The Historians' History of the World 07 [The History of the Later Roman Empire]

And I would describe how difficult was the passage across the Alps as he entered Italy, and what great labour it cost the Franks to cross the trackless ridges of the mountains, and the steep rocks that tower up into the sky, were not my intention in the present work to communicate the events concerning my hero’s own life rather than those concerning the wars which he waged. Yet I will add that the war ended in the conquest of Italy, King Desiderius was banished into perpetual exile, his son Adelchis was driven from Italy, and the property stolen from the king of the Lombards was restored to Adrian, the rector of the Roman church.

THE SAXON WAR (772-804 A.D.)

A Saxon

[772-804 A.D.]

No sooner was this finished than the Saxon War, in which there had seemed to be a kind of pause, was renewed. The Frankish people never engaged in a task more protracted, fiercer, or more wearisome; for the Saxons, like almost all the nations inhabiting Germany, are cruel by nature, abandoned to the cult of devils, foes of our religion, nor do they think it wrong to violate or transgress any law, whether human or divine. They had an easy means of disturbing the peace daily, for of a truth their boundaries and ours touched at almost any point in the open, except in a few places where either wide stretches of forest land or the ridges of intervening mountains set an indisputable limit to the lands of both countries. Everywhere else indiscriminate bloodshed, plunder, and burning were incessant. This so stung the Franks that they were not content with returning one evil turn with another, but determined to make open war upon their neighbours. And so war was declared against them, and waged for thirty long years with great bitterness on both sides, but the Saxons suffered greater injury than the Franks. Hostilities might have ended sooner but for the perfidy of the Saxons. It is difficult to tell how often they were beaten and surrendered themselves humbly to the king, promising to do his bidding. The hostages claimed of them they would surrender with alacrity, and acknowledge the ambassadors sent to them. Sometimes they were so cowed and enervated that they even promised to abandon their cult of devils, saying they would fain submit to the Christian religion; but ready as they were sometimes to do this they were always in a hurry to undo it again, so that it is hard to guess to which of these courses they may the more truly be said to have leaned; for after the war with them had begun, scarce a single year reached its conclusion without their shifting from one view to another in this way. But their mutability, were it never so great, could never overcome the king’s high spirit and constancy of mind, in adversity as in prosperity, nor could it tire him out of fulfilling what he had begun to do. For they never did an act of treachery which he suffered to pass unpunished. He would despatch an army, either under his own leadership or under that of his peers, and take vengeance on the enemy’s perfidy, mulcting them in damages worthy of the offence, until at last he had reduced to his will all the miserable rebels who offered him habitual resistance. He then transported ten thousand men of the inhabitants on both banks of the Elbe, with their wives and little children, distributing them here and there over Gaul and Germany in fragmentary groups. When they had agreed to the following conditions imposed upon them by the king, the war that had lasted so many years was declared at an end:—The cult of the devils was to be abandoned, the native rites discontinued,[134] the sacraments of the Christian faith and religion were to be adopted: united to the Franks they were to form one people with them.

Though this war lasted over so long a space of time, the king himself did not fight more than two pitched battles with the enemy, one near a hill called Osneng in a place called Theotmel (Detmold), the other on the river Hasa, both in the same month and at a few days’ interval. In these two battles the enemy were so demoralised by defeat that they no longer dared to provoke the king to battle or to offer resistance to him when he attacked, except in a place where they were protected by fortification.

In this war perished a large number of nobles, both Frankish as well as Saxon, men of high distinction. At last, in the thirty-third year, it came to an end. During this time wars so many and so great sprang up against the Franks in diverse parts of the earth, wars directed with such skill by the king, that well might the onlooker be perplexed whether to admire most the patience of his essays or the success which crowned them. Two years before the Italian war, began this war (against Desiderius), which was waged without intermission, and yet there was no relaxation in any of the other wars that had to be carried on, nor was there anywhere any respite from battle attended with equal difficulties. The king, who excelled all the sovereigns of his age in foresight and largeness of mind, never weakly shrank from taking up and following to the end a duty either because it was difficult or dangerous. He was well versed in a knowledge of how to weigh such matter according to its intrinsic value, not to give way in adversity, and not to be duped by the smiles of specious fortune in prosperity.