Foiled in this endeavor King Charles allowed the year 793 to pass without an attempt to punish the Saxon rebellion. The next six years (794–799) each had its Saxon campaign. The general features of the war are very similar to those which we have already noticed: rapid marches of the Frankish king, devastation of the Saxon country, oaths of submission and Saxon hostages. It is noteworthy that Charles now carries back into Frank-land large numbers of these hostages--all apparently young lads--has them educated as Christians, generally as ecclesiastics, and when peace is restored instals them in the various churches and convents wherewith, as the Roman _imperator_ of old with his _coloniæ_, he fastens down the conquered country. It is also to be observed that the struggle is now chiefly confined to the northern part of Saxon-land, to the great _gau_ of Wigmodia, which stretched between Bremen and Hamburg, and to the Nordalbingi who, as has been said, occupied what is now the duchy of Holstein. Further, that Charles, Teuton as he was, did not object to avail himself of the help of a Sclavonic people, the Abodrites, who were the eastern neighbors of the Saxons, and that he bitterly avenged the death of their king Witzin on “the perfidious Saxon nation,” into whose snares he had fallen (795).
In several of these campaigns the Frankish king was effectually seconded by his son Charles, now a young man of between twenty and thirty, to whom it was the father’s custom to entrust a portion of his army that a combined attack might be made from different points of the compass. The plan of operations seems to have been generally well laid, for we never hear of these concerted invasions failing to meet at the point agreed upon.
One of the fiercest campaigns was that of 798 against the Nordalbingi, who had grievously enraged Charles by the murder of his _missi_ or plenipotentiaries, one of whom was clothed with the sacred character of an ambassador to the King of Denmark. In his vengeance for this murder Charles was powerfully seconded by Thrasco, Duke of the Abodrites.
During the next four eventful years (800–803) Charles had abundant occupation south of the Alps. In 804 he led his army into Saxon-land, “transferred all the Saxons who dwelt beyond the Elbe and in Wigmodia with their wives and children into Frank-land, and gave the shires beyond the Elbe to the Abodrites.” As these Sclavonian allies of Charles were heathens, this handing over to them of the duchy of Holstein was so far a confession of failure in the attempt to win the whole of the Saxon territory for Christianity. The number of the Saxons on both banks of the Elbe thus transported is given by Einhard at 10,000. When the inhabitants of whole districts were thus forcibly removed, much injustice, even from the point of view of Frankish “law and order,” must often have been committed. In the next generation complaints reached the ears of Charles’s successor from the sons of loyal and peaceable dwellers by the Weser who had been swept off into exile together with the rebel Wigmodians, and had never recovered the property of which they were then despoiled.