of the Danes, sent to
Charlemagne a deputation, as if to treat for peace. Wittikind had left
Denmark; but he had gone across to her neighbors, the Northmen; and,
thence re-entering Saxony, he kindled there an insurrection as fierce as
it was unexpected. In 782 two of Charlemagne's lieutenants were beaten
on the banks of the Weser, and killed in the battle, together with four
counts and twenty leaders, the noblest in the army; indeed the Franks
were nearly all exterminated. "At news of this disaster," says Eginhard,
"Charlemagne, without losing a moment, re-assembled an army and set out
for Saxony. He summoned into his presence all the chieftains of the
Saxons and demanded of them who had been the promoters of the revolt.
All agreed in denouncing Wittikind as the author of this treason. But as
they could not deliver him up, because immediately after his sudden
attack he had taken refuge with the Northmen, those who, at his
instigation, had been accomplices in the crime, were placed, to the
number of four thousand five hundred, in the hands of the king; and, by
his order, all had their heads cut off the same day, at a place called
Werden, on the river Aller. After this deed of vengeance the king
retired to Thionville to pass the winter there."

[Illustration: A Battle between Franks and Saxons----216]

But the vengeance did not put an end to the war. "Blood calls for
blood," were words spoken in the English parliament, in 1643, by Sir
Benjamin Rudyard, one of the best citizens of his country in her hour of
revolution. For three years Charlemagne had to redouble his efforts to
accomplish in Saxony, at the cost of Frankish as well as Saxon blood, his
work of conquest and conversion: "Saxony," he often repeated, "must be
christianized or wiped out." At last, in 785, after several victories
which seemed decisive, he went and settled down in his strong castle of
Ehresburg, "whither he made his wife and children come, being resolved to
remain there all the bad season," says Eginhard, and applying himself
without cessation to scouring the country of the Saxons and wearing them
out by his strong and indomitable determination. But determination did
not blind him to prudence and policy. "Having learned that Wittikind and
Abbio (another great Saxon chieftain) were abiding in the part of Saxony
situated on the other side of the Elbe, he sent to them Saxon envoys to
prevail upon them to renounce their perfidy, and come, wi