Saxon Wars
More than thirty years of campaigns and revolts in which Charlemagne conquered pagan Saxony, forcibly converted the Saxons and incorporated their land into the Frankish realm.
- Date
- 772–804year known · duration: ≈ 32 years
- Place
- Saxony (Paderborn)approximate locationtoday: Paderborn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany · Western and Central Europe
- Participants
- Francia (Frankish realm), Charlemagne, Widukind
- Threads
- Early medieval Europe (500–1000)
- Also known as
- Massacre of Verden; Верденская резня; Irminsul; Ирминсуль
The war began in 772 with the destruction of the Irminsul, a Saxon sacred pillar near the fort of Eresburg. Charlemagne held an assembly at Paderborn in 777 and divided Saxony into missionary districts and counties, but each absence of the king provoked new revolts led by Widukind. After a Frankish defeat in the Süntel hills in 782, Charlemagne had some 4,500 Saxons executed at Verden. In 785 Widukind submitted and was baptized, and the Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae prescribed death for refusing baptism.
Uprisings continued in the 790s; the last, among the Saxons north of the Elbe, was suppressed in 804 by mass deportations. Saxony received bishoprics and its own law code (Lex Saxonum, 802) and a century later became the homeland of the Ottonian kings.
Connections
Related events
- Siege of Pavia and fall of the Lombard kingdomSeptember 773 – June 774 · Western and Central EuropeIn 773 Charlemagne interrupted the Saxon war to march against the Lombards
- Battle of Roncevaux Pass15 August 778 · Western and Central EuropeWhile Charlemagne campaigned in Spain in 778, the Saxons rose again
Same participants
- Coronation of Charlemagne25 December 800 · Western and Central Europevia Francia (Frankish realm)
Adjacent events in the thread
- Second Council of Nicaea24 September – 23 October 787 · Balkans and Anatolia
- Viking raid on Lindisfarne8 June 793 · Western and Central Europe
Meanwhile in the world
Other regions, within 25 years of this event
Eastern Europe
- The Khazar rulers adopt Judaismbetween 740 and 861
- Founding of Ladoga753
Balkans and Anatolia
- Second Council of Nicaea24 September – 23 October 787
- Byzantine Iconoclasmbetween 726 and 730 – 11 March 843
The same period
Sources
- Wikipedia (English): Saxon Wars
- Wikipedia (Russian): Саксонские войны
- Barbero A. Charlemagne: Father of a Continent. — Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.
- Wikidata: Q499909