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Concept
Massacre of Verden
Summary
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.
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.
Official source
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