a point to pierce the
priest, when one of the chieftains, named Buto, cried aloud: "Listen, ye
who are the most wise. There have often come unto us ambassadors from
neighboring peoples, Northmen, Slavons, or Frisians; we have received
them in peace, and when their messages had been heard, they have been
sent away with a present. Here is an ambassador from a great God, and ye
would slay him!" Whether it were from sentiment or from prudence, the
multitude was calmed, or, at any rate, restrained; and for this time the
priest retired safe and sound.

Just as the pious zeal of the missionaries was of service to
Charlemagne, so did the power of Charlemagne support and sometimes
preserve the missionaries. The mob, even in the midst of its passions,
is not throughout or at all times inaccessible to fear. The Saxons were
not one and the same nation, constantly united in one and the same
assembly, and governed by a single chieftain. Three populations of the
same race, distinguished by names borrowed from their geographical
situation, just as had happened among the Franks in the case of the
Austrasians and Neustrians, to wit, Eastphalian or Eastern Saxons,
Westphalian or Western, and Angrians, formed the Saxon confederation.
And to them was often added a fourth people of the same origin, closer
to the Danes, and called North-Albingians, inhabitants of the northern
district of the Elbe. These four principal Saxon populations were
subdivided into a large number of tribes, who had their own particular
chieftains, and who often decided, each for itself, their conduct and
their fate. Charlemagne, knowing how to profit by this want of cohesion
and unity among his foes, attacked now one and now another of the large
Saxon peoplets or the small Saxon tribes, and dealt separately with each
of them, according as he found them inclined to submission or
resistance. After having, in four or five successive expeditions, gained
victories and sustained checks, he thought himself sufficiently advanced
in his conquest to put his relations with the Saxons to a grand trial.
In 777, he resolved, says Eginhard, "to go and hold, at the place called
Paderborn (close to Saxony) the general assembly of this people. On his
arrival he found there assembled the senate and people of this
perfidious nation, who, conformably to his orders, had repaired thither,
seeking to deceive him by a false show of submission and devotion....
They earned their pardon, but on