Angus Donald, author of Blood of the Bear, examines Charlemagne’s conquest of Saxony in the late 8th century. It was a campaign not just about territory but about religion: Christian versus pagan. Could it be considered the first ‘crusade’?
The First Crusade, historians claim, was launched by Pope Urban II in 1096, after the Pontiff preached several sermons exhorting the knights of Christendom to go to the Holy Land and attack the Muslims who then had possession of Jerusalem. His message was spiced with tales of holy sites defiled by unbelievers and Christians being persecuted and tortured.
Some 60,000 crusaders answered his call and the ensuing campaign was, from the point of view of Christendom, a success – Jerusalem was captured, amid appalling bloodshed and the slaughter of innocents, in 1099.
But this was far from the first time a brutal military campaign had been launched by a Christian potentate to slaughter unbelievers and annex their territories. Charles, King of the Franks – known to history as Charlemagne – was determined to expand his empire and subjugate the fierce pagan tribespeople on his northern flank.
These two neighbouring Germanic societies, the Franks and the Saxons, which were similar in culture and language, if not in faith, had squabbled and raided each other’s lands for decades but, in AD772, after a Christian church at Deventer (now in the north-east Netherlands) was burned by Saxons and several monks were killed, Charlemagne used this attack on a holy site as an excuse to launch a full-scale invasion of Saxony.
The King of the Franks led his powerful army across the Rhine and deep into the thickly wooded interior of Saxony. He captured several fortresses and headed for the holiest pagan site in the Saxon heartland – Eresburg (now a sleepy suburb called Obermarsberg), the site of the ancient Irminsul, the World Tree of the pagans, which equates to the Yggdrasil of Norse mythology. Charlemagne captured Eresburg and burnt the Irminsul, which may have been either been a vast living tree or a hollow tree trunk set up for worship.
Either way, this direct attack on their most sacred site enraged the Saxons and sowed the seeds of future rebellions. (This story is told in The Last Berserker, the first novel in my Fire Born series.)
It was a deliberately provocative act by Charlemagne. The historian Christopher Tyerman writes in God’s War: A New History of the Crusades (p37): “Charlemagne’s protracted conquest of the pagan Saxons… was placed in a Christian context: the pagan Saxons were ‘hostile to our religion’ and ‘felt no dishonour to violate and transgress the laws of God and man’… The atmosphere of holy war was deliberately fostered.”
With Saxony apparently pacified, Charlemagne turned his attention to the rebellious Lombards of northern Italy, and while he was subduing them (and crowning himself King of Lombardy) the Saxons rose up against Frankish rule. They were led in their rebellion by a charismatic warrior known as Widukind, which means child of the woods, a kenning for wolf. (See my novel The Saxon Wolf – Fire Born 2).
Widukind, whose real name was probably Theodoric, is a fascinating character. He was a Saxon aristocrat who used guerrilla tactics to attack the occupying Franks. He would use the thick forests of his homeland to hide his forces, emerging to strike and cause death and destruction in the Frankish fortified camps. On one occasion, his men successfully posed as their enemies to infiltrate a Frankish garrison and attack it from the inside in the middle of the night.
It was largely due to Widukind’s leadership that the resistance to Frankish/Christian rule continued for so long. It was not until 804 that Saxony could reasonable be considered conquered, even then, sporadic uprisings continued for another decade. However, Charlemagne’s legal suppression of their Germanic religion was a constant spur to action for Saxon patriots.
A new set of laws concerning Saxony, decreed by Charlemagne in AD782, known as the Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae, sparked a major rebellion that same summer. Under these laws, the punishment for avoiding baptism was death. The penalties for damaging a church, injuring a monk or priest, cremating the dead, worshipping idols, and even eating meat during Lent were also death. Charlemagne had, in effect, declared being a pagan a capital offence.
Saxony erupted in rebellion again the moment Charlemagne’s back was turned, with Widukind achieving his only notable victory in a set-piece battle against the more professional Frankish armies at the Battle of the Süntel Hills (as told in Blood of the Bear: Fire Born 5). But Saxon jubilation was to be short-lived. Charlemagne returned to Saxony with bloody vengeance in mind and, at Verden, a settlement near modern-day Bremen, in the autumn of 782, he ordered the execution of 4,500 Saxon warriors who had trustingly surrendered to him.
While the number of Saxon victims of this massacre may have been exaggerated by the monks who recorded it – just think of the sanguinary logistics involved in chopping off several thousand prisoners’ heads – it is still remembered as one of the worst stains on Charlemagne’s honour.
It was, however, a successful tactic. Three years after the massacre, Widukind came in from the cold and surrendered to the Franks. He was baptised at Attigny (now in northeastern France) with Charlemagne standing as his godfather. The years of rebellion were (more or less) over and Saxony was part of the family of Christendom.
A poem called the Carmen de conversione Saxonum (the conversion of the Saxons) written by the Franks after one of Charlemagne’s victories says: “[Charlemagne] crushed down and subjected [the Saxons] to himself with a shimmering sword. He dragged the forest-worshipping legions into the Kingdom of Heaven…”
So, was the Saxon annexation by Charlemagne the first true crusade? Yes, it might be called a crusade, if we use the narrow definition of a religious war of conquest.
But then, according to that metric, the conquests of the Islamic horsemen in North Africa and Spain in the 7th and 8th centuries would also count as crusades. So, the answer is probably no, and for this reason: the Frankish soldiers who fought against Widukind and his ragtag guerrillas were not guaranteed a place in Heaven if they died in battle.
Pope Urban II, and subsequent popes who roused Christendom to war in the Holy Land, promised ‘indulgences‘ to any who fought – ie, a ticket to salvation – and protection of their lands from rival barons and creditors, while they were on crusade. The participants ‘took the cross’ in a ceremony to become crusaders, which gave them special status in the eyes of the Church.
And while Charlemagne’s battles to turn ‘bad’ Saxons into good Christians were undoubtedly approved of by the Church, there was no structure in place to sanctify the Franks’ blood-drenched activities.
In truth, the argument is moot because ‘crusade’ is an artificial label applied long after the events. It has a broadly negative connotation in our society now, whereas a hundred years ago (in the West) it implied something wholly righteous.
The word would, of course, have been quite meaningless to Charlemagne and Widukind. And, at the time of the First Crusade, and for centuries afterwards, the devout knights who rode east to do battle with the paynim would have called their mission a pilgrimage.
Blood of the Bear by Angus Donald is published on 10 October, 2024. It’s the fifth and last in his Fire Born series.
See more about this book.
You may enjoy Angus’s other features about the historical background to the series:
How to become a berserker – a historical novelist’s guide
Widukind of Westphalia – the Saxon Wolf
Brávellir: the greatest battle… that never was
Other pieces Angus has written include:
Thomas Blood and the theft of the Crown Jewels
Why the Glorious Revolution was . . . well, neither
The never-ending Battle of the Boyne
For more Norse and viking content, have a look at:
The power of alliance in the Viking Age by Matthew Harffy and his interview with Giles Kristian
The 5th century: the fall of Rome, the birth of legends by Tim Hodkinson
The history of werewolves by Theodore Brun
Horses in battle at the time of Alfred the Great, Was King Alfred really the father of the English navy? and The ways of war at the time of King Alfred by Chris Bishop
Vikings in Georgia: history or myth? by Simon Turney
The Battle of Brunanburh by Hilary Green
874 and All That: a short history of a small country by Michael Ridpath
And Matthew Harffy writes about Islamic Andalusia in Al-Andalus: Islamic Spain in the 8th century
Images:
- Pope Leo III crowning Charlemagne as Emperor on Christmas Day, 800, from Chroniques de France ou de St Denis, 14th century: Levan Ramishvili for Flickr (public domain)
- A denarius of Charlemagne, c812–814, with the inscription KAROLVS IMP AVG (Karolus Imperator Augustus): PHGCOM for Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)
- Charlemagne destroys the Irminsul by Hermann Wislicenus, 1880: Wikimedia (public domain)
- Statue of Widukind in Herford, North Rhine-Westphalia: M Kunz for Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)
- The Saxons submitting to Charlemagne and Charlemagne having the Saxons baptised, f130v of Chroniques de France ou de St Denis: BL Royal 16 G VI via Picryl (public domain)
- The Hohenstein in the Süntel hills, where the battle took place: R Pessler for Wikimedia (public domain)
