Next year Charles led his army into Spain on that memorable expedition which ended in the disaster of Roncesvalles.[40] Hearing that he was engaged in so remote a region, and perhaps also having some tidings of his ill-success, the Saxons, headed by Widukind, rose in rebellion, crossed the hills which formed their Western boundary and poured into the valley of the Rhine. The great river itself, not the Frankish armies, barred their further progress, but they rushed along the right bank from Deutz to Coblentz ravaging and burning. “Buildings sacred and profane were equally laid in ruins. No distinction of age or of sex was made by their hostile fury, so that it was plainly manifest that not for the sake of booty but in order to wreak vengeance they had crossed the frontier of the Franks.” Incidentally we learn that so great was the terror caused by this inroad that the monks of Fulda took from the tomb their greatest treasure, the body of the holy Boniface, and journeyed with it two days into Frankish territory, but then hearing that the tide of invasion was turned, went back to redeposit their treasure at Fulda. For Charles, on learning the tidings of the Saxon invasion, had not thought it necessary with his war-wearied army to undertake a regular campaign, but had sent a flying squadron of Franks, who by forced marches came up with the Saxons at the river Eder, attacked them while crossing the stream, and inflicted upon them grievous loss. In the next few years we hear the oft-repeated story of rapid marches right through Saxon-land even to the Elbe, no effectual stand made by the Saxons, but raids and insurrections headed by the restless Widukind. In 780 Charles begins to busy himself with the ecclesiastical organization of the conquered country. In 782 (apparently) he holds a _placitum_ at the sources of the Lippe, and there promulgates his stern _Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniæ_. On any one who violently enters a church and robs it, shall be inflicted the punishment of death; on any one who despises the Christian custom of Lent and eats flesh therein, death (but his life may be saved if the priest shall certify that flesh was necessary for his health); on any one who slays bishop or presbyter, death; on any one who in pagan fashion believes in witchcraft and burns the supposed witch, death; on any one practising cremation instead of burial, death; on any Saxon hiding himself in order to escape baptism and remain in paganism, death; on any one offering sacrifice to the demons of the pagans, death; on any one who shall conspire with the pagans against the Christians, or seek to continue with them in hostility to the Christian faith, death. Yet if, after privily committing any of these crimes, the criminal shall flee to a priest, make confession and do penance, on the priest’s testimony the capital punishment shall be remitted. At the same time a strict tithe-law was passed. “We enact that according to the command of God,