The Massacre of Verden was an event during the Saxon Wars where the Frankish king Charlemagne ordered the death of 4,500 Saxons in October 782. Charlemagne claimed suzerainty over Saxony and in 772 destroyed the Irminsul, an important object in Saxon paganism, during his intermittent thirty-year campaign to Christianize the Saxons. The massacre occurred in Verden in what is now Lower Saxony, Germany. The event is attested in contemporary Frankish sources, including the Royal Frankish Annals.
Beginning in the 1870s, some scholars have attempted to exonerate Charlemagne of the massacre by way of a proposed manuscript error but these attempts have since been generally rejected. While the figure of 4,500 victims has generally been accepted, some scholars regard it as an exaggeration.
Sources
An entry for the year 782 in the first version of the Royal Frankish Annals (Annales Regni Francorum) records a Saxon rebellion, followed by a Saxon victory in the battle of the Süntel before Charlemagne arrived and put down the rebellion. Charlemagne ordered the execution of 4,500 Saxons near the confluence of the Aller and the Weser, in what is now Verden. Regarding the massacre, the entry reads: When he heard this, the Lord King Charles rushed to the place with all the Franks that he could gather on short notice and advanced to where the Aller flows into the Weser. Then all the Saxons came together again, submitted to the authority of the Lord King, and surrendered the evildoers who were chiefly responsible for this revolt to be put to death—four thousand and five hundred of them. This sentence was carried out. Widukind was not among them since he had fled to Nordmannia [Denmark]. When he had finished this business, the Lord King returned to Francia.
The Annales qui dicuntur Einhardi (Annals of Einhard), which are a revised version of the Royal Frankish Annals and not a completely independent source, give a different account of the battle of the Süntel, recording that Charlemagne lost two envoys, four counts, and around twenty nobles in a Frankish defeat. The reviser agrees about the punishment meted out on the Saxon rebels, and adds some details, such as that the Saxons blamed Widukind, that the number 4,500 was a minimum and that the executions took place in a single day:
A short notice under the same year in the Annales Laubacenses (Annals of Lobbes) and the related Annales sancti Amandi (Annals of Saint-Amand) reads: "The rebellious Saxons killed many Franks; and Charles, [having] gathered the Saxons together, ordered them beheaded" (Saxones rebellantes plurimos Francos interfecerunt; et Karlus, congregatos Saxones, iussit eos decollare). For the year 782, the Annales Sangallenses Baluzii are more cryptic: "this year the Lord King Charles killed many Saxons" (hoc anno domnus rex Karolus plures de Saxonis interfecit).
Scholarship
Historian Alessandro Barbero says that, regarding Charlemagne, the massacre "produced perhaps the greatest stain on his reputation". In his survey on scholarship regarding Charlemagne, Barbero comments on attempts at exonerating Charlemagne and his forces from the massacre: Several historians have attempted to lessen Charles's responsibility for the massacre, by stressing that until a few months earlier the king thought he had pacified the country, the Saxon nobles had sworn allegiance, and many of them had been appointed counts. Thus the rebellion constituted an act of treason punishable by death, the same penalty that the extremely harsh Saxon law imposed with great facility, even for the most insignificant of crimes. Others have attempted to twist the accounts provided by sources, arguing that the Saxons were killed in battle and not massacred in cold blood, or even that the verb decollare (to decapitate) was a copyist's error in place of delocare (to relocate), so the prisoners were deported. None of these attempts has proved credible. He continues: "the most likely inspiration for the mass execution of Verden was the Bible", Charlemagne desiring "to act like a true King of Israel", citing the biblical tale of the total extermination of the Amalekites and the conquest of the Moabites by David. Barbero further points out that a few years later, a royal chronicler, commenting on Charlemagne's treatment of the Saxons, records that "either they were defeated or subjected to the Christian religion or completely swept away."
Roger Collins identifies the victims of the massacre as all Saxons held to have participated in the battle of the Süntel. Charlemagne may have found his precedent for mass execution in the Council of Cannstatt of 745/6, whereat his uncle Carloman executed numerous leading Alemannic noblemen.