It was in the years from 808 to 810 that this menace to the tranquillity of the Frankish kingdom showed itself in its most alarming shape. In the first of those years Godofrid invaded the territory of the Abodrites and ravaged their lands. Drasko fled before him, but another chieftain, Godelaib, was treacherously taken and hung. The Wiltzi joined forces with the Danes: and after much slaughter on both sides (for the flower of the Danish nobility fell in this campaign), the Abodrites were made subject to tribute to the Danish king. In retaliation for this onslaught on a friendly tribe, the younger Charles was sent across the Elbe with an army, but though he ravaged the lands of some Sclavonic allies of the Danes he seems to have returned home without achieving any decisive victory. Then both the two chief powers, knowing that a war of reprisals was imminent, took to fortifying their frontier. Godofrid drew across Holstein that line of forts which has since become famous as the Dannewerk, and Charles erected fortresses on his side of the border, especially restoring the stronghold of Hohbuoki which had been destroyed by the Wiltzi. Next year (809) Godofrid sought and obtained an interview with Charles at Badenfliot (in Holstein), desiring to exculpate himself from the charge of having provoked the previous war. But the interview came to nothing. The Danish king did not sincerely desire peace, and probably showed too plainly the arrogance of his ignorant soul and his foolish pretensions to equality with Charles. He succeeded, however, in patching up a temporary peace with the Abodrite chief Drasko who returned to his own land, but only to fall a victim some months later to the treacherous attack of a vassal of Godofrid’s, who was believed to have been incited to the deed by the Danish king. In 810 the contest seemed to be growing desperate, and the wild hopes of Godofrid to be approaching fulfilment. A fleet of two hundred Danish ships sailed to Friesland, laid waste all the multitudinous islands on the Frisian shore, and landed an army on the mainland, which defeated the Frisians in three pitched battles and laid upon them a tribute, of which 100 lbs. of silver had been already paid when tidings of the disaster reached the emperor in his palace at Aachen. He at once set about the too long delayed construction of a fleet: and at the mouths of all the rivers which poured into the German Ocean, the Channel, and the Atlantic, the sound of the shipbuilder’s hammer was heard. Then in the midst of his anxieties he received two welcome pieces of intelligence. The first was that the Danish fleet had returned home: the second that Godofrid was dead, murdered by one of his vassals, a fitting retribution for the assassination of Drasko, which he himself had instigated.