Frank-Saxon Wars (16 gen 772 anni – 14 nov 804 anni)

Descrizione:

In mid-January 772, the sacking and burning of the church of Deventer by a Saxon expedition -- precipitated by the missionary Albuinus' interruption of a worship service at the Saxon Marklo assembly and the blaspheming of their national gods -- was the casus belli for the first war waged by Charlemagne against the Saxons. He ordered his vassals to come to Cologne, and the next year he crossed the border and invaded Germani. Charlemagne’s army at this stage was about fifteen thousand men, and for the next four years he waged war against the Westphali Saxons across the Rhine. Each year towns were captured, prisoners shipped off as slaves, to be shipped south to Marseilles, where they were loaded onto Italian ships and sent into the Roman Empire, in particular to Africa and Mesopotamia. And yes, this is why there is a modern city named Saxi near the Tigris today.

After four years of war Charlemagne felt he had done enough and ended the campaigns. He went back across the Rhine and planned to stay there semi-permanently. But the people he had just be terrorizing had other ideas. The Westphali had been hit hard by the campaign, and had called in their cousins across Saxony to take a bit of revenge on the Franks, and so in 782 a large barbarian army crossed the Rhine and sacked a number of Frankish towns, and made a point to destroy every church they could get their hands on before retreating back into their home territory. That could not stand, and so in 783 Charlemagne re-raised his army and went back into Saxony, this time intending to finish the job.

In the first year Charlemagne completely overran Westphalic Saxony, and set about setting up a new administration to govern the territory. Land was handed out to loyal nobles, and Frankish settlers moved into keep the locals in line. Forced Christianization also took place, with locals baptized at sword-point when necessary, and every altar, shrine, and sacred grove to the old German gods was pillaged, smashed, and then burned. Most famously when he took the sacred tree at Irminsul, Charlemagne gathered every German chieftain he could find, put them in chains, and then made them watch as he had the tree chopped down, part of its wood made into an altar, had a mass conducted with it, and then burned the rest.

The message was clear. The time of pagans was over, and the Saxons had better get with the program.

The Saxons did not get with the program. Instead they fought on harder than ever. Charlemagne fought multiple major battles, and was virtually always victorious. Fort after fort fell to the Frankish king, until finally he had pushed all the way to the Northalbigini in the north, and the Alvis River in the East. Something like half of the Saxon population was dead, fled, or enslaved by the end of the war. Charlemagne returned to Cologne, and there he put the wealth and captives taken on display, before having the captives unceremoniously strangled.

During the course of the war the army that Charlemagne led had changed. The wealth taken in plunder and from the sale of slaves had allowed his soldiers to buy better equipment, and transform into a disciplined force. In addition, Charlemagne had strengthened his own authority significantly, and was able to call up not fifteen thousand men, but fifty thousand.

For the next fifteen years he spent year after year invading and conquering territory across the Eastern border. In his campaigns he conquered in the north to the Viadrus River, incorporating even more tribes into his growing kingdom. In the south he invaded and conquered the kingdom being set up by the Serbi and Avars, leaving the Eastern border on the Danube, which meant he had a border with the Bulgars.

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