Part 145

For generations before Charlemagne—from the period, in fact, of the sons of Clovis, early in the sixth century—the Frank kings had claimed supremacy over the Saxons and counted them among the tributaries of their Austrasian or German monarchy. Repeatedly, too, the Saxons had been forced to submit themselves and acknowledge the yoke, in terms, while they repudiated it in fact. When Charlemagne took in hand the conquest of this stubborn and barbarous people, he seems to have found the task as arduous as though nothing had been done in it before him. His first expedition into their country was undertaken in 772, when he advanced with fire and sword from the Rhine at Mayence to the Diemel in the Hessian country. It was on this occasion that he destroyed, near the head-waters of the Lippe, the famous national idol and fane of the Saxons called the Irminsul or Herminsaule supposed to be connected with the memory of Hermann, the Cheruscan patriot chief who destroyed the Roman legions of Varus. The campaign resulted in the submission of the Saxons, with a surrender of hostages to guarantee it. But in 774 they were again in arms, and the next summer Charlemagne swept their country to beyond the Weser with the besom of destruction. Once more they yielded and gave hostages, who were taken to Frank monasteries and made Christians of. But the peace did not last a twelvemonth, and there was another great campaign in 776, which so terrified the turbulent heathen that they accepted baptism in large numbers, and a wholesale conversion took place at Paderborn in May, 777. But a chief had risen at last among the Saxons who could unite them, and who would not kneel to Charlemagne nor bow his head to the waters of baptism. This was Wittekind, a Westphalian, brother-in-law of the king of the Danes and friend of the Frisian king, Ratbod. While Charlemagne was in Spain, in 778, Wittekind roused his countrymen to a rising which cleared their land of crosses, churches, priests and Frank castles at one sweep. From that time until 785 there were campaigns every year, with terrible carnage and destruction in the Saxon country and industrious baptising of the submissive. At Badenfield, at Bockholz, near Zutphen, and at Detmold, there were fierce battles in which the Saxons suffered most; but; at Sonnethal, on the Weser (the Dachtelfield), in 782, the Franks were fearfully beaten and slaughtered. Charlemagne took a barbarous vengeance for this reverse by beheading no less than 4,500 Saxon prisoners at Verden, on the Aller. Three years later, the country of the Saxons having been made, for the most part, a famine-smitten desert, they gave up the struggle. Even Wittekind accepted Christianity, became a monk—a missionary—a canonized saint— and disappeared otherwise from history. According to legend, the blood of more than 200,000 Saxons had "changed the very color of the soil, and the brown clay of the Saxon period gave way to the red earth of Westphalia." For seven years the Saxons were submissive and fought in Charlemagne's armies against other foes. Then there was a last despairing attempt to break the conqueror's yoke, and another long war of twelve years' duration. It ended in the practical annihilation of the Saxons as a distinct people in Germany. Many thousands of them were transplanted to other regions in Gaul and elsewhere; others escaped to Denmark and were absorbed into the great rising naval and military power of the Northmen. The survivors on their own soil were stripped of their possessions. "The Saxon war was conducted with almost unparalleled ferocity."

_J. I. Mombert, History of' Charles the Great, book 2, chapters 3-4._

ALSO IN: _P. Godwin, History of France: Ancient Gaul, chapters 16-17._

SAXONS: End--------

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SAXONS OF BAYEUX.

"The district of Bayeux, occupied by a Saxon colony in the latest days of the old Roman Empire, occupied again by a Scandinavian colony as the result of its conquest by Rolf [or Rollo, the Northman], has retained to this day a character which distinguishes it from every other Romance-speaking portion of the Continent. The Saxons of Bayeux preserved their name and their distinct existence under the Frankish dominion; we can hardly doubt that the Scandinavian settlers found some parts at least of the district still Teutonic, and that nearness of blood and speech exercised over them the same influence which the same causes exercised over the Scandinavian settlers in England. Danes and Saxons coalesced into one Teutonic people, and they retained their Teutonic language and character long after Rouen had become, in speech at least, no less French than Paris. With their old Teutonic speech, the second body of settlers seem to have largely retained their old Teutonic religion, and we shall presently find Bayeux the centre of a heathen and Danish party in the Duchy, in opposition to Rouen, the centre of the new speech and the new creed. The blood of the inhabitants of the Bessin must be composed of nearly the same elements, mingled in nearly the same proportions, as the blood of the inhabitants of the Danish districts of England."

_E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest of England, chapter 4._

SAXONY: Start--------

SAXONY: The old Duchy.

"The great duchy of Saxony [as it existed under the Carolingian empire and after the separation of Germany from France] consisted of three main divisions, Westfalia, Engern or Angria, and Eastfalia. Thuringia to the south-east, and the Frisian lands to the north-west, may be looked on as in some sort appendages to the Saxon duchy. The duchy was also capable of any amount of extension towards the east, and the lands gradually won from the Wends on this side were all looked on as additions made to the Saxon territory. But the great Saxon duchy was broken up at the fall of Henry the Lion [A. D. 1191]. The archiepiscopal Electors of Köln received the title of Dukes of Westfalia and Engern. But in the greater part of those districts the grant remained merely nominal, though the ducal title, with a small actual Westfalian duchy, remained to the electorate till the end. From these lands the Saxon name may be looked on as having altogether passed away. The name of Saxony, as a geographical expression, clave to the Eastfalian remnant of the old duchy, and to Thuringia and the Slavonic conquests to the east. In the later division of Germany these lands formed the two circles of Upper and Lower Saxony; and it was within their limits that the various states arose which have kept on the Saxon name to our own time. From the descendants of Henry the Lion himself, and from the allodial lands which they kept, the Saxon name passed away, except so far as they became part of the Lower-Saxon circle. They held their place as princes of the Empire, no longer as Dukes of Saxony, but as Dukes of Brunswick, a house which gave Rome one Emperor and England a dynasty of kings. After some of the usual divisions, two Brunswick principalities finally took their place on the map, those of Lüneburg and Wolfenbüttel, the latter having the town of Brunswick for its capital. The Lüneburg duchy grew. Late in the seventeenth century it was raised to the electoral rank, and early in the next century it was finally enlarged by the acquisition of the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden. Thus was formed the Electorate, and afterwards Kingdom, of Hannover, while the simple ducal title remained with the Brunswick princes of the other line."

_E. A. Freeman, History Geography of Europe, chapter 8, section 1._

See, also, GERMANY: A. D. 843-962.

SAXONY: A. D. 911-1024. The Imperial House.

See GERMANY: A. D. 911-936; 936-973; and 973-1122.

SAXONY: A. D. 1073-1075. Revolt against Henry IV.

The Saxons were still unreconciled to the transfer of the imperial dignity from their own ducal family to the House of Franconia, when the third of the Franconian emperors, Henry IV., came to the throne while still a boy. His long minority encouraged them to a habit of independent feeling, while his rash and injudicious measures when he grew to manhood provoked their raging enmity. They were still a turbulent, wild people, and he undertook to force the yoke of the empire on their necks, by means of garrisoned fortresses and castles, distributed through their land. The garrisons were insolent, the people were not meek, and in 1073 a furious revolt broke out. "'All Saxony,' says a chronicler, 'revolted, as one man, from the king,' and marched, 80,000 strong, to the Hartzburg, a stately citadel near Goslar, which the king had built for a residence upon a commanding height. After useless negotiations, Henry made a narrow escape by flight. When he then summoned his princes around him, no one came; and here and there it began to be said that he must be entirely abandoned and another monarch chosen. In this extremity, the cities alone remained faithful to the emperor, who for some time lay sick almost to death in his loyal city of Worms." Henry's energy, and the great abilities which he possessed, enabled him to recover his command of resources and to bring a strong army into the field against the Saxons, in the early summer of 1075. They offered submission and he might have restored peace to his country in an honorable way; but his headstrong passions demanded revenge. "After a march of extraordinary rapidity, he fell suddenly upon the Saxons and their allies, the Thuringians, on the meadows of the Unstrutt, at Langensalza, near Hohenburg. His army drawn up in an order resembling that which Otto the Great had formed on the Lech [against the Hungarians], obtained, after a fierce hand-to-hand fight of nine hours, a bloody victory. When the Saxons finally yielded and fled, the battle became a massacre. … It is asserted that of the foot-soldiers, who composed the mass of the Saxon army of 60,000, hardly any escaped; though of the noblemen, who had swift horses, few were slain. But it was a battle of Germans with Germans, and on the very evening of the struggle, the lamentations over so many slain by kindred hands could not be suppressed in the emperor's own camp. Yet for the time the spirit of Saxon independence was crushed. Henry was really master of all Germany, and seemed to have established the imperial throne again." But little more than a year afterwards, Henry, under the ban of the great Pope Gregory VII., with whom he had quarrelled, was again deserted by his subjects. Again he recovered his footing and maintained a civil war until his own son deposed him, in 1105. The next year he died.

_C. T. Lewis, History of Germany, book 2, chapter 7, sections 13-20._

ALSO IN: _W. Menzel, History of Germany, chapter 142._

See, also, GERMANY: A. D. 973-1122.

SAXONY: A. D. 1125-1152. The origin of the electorate.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1125-1152.

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SAXONY: A. D. 1178-1183. The dissolution of the old duchy.

In an account given elsewhere of the origin of the Guelf and Ghibelline parties and their names (see GUELFS AND GHIBELLINES), the circumstances under which Henry the Proud, in 1138, was stripped of the duchy of Saxony, and the duchy of Bavaria, have been briefly related. This Duke Henry the Proud died soon after that event, leaving a son who acquired the name of Henry the Lion. The Emperor Conrad, whose hostility to the father had been the cause of his ruin, now restored to the son, Henry the Lion, his duchy of Saxony, but required him to renounce the Bavarian duchy. But Conrad, dying in 1152, was succeeded on the imperial throne by his nephew, Frederick Barbarossa, who entertained a friendly feeling for the young Duke of Saxony, and who restored to him, in 1156, the whole of his father's forfeited possessions, Bavaria included. By his own warlike energies, Henry the Lion extended his dominions still further, making a conquest of the Obotrites, one of the tribes of heathen Slaves or Wends who occupied the Mecklenburg region on the Baltic. He was, now, the most powerful of the princes of the Germanic empire, and one of the most powerful in Europe. But he used his power haughtily and arbitrarily and raised up many enemies against himself. At length there arose a quarrel between the Emperor and Duke Henry, which the latter embittered by abruptly quitting the emperor's army, in Italy, with all his troops, at a time when (A. D. 1175) the latter was almost ruined by the desertion. From that moment Henry the Lion was marked, as his father had been, for ruin. Accusations were brought against him in the diet; he was repeatedly summoned to appear and meet them, and he obstinately refused to obey the summons. At length, A. D. 1178, he was formally declared to be a rebel to the state, and the "imperial ban" was solemnly pronounced against him. "This sentence placed Henry without the pale of the laws, and his person and his states were at the mercy of everyone who had the power of injuring them. The archbishop of Cologne, his ancient enemy, had the ban promulgated throughout Saxony, and at his command Godfrey, Duke of Brabant; Philip, Count of Flanders; Otho, Count of Guelders; Thierry, Lord of Cleves; William of Juliers, with the Lords of Bonn Senef, Berg, and many others, levied forces, and joining the archbishop, entered Westphalia, which they overran and laid waste, before he was aware of their intentions." This was the beginning of a long struggle, in which Henry made a gallant resistance; but the odds were too heavily against him. His friends and supporters gradually fell away, his dominions were lost, one by one, and in 1183 he took refuge in England, at the court of Henry II., whose daughter Matilda he had married. After an exile of three years he was permitted to return to Germany and his alodial estates in Saxony were restored to him. The imperial fiefs were divided. The archbishop of Cologne received the greater part of Westphalia, and Angria. Bernard, Count of Anhalt, got the remainder of the old Saxon duchy, with its ducal title. When Henry the Lion died, in 1195, the alodial possessions that he had recovered were divided between his three sons.

_Sir A. Halliday, Annals of the House of Hanover, book 4 (volume 1)._

Fifty years afterwards these were converted into imperial fiefs and became the two duchies of the house of Brunswick, —Lüneburg and Wolfenbüttel, afterwards Hanover and Brunswick—the princes of which represented the old house of Saxony and inherited the name of Guelf.

ALSO IN: _H. Hallam, The Middle Ages, chapter 5._

See, also, SAXONY: THE OLD DUCHY; GERMANY: A. D. 1138-1268; ITALY: A. D. 1174-1183.

SAXONY: A. D. 1180-1553. The later Duchy and Electorate. The House of Wettin. Its Ernestine and Albertine lines, and their many branches.

"When Henry the Lion was deprived of the Duchy of Saxony in 1180, it [reduced to a small district around Lauenberg] was given to Bernhard, the youngest son of Albert the Bear, Elector of Brandenburg, and it continued with his descendants in the male line till 1422, when it was sold by the Emperor Sigismond to Frederick, surnamed the Warlike, Margrave of Misnia, descended in the female line from the Landgraves of Thuringen."

_Sir A. Halliday, Annals of the House of Hanover, volume 1, page 426._

This line has been known as the House of Wettin, taking that name from Dedo, count of Wettin, who was the first margrave of Misnia, or Meissen; being invested with the dignity in 1048. "The Wettin line of Saxon princes, the same that yet endures [1855], known by sight to every English creature (for the high individual, Prince Albert, is of it), had been lucky enough to combine in itself, by inheritance, by good management, chiefly by inheritance and mere force of survival, all the Three separate portions and divided dignities of that country: the Thüringen Landgraviate, the Meissen Markgraviate, and the ancient Duchy and Electorate of Saxony; and to become very great among the Princes of the German Empire. … Through the earlier portion of the 15th century, this Saxon House might fairly reckon itself the greatest in Germany, till Austria, till Brandenburg gradually rose to overshadow it. Law of primogeniture could never be accepted in that country; nothing but divisions, redivisions, coalescings, splittings, and never-ending readjustments and collisions were prevalent in consequence; to which cause, first of all, the loss of the race by Saxony may be ascribed." In 1464, Frederick II. was succeeded by his two sons, Ernest and Albert. These princes governed their country conjointly for upwards of 20 years, but then made a partition from which began the separation of the Ernestine and Albertine lines that continued ever afterwards in the House of Saxony. "Ernest, the elder of those two … boys, became Kurfürst (Elector); and got for inheritance, besides the 'inalienable properties' which lie round Wittenberg, … the better or Thuringian side of the Saxon country—that is, the Weimar, Gotha, Altenburg, &c. Principalities: —while the other youth, Albert, had to take the 'Osterland (Easternland), with part of Meissen,' what we may in general imagine to be (for no German Dryasdust will do you the kindness to say precisely) the eastern region of what is Saxony in our day. These Albertines, with an inferior territory, had, as their main towns, Leipzig and Dresden, a Residenz-Schloss (or sublime enough Ducal Palace) in each city, Leipzig as yet the grander and more common one. There, at Leipzig chiefly, I say, lived the august younger or Albertine Line. … {2814} As for Ernst, the elder, he and his lived chiefly at Wittenberg, as I perceive; there or in the neighbourhood was their high Schloss; distinguished among palaces. But they had Weimar, they had Altenburg, Gotha, Coburg,—above all, they had the Wartburg, one of the most distinguished Strong Houses any Duke could live in, if he were of frugal and heroic turn. … Ernst's son was Frederick the Wise, successor in the Kur (Electorship) and paternal lands; which, as Frederick did not marry and there was only one other brother, were not further divided on this occasion. Frederick the Wise, born in 1463, was that ever-memorable Kurfürst who saved Luther from the Diet of Worms in 1521.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1521-1522.

He died in 1525, and was succeeded by his brother, John the Steadfast. … He also was a wise and eminently Protestant man. He struggled very faithfully for the good Cause, during his term of sovereignty; died in 1532 (14 years before Luther), having held the Electorate only seven years. … His son was Johann Friedrich, the Magnanimous by epithet (der Grossmüthige), under whom the Line underwent sad destinies; lost the Electorship, lost much; and split itself after him into innumerable branches, who are all of a small type ever since." In the Albertine Line, Albert's eldest son, "successor in the eastern properties and residences, was Duke George of Saxony,—called 'of Saxony,' as all those Dukes, big and little, were and still are,—Herzog Georg von Sachsen: of whom, to make him memorable, it is enough to say that he was Luther's Duke George! Yes, this is he with whom Luther had such wrangling and jangling. … He was strong for the old religion, while his cousins went so valiantly ahead for the new. … George's brother, Henry, succeeded; lived only for two years; in which time all went to Protestantism in the eastern parts of Saxony, as in the western. This Henry's eldest son, and first successor, was Moritz, the 'Maurice' known in English Protestant books; who, in the Schmalkaldic League and War, played such a questionable game with his Protestant cousin, of the elder or Ernestine Line,—quite ousting said cousin, by superior jockeyship, and reducing his Line and him to the second rank ever since.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1546-1552.

This cousin was Johann Friedrich the Magnanimous … whom we left above waiting for that catastrophe. … Duke Moritz got the Electorship transferred to himself; Electorship, with Wittenberg and the 'inalienable lands and dignities.' … Moritz kept his Electorship, and, by cunning jockeying, his Protestantism too; got his Albertine or junior Line pushed into the place of the Ernestine or first; in which dishonourably acquired position it continues to this day [1855]; performing ever since the chief part in Saxony, as Electors, and now as Kings of Saxony. … The Ernestine, or honourable Protestant line is ever since in a secondary, diminished, and as it were, disintegrated state, a Line broken small; nothing now but a series of small Dukes, Weimar, Gotha, Coburg, and the like, in the Thuringian region, who, on mere genealogical grounds, put Sachsen to their name: Sachsen-Coburg, Sachsen-Weimar, &c. [Anglicised, Saxe-Coburg, etc.]."

_T. Carlyle, The Prinzenraub (Essays, volume 6)._

ALSO IN: _F. Shoberl, Historical Account of the House of Saxony._

SAXONY: A. D. 1500-1512. Formation of the Circles of Saxony and Upper Saxony.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1493-1519.

SAXONY: A. D. 1516-1546. The Reformation.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1516-1517, to 1517-1521, 1521-1522, 1522-1525, 1525-1529, 1530-1531; also, GERMANY: A. D. 1530-1532, and after.

SAXONY: A. D. 1525. The Lutheran doctrines and system formally established in the electorate.

See PAPACY: A. D. 1522-1525.

SAXONY: A. D. 1539. Succession GERMANY of a Protestant prince.

See: A. D. 1533-1546.

SAXONY: A. D. 1546-1547. Treachery of Maurice of Saxony. Transfer of the electorate to him.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1546-1552.

SAXONY: A. D. 1619. Adhesion of the Elector to the Emperor Ferdinand, against Frederick of Bohemia and the Evangelical Union.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1618-1620.

SAXONY: A. D. 1631. Ignoble trepidations of the Elector. His final alliance with Gustavus Adolphus. The battle of Breitenfeld.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1631.

SAXONY: A. D. 1631-1632. The Elector and his army in Bohemia.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1631-1632.

SAXONY: A. D. 1633. Standing aloof from the Union of Heilbronn.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1632-1634.

SAXONY: A. D. 1634. Desertion of the Protestant cause. The Elector's alliance with the Emperor.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1634-1639.

SAXONY: A. D. 1645. Forced to a treaty of neutrality with the Swedes and French.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1640-1645.

SAXONY: A. D. 1648. The Peace of Westphalia.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1648.

SAXONY: A. D. 1686. The League of Augsburg.

See GERMANY: A. D. 1686.

SAXONY: A. D. 1697-1698. The crown of Poland secured by the Elector.

See POLAND: A. D. 1696-1698.

SAXONY: A. D. 1706. Invasion by Charles XII. of Sweden. Renunciation of the Polish crown, by the Elector Augustus.

See SCANDINAVIAN STATES (SWEDEN): A. D. 1701-1707.

SAXONY: A. D. 1733. Election of Augustus III. to the Polish throne, enforced by Russia and Austria.

See POLAND: A. D. 1732-1733.