acred priests and monks wherever they could be found.
Then came years of carnage: once Charles--it is said--caused 4,500
Saxons to be beheaded in one day. In 793 there was a new outbreak.
The Saxons "as a dog returneth to his vomit so returned they to the
paganism they had renounced, again deserting Christian faith and lying
not less to God than to their lord the king." Churches were destroyed,
bishops and priests slain, and the land was again defiled with blood.
They allied with the Avars, and Charles was thus beset with heathen
foes in Hungary and in North Germany at once. He tried every measure
of devastation and exile; but it seems that by 797 he had come more
clearly to see the Christian way. "Let but the same pains be taken,"
he wrote--or the English scholar Alcuin wrote for him--"to preach the
easy yoke and light burden of Christ to the obstinate people of the
Saxons as are taken to collect the tithes from them or to punish the
least transgression of the laws imposed on them, and perhaps they would
be found no longer to repel baptism with abhorrence." But he was far
from always acting up to this view, and he even allied with heathen
Slavs to accomplish the subjugation of his enemies. As he conquered he
mapped out the land in bishoprics and planted monasteries at important
points: he took Saxon boys to his court and sent them back trained,
often as ecclesiastics, to teach and rule. Among such was Ebbo,
afterwards Archbishop of Rheims, the "Apostle of Denmark." From abroad
too came other missionaries, and notable among them was another
Englishman, Willehad of {142} Northumbria, who became in 788 the first
bishop of Bremen. At last Christianity was, at least nominally, in
possession from the Rhine to the Elbe, and in the words of Einhard
"thus they were brought to accept the terms of the king, and thus they
gave up their demon worship, renounced their national religious
customs, embraced the Christian faith, received the divine sacraments,
and were united with the Franks, forming one people."

Under Charles the organisation of the German Church, begun by Boniface,
received a great extension. It was possible, after his death, to
regard Germany as Christian and as organised in its religion on the
lines of all the Western Churches.

[1] Hodgkin, _Italy and her Invaders_, v. 203.

[2] See p. 1-14.

[3] This seems to me the most probable date. Cf. Hauck,
_Kirchengeschichte Deutschlands_, i. 448.