Terrible was the anger of Charles when he heard of the Saxon rising, of the murders of priests and monks with which it had been accompanied, and lastly of the deep humiliation inflicted on his race by the defeat of the three generals. He collected a large army and entered the land of the Saxons. When thus in earnest he seems to have been always able to crush their resistance. Widukind fled for the fourth or fifth time to Denmark, and the land lay prostrate at the feet of Charles. He summoned before him all the chiefs of the Saxons, and made inquisition concerning the author of the revolt. With one voice all named Widukind, the absent Widukind. As he could not be arrested, the men who had listened to his persuasions must suffer. Four thousand five hundred men (including probably some of the chiefs of the nation) who had shown themselves foremost in the revolt were surrendered to Charles. It was expected probably that the ringleaders only out of this number would suffer; but Charles was evidently in a Berserk rage.[41] All the 4500 Saxons were beheaded in one day at Verden on the banks of the Aller. “Having perpetrated this act of vengeance, the king went into winter quarters at the villa of Theodo, and there celebrated the birth of our Lord, and there also the festival of Easter, according to his wonted custom.” The year 783 was to Charles a year of domestic sorrow but of military triumph. His wife Hildegard (whom he had married immediately after the repudiation of the daughter of Desiderius) died on the 30th of April; his loved and honored mother, Bertrada, on the 12th of July; but immediately after his wife’s funeral he entered Saxon-land with a powerful army, vanquished his enemies with great slaughter at Detmold, vanquished them again in the neighborhood of Osnabrück, where “there was slain of the Saxons an infinite multitude, great booty was taken, and a large number of captives was led away.” He then swept with his victorious army from the Weser to the Elbe, ravaging wherever he went--for it was thus that this great preacher of Christianity argued for the faith--and then returning to Frankland married his fourth wife, Fastrada, the daughter of the Frankish count Radolf. The next year (784) was somewhat less successful, owing to widespread inundations, the result of sudden and heavy rains, which stopped the victor’s progress northward; but his young son Charles, who had been left with a part of the army in Westphalia while Charles himself went southward towards Thuringia, won a great cavalry battle on the banks of the Lippe. And this year Charles made a new departure. After a short autumnal visit to Frankland, he returned into Saxon-land, spent his Christmas in the neighborhood of Pyrmont, and went into winter quarters at the now strongly fortified Eresburg.