Widukind

Biography

The great leader of Saxon resistance to Charlemagne, Widukind was a nobleman of the Westphalian Saxons who for years personified his people's ferocious struggle to keep their independence and their pagan gods. Again and again, whenever Charlemagne withdrew, Widukind returned from refuge among the Danes to raise fresh revolts, burning churches and cutting down Frankish garrisons — most spectacularly the rising of 782 that destroyed a Frankish army and provoked the Massacre of Verden. But the relentless Frankish machine — its campaigns, deportations, and savage laws — ground the Saxons down. In 785 Widukind at last despaired and submitted, accepting Christian baptism with Charlemagne himself as his godfather. He then vanishes from the record. In later ages, especially in Germany, he was transformed into a national hero — a symbol, variously, of Saxon freedom, of resistance to foreign domination, and, more darkly, of Germanic identity.

Key Battles