of them to native Saxon chiefs, whom he honoured with the title of count; the rest were placed under officers of Frankish blood. He also published a code of laws for Saxony, in which the harshest punishments were denounced against all those who still clung to paganism. Such offences as sacrificing to Woden, burning instead of burying the dead, openly deriding church ceremonies, or robbing a church, were to be punished with instant death. Even those who obstinately refused baptism, or who after baptism refused to fast in Lent, and conform to church discipline, were threatened with capital punishment.