The conflict between the Saxons and the Franks during the late 700s and early 800s wasn’t just a random clash. Inflamed by a missionary zeal, it was part of a long and complicated relationship that stretched back centuries.
The Saxons and Franks weren’t exactly strangers when their conflicts flared up in the late 700s and early 800s. Living on the Eastern brink of the River Rhine they had been longstanding neighbours to each other. Both tribes or warbands often showed up together in Roman writings, and would have served together as mercenaries. Also, they initially spoke the same language or variants thereof, West Germanic, and may have sacrificed to gods belonging to the same Pantheon.
By the fifth century, however, the Saxons had made their way not only to Britain but also into Gaul, settling along the Atlantic coast, while the Franks had migrated westward forging Francia, the Merovingian successor kingdom covering more or less present France and the region around the Lower Middle Rhine reaching towards the Elbe. During this period, Frankish kings, especially during the Merovingian era, frequently launched campaigns into Saxon territory lying between the Rhine and the Weser, collecting tribute – mostly horses from the Weser region – and exerting a kind of loose control. However, some Saxons climbed pretty high up the Frankish political ladder, even becoming dukes and queens, and the frontierzone was permeable. The socalled Prince from Beckum may represent and interesting example. Buried with a Merovingian period ring-sword and several horses, he appears to have been a veritable high-ranking cultural border crosser.
In a notice in the Royal Frankish Annals from AD 775, we read how the part of the (Frankish) army, which had pitched camp at a place called Lübbekke “acted carelessly, and were tricked by the Saxon guile. When the Frankish foragers returned to camp about the 9th hour of the day, Saxons mixed with them as if they belonged to them, and thus entered the camp of the Franks”. Here, they attacked the sleeping or half-awake soldiers and are said to have caused quite a slaughter. The Saxon War appears to have been internecine. (Royal Frankish Annals AD 775).
Things began heating up under the Carolingians, starting with Charles Martel in the 720s. Frankish military activity in Saxony ramped up right alongside a wave of Anglo-Saxon missionaries – Willibrord and Boniface – who with papal backing pushed east of the Rhine and further up north. At the same time, the pagan Saxons themselves were expanding south, bumping up against the Franks more often.
During the 740s and 750s, Frankish rulers like Pippin III and his brother Carloman launched more campaigns into Saxon lands. They reimposed the Saxon tribute and might have made the first (tentative) attempts to introduce Christianity there—though that’s still debated. Nonetheless, the missionary endeavor was definitely a significant motivation listed in the annals and other texts referring to these events.
Charlemagne’s Saxon Wars
When Charlemagne (748-814) led his first campaign into Saxony in 772, he was ruler of a newly unified Frankish kingdom. That campaign ended with the capture of the Eresburg fortress, the destruction of the Irminsul (a sacred Saxon site), and the taking of hostages. A year later, the Saxons hit back, targeting Christian sites like the monastery of Fritzlar, founded by St. Boniface.
Although many historians mark 772 as the start of the Saxon conquest, the real push likely began in 775. That year followed Charlemagne’s successful campaign in Italy and a royal assembly at Quierzy. The 775 campaign was well-planned: small advance raids had gone out the year before, and the aim seemed to be locking down loyalty in three key Saxon regions—Eastphalia, Angria, and Westphalia—by forcing oaths and collecting hostages. One important military victory was gained at Braunsburg. Some of the first Saxon baptisms might’ve happened then, but more likely in 776, when Charlemagne established a new royal centre called Urbs Caroli in Saxon lands, the later Paderborn.
The momentum continued in AD 777 with a major royal assembly at Paderborn, where more baptisms were performed. This event was celebrated in a short poem called the Carmen de conversione Saxonum –the first written Frankish account of the conquest. At the time, it seemed like Saxony had been brought under control.
But that wasn’t the case. In AD 778, while Charlemagne was off campaigning in Spain, the Saxons rose again, this time led by a Westphalian named Widukind, who destroyed Paderborn. He had already been mentioned in the year 777 in the Annales regni Francorum as having fled to the Danes. The Franks struck back hard that autumn and again the next summer.
By 780, things had quieted down enough for a second assembly near Paderborn, and Christian efforts spread north into Wigmodia and Nordalbingia, the region just south of the river Elbe. According to some minor sources, Charlemagne started distributing land in these areas to bishops, priests, and abbots that year.
The year 782 was a turning point. Charlemagne held another assembly at Lippespringe near Paderborn, where he likely introduced the infamous Capitulatio de partibus Saxoniae – a harsh legal code demanding loyalty to the Frankish regime and Christianity under penalty of death. Around the same time, Widukind returned and ambushed a Frankish force in the Süntel Mountains, killing several high-ranking nobles. In revenge, Charlemagne reportedly executed 4,500 Saxons at Verden—an event that still sparks debate.
More uprisings followed in 783 and again in 784, the latter involving Frisian allies. Charlemagne responded with another assembly at Paderborn. That year, Widukind travelled to Attigny and accepted baptism, which Pope Hadrian I welcomed with widespread prayer and celebration. For a while, peace held.
Still, from 792 to 799, Saxony saw almost yearly revolts, especially in the north. In 797, Charlemagne issued the Capitulare Saxonicum, which softened some of the harsher laws of the earlier Capitulatio. Two years later, he met the wounded Pope Leo III at another Paderborn assembly.
In 802, a Saxon army fought on behalf of the Franks against rebellious northern Saxons. This marked a shift. It appears, some Saxons were now part of the Frankish military system. A peace treaty might have been concluded at an assembly in Salz the next year, and the Lex Saxonum, the final law code for Saxon subjects, was issued. Nevertheless, In 804, another northern campaign resulted in the forced relocation of about 10,000 Saxons from both north and south of the Elb estuary. The conquest effectively wrapped up in 804. However, the latest events led to a series of diplomatic contacts and scary manouvres initiated by the Danish kings, Godfried and Siegfried in the next decade, forcing Charlemagne to muster his army in 810 against a fleet of 200 ships anchoring up off Frisia.
After that, though, the Carolingians turned their focus elsewhere. The next few decades emphasized building the church in Saxony, bringing in relics from Francia and Italy, educating the Saxons in Christianity (something that had been sidelined during the wars), and raising up a new Saxon nobility – some of whom later traced their roots to pre-conquest times.
The final chapter came in 841–842 with the Stellinga uprising. In this revolt, poor and unfree Saxons rose up against the new Saxon elites, hoping to return to their old ways.
Ironically, by the 10th century, it would be the Saxons themselves who expanded east to sundue and convert their own pagan neighbours – the Abodrites, the Poles and the Danes, representing a striking example of the conquered adopting and continuing the culture of their conquerors.
Looking Back
Source: Wikipedia
The Frankish conquest of Saxony is one of the most hotly debated subjects in Carolingian history. From medieval chronicles to Nazi propaganda and modern academic work, every era has interpreted it through its own lens.
In the 1930s and ’40s, Nazi ideologues twisted the story into a racist narrative: the Saxons were cast as pure Germanic heroes with Henry I, Himmler’s absolute Germanic hero. Meanwhile, Charlemagne was vilified as a “Sachsenschlächter” (Saxon butcher) and a puppet of a foreign Christian religion. Historians who pushed back against this nonsense were smeared as traitors. One such historian, Martin Lintzel, produced foundational studies of the conquest that are still respected today – though his work was slanted in its own way, reflecting a kind of Marxist perspective, thus seeing the conflict as a clash between elite alliances and peasant resistance.
After WW2, Aachen was defined as the heart of the new Europe while Charlemagne was turned into the father of Europe. Both celebrated with an famous exhibition in Aachen in 1965.
However, in the past three decades, Saxony has come back into scholarly focus, especially as historians have shifted attention from imperial centres to regional experiences. A 1999 exhibition in Paderborn directly responded to the Aachen event of 1965. Also, modern research has explored everything from archaeological finds to how the Frankish narrative shaped our understanding of the Saxons. Scholars have questioned old assumptions about a united pre-conquest Saxon identity and studied how Saxony was gradually stitched into the empire while keeping its historical roots intact to be reinvented in the 10th century Ottonian Empire.
Even the words used to describe the conquest have changed. Medieval and early modern writers simply called it a “conquest” and a “conversion.” More recently, though, “integration” has become the buzzword, reflecting broader 21st century conversations about expropriation, assimilation and downright colonization.
The most recent questions raised focus on both sides: The Frankish drive to conquer and rule and the Saxon experience of losing their land, culture, and autonomy. This approach helps paint a fuller picture of what was really going on in one of early medieval Europe’s most transformative and brutal conquests.
Looking Forward
The history of the Carolingian war in Saxony also play into the 21st history of the wars waged by the religiously inflamed despots like J. D. Vance, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Together with their loyal retinues and warbands, they are inspired by the histories and traditions of the wars of religion such as the archetypal “Carolingian wars in Saxony””.
SOURCES
Saxon Identities, AD 150–900
By Robert Flierman and Ian Wood
Series: Studies in Early Medieval History
Bloomsbury 2019
Converting the Saxons. A Study of Violence and Religion in Early Medieval Germany
By Joshua M. Cragle
Routledge 2024
Conquest and Colonization in the Early Middle Ages: The Carolingians and Saxony, c. 751–842
Thesis by Christopher Thomas Landon
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto, 2017
Conquest and Christianization: Saxony and the Carolingian world, 772-888
By Ingrid Rembold
CambridgeUniversity press 2018
The Continental Saxons from the Migration Period to the Tenth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective
Ed by Dennis H. Green and Frank Siegmund
Series: Studies in Historical Archaeoethnology (Volume 6)
Boydell 20023