It will be remembered that one of the grounds of accusation against the insubordinate Duke of Bavaria was, that he had been intriguing with the Avars against his lord. It is probable that, sooner or later, when he found Charles bent on his destruction, Tassilo did make overtures of some kind for a league of mutual defence with his formidable eastern neighbors. Certain it is that they came, though too late to help him, with two armies against the Franks (788). One army went southward against the duchy of Friuli, the other westward against Bavaria. Both were defeated, the latter at Ips on the Danube (about forty miles south of Linz), having only just touched the frontier of Bavaria. Enraged at meeting such a hostile reception from the Bavarians whom, as they said, they came to help, they made another invasion later in the same year; but the two brave _missi_ of Charles, Grahamann and Audacer, who had repelled the previous invasion now again won a signal victory. Great was the slaughter on the field, and multitudes of the flying Avars were whelmed in the waters of the Danube. It is probable that Charles was already revolving in his mind plans for the entire subjugation of the barbarous Avar nationality, but he knew that such an enterprise would require long preparations, and meanwhile events were again occurring on the Elbe which required his immediate attention. The Saxons, it is true, were still apparently submissive to the yoke--we are now in that seven years’ peace (785–792) which followed the submission of Widukind--but there was a fierce and warlike Sclavonic tribe called by themselves Welatabi, but by the Franks Wiltzi, who dwelt beyond the Elbe in the country which has since been named Pomerania, and these people, having by the subjugation of the Saxons become next-door neighbors to the Frankish State, was displaying those qualities which generally bring the less civilized race into collision with the more civilized, when a narrow boundary divides them. As the chronicler puts it: “This people was ever hostile to the Franks, and was wont to pursue with their hatred, to oppress and harass in war all their neighbors who were either subject to the Franks or in league with them. Whose insolence the king thought he ought no longer to put up with, and he therefore determined to attack them in war, and, having collected a large army, he crossed the Danube[53] at Cologne” (789). He marched through Saxon-land, crossed the Elbe by two bridges, led his army (in whose ranks fought many of the lately subdued Saxons), into the hostile territory, and, according to the usual formula, laid everything waste with fire and sword. The Wiltzi, though a warlike people, lost heart, and when the oldest and most powerful of their chiefs, a man named Dragawit, came in and made his submission to Charles, all the others followed his example. There were the usual oaths of vassalage, surrender of hostages, perhaps a